[ale] OT: what about the free and open work market?

[J.M. Taylor]

> Who American business choose to do their work
> has little to do with what restrictions the Indian government wishes to
> make on immigration.  It's not a matter of "working both ways" - these
> are fundamentally separate issues.
>

<rambling>
Let me preface this by saying that I've been seriously under-employed for
more than 6 months, and have dropped out of the job market to go back to
school.  So I understand why these articles piss people off, believe me,
it sucks to have your earnings decimated and no hope in sight.

But I gotta agree with George on this one.  If we had worked building TVs
50 years ago, we would have been all up in arms about all that tech going
overseas, first to Japan and then, when Japan got too expensive, to
cheaper labour countries.  Japan doesn't hire outsiders either.  Many,
many countries have protectionist laws in place.  It just depends on what
that culture emphasises, and we in the US have always emphasized the
corporation because we believe that if the corporations are healthy, the
rest of the country will benefit.  That is captialism.  Many countries
believe that if the workers are healthy, the nation will benefit...and you
just *try* to emigrate to Sweden or Germany.  I urge you to open any copy
of The Economist and look at how the US compares to other countries in
just raw statistics.  There are no right answers to this stuff, but on the
whole we do pretty well.

American corporations have *always* made the decisions that they believe
will maximize overall profits.  Doing business in America is fairly
expensive.  Not as expensive as Europe, but our worker-protection laws are
costly.  The fiasco in California is partially due to its dramatic
anti-corporate laws...businesses moved out because it was too expensive to
operate there, tax revenues fell, massive budget deficit...blah blah blah.
 So before we vote for someone who vows to enact more worker protection
laws, or grumble about India (or Japan, or whoever), we should consider
how it would *really* work if we stopped US companies from outsourcing.

Things may never improve for IT as we know it, just as they've never
improved for manufacturing. Still, things change, and people adapt.  There
will be something else. If we want to cling to our tech-as-we-know-it,
then we have to be willing to accept lower wages than the places they're
outsourcing to.
</rambling>

jenn