Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Offshoring Main Street USA
Offshoring, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is what you call
outsourcing to foreign countries, like India and China.
I used to own a small website development company. I gave up on it last year as
I realized that juggling two kids and a business was going to be
impossible for me to do. Well, the phone directories still aren't up-to-date as
I still get phone calls for my company. The latest came today while I was out
running an errand. A gentleman with a thick Indian accent was calling me to
solicit my business. He wanted me to outsource my work to him as he had a bunch
of programmers in India ready to do any sort of computer programming I could
think of. "We'll make you lots of money," he said.
I'm very anti-offshoring. It's a good thing I wasn't home as the
temptation to be rude, to say the least, would've been overwhelming.
The rhetoric that we've heard from captains of industry and (probably bribed by
lobbyists) politicians is that we're sending menial jobs overseas and that it's
good for the economy. Manufacturing has all gone to China (putting this
country's industrial infrastructure into a dangerous predicament). But we're
told not to worry because we still had service jobs and just look at all the
cheap stuff we're getting at Wal-Mart (cheap shit more like). And our
highly skilled jobs that required a college education (like architecture,
engineering, computer programming, etc.) would be safe. Well, we all know that
many customer service jobs have been sent to India (witness the latest Dell
fallout) and scores of computer programming jobs have followed. Work that used
to be done by architectural interns is being shipped to China. Don't believe me?
Just pick up a copy of Wired as
they jerk off about the wonders of the global economy.
I figured that I was safe from offshoring as my small business targetted other
small businesses. Not enough money there for big offshore IT farms to care
about. But I'm wrong. Now they want the under $500/website crowd. It makes me
sick. These guys are working their asses off for $20,000/yr while the same jobs
in the US pay 3-4 times that amount. How can an American compete with that? Of
course it's even worse in manufacturing, which I won't needn't bother going
into.
The only safe jobs are those that require your physical presence: electricians,
plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, nurses, etc. While an influx of cheap illegal
immigrant labor has flooded this country, I haven't seen much of an impact on
these skilled trade jobs. I could be wrong, but unskilled labor seems to be the
predominant haven for illegal immigrants. A nation of plumbers? Seems alot
better that a nation of Wal-Mart Associates.
Libertarians tend to go along with the thinking that free trade is good. But if
trade isn't fair, how good can it be? If all of your manufacturing and
technical jobs leave for cheaper parts of the world, what's going to be left for
the middle class? Management? Yeah, like that's useful. We won WW2 because our
nation was an agricultural and industrial juggernaut. Now? Well, at least we
still grow most of our own food.
\_/
DED
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About Me
Name: DED
Location: United States
I'm a stay-at-home Dad who survived dotcom burnout and a
chemical engineering career that fizzled. While the kids are in school,
I'm free to write stories.
I'm a rational environmentalist, science and technology enthusiast, who leans
libertarian, reads and watches sci-fi, drinks and brews beer, and listens to
metal.
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