Globalization Decimating US I.T. Jobs

mrraven writes, "According to Ronald Reagan's former deputy secretary of the treasury in this article in Counterpunch, globalization is destroying US I.T. jobs. From the article: 'During the past five years (January 01 – January 06), the information sector of the US economy lost 644,000 jobs, or 17.4 per cent of its work force. Computer systems design and related work lost 105,000 jobs, or 8.5 per cent of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology.'" Paul Craig Roberts quotes a number of formerly pro-globalization economists who are now seeing the light of the harrowing of the US middle class. It's not limited to I.T. Roberts quotes one recanting economist, Alan Blinder, as saying that 42–56 million American service-sector jobs are susceptible to offshoring.

In more trouble than most realize...

Of course most folks who are actually working in IT could have told you this. I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs. Morale is low, pay has not kept up with the cost of living increases, the cost of health care or inflation. Productivity is still there, but burnout is likely in these individuals. Other people I know that did lose their jobs ended up going back to school and getting out of IT entirely which I suspect is not an isolated situation and would lead to skewed unemployment statistics.

The thing that worries me is that this is not an isolated employment sector, and I predict that we are in more trouble than we might know. Historically we have relied on our research and development to keep this country on top technologically, but over the last five years or so, we have been reducing the amount of funding we spend on research and development, particularly in the biosciences. For example, if you were to look at NIH grant paylines, five years ago the payline was around 33%. Next year it is predicted to be anywhere from 10-14% meaning the likelihood that a researcher will obtain funding has been cut by more than half. In fact, research and education spending on the whole is down under the current White House administration. So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Speaking of R&D... ...one of the comments made by Lucent CEO Patricia Russo about the pending merger with Alcatel said (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the quote in front of me):

"Alcatel does not do the kind of research that Lucent has historically done at Bell Labs. Future projects at Bell Labs will need to focus on productization in a 5-year timeframe. This transition has already started."

Science and research for the sake of science and research is now officially dead at Bell Labs. If they can't turn it into something that can be sold within 5 years, shitcan it.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

This is an interesting commment, except that Alcatel, like any large telco would have been dead long ago if they hadn't done or sponsored a modicum of basic research, and they have, see this [alcatel.com] for example.

Meanwhile, at Bell Labs, things have been business-focused for a very long time. Remember that Thompson, Richie et al. couldn't get funding to make a new O/S, they had to pretend they were writing a text processor instead [ualberta.ca].

The first version of @acronym{UNIX} was developed on a PDP-7 which was sitting around Bell Labs. In 1971 the developers wanted to get a PDP-11 for further work on the operating system. In order to justify the cost for this system, they proposed that they would implement a document formatting system for the AT&T patents division. This first formatting program was a reimplementation of McIllroy's roff, written by J. F. Ossanna.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Meanwhile, at Bell Labs, things have been business-focused for a very long time.

I'm not sure you counterexample is a good one. Operating systems are more likea product than basic research, although at the time this was less so than today. You take away know-how from both, but you need to have a plan for what to do with a product. Up until then, OSs were tied very closely to hardware; UNIX turned out to be the most portable operating system ever.

You are missing a major point though. Bell Labs had enoug people of this caliber running around that a couple of rapscallions could, with a wink and their fingers crossed, create an operating system under th guise of porting roff. In part this was due to the overal wastefulness of Bell as a regulated monopoly. They told the regulators how much it took to run a telephone system, and the regulators marked that figure up. But it goes to show if you're going to waste money, at least you should waste it on something useful.

Another factor that is different now than then is government investment in research. Part of this was the cold war, which post sputnik threw a lot of money at applied research projects, possibly because nobody knew where the next marginal dollar.

Current attitudes towards government investment in applied research in Washington are rather negative. The idea is that it amounts to "government planning", and that applied research interferes with market efficiencies in allocating research capital to applied problems. Basic research -- OK for the government, but applied research is somebody else's job. Unfortunately, their counterparts in the US private sector is increasingly thinking the same thing, that their job is watching the quarterly profits and applied research is somebody else's job. That's what Lucent was saying; they shouldn't be in the applied research business anymore. The Federal government has cut research funding in energy R&D, agricultural R&D, and at NOAA, NIST and other Department of Commerce agencies.

It's not that the government doesn't do research anymore. Nor is it the case that the government and private sector don't do ANY applied research. But Lucent has a point. A private sector company can't be expected to invest in research that pays off in ten years; there are too many uncertainties in business to ask investors to shoulder that. Five years is reasonable. But if five years is a reasonable end point for private sector research efforts, and, say, twenty years is a reasonable starting point for public sector research efforts, then we have a massive gap in the 5-20 year range. That applied research gap is a massive national economic vulnerability.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

They told the regulators how much it took to run a telephone system, and the regulators marked that figure up.

IIRC, they were regulated under a CAPM regime. Under the Capital Asset Pricing Model, regulators allow for a "fair" rate of return on invested capital. (The definition of "fair" might or might not include a reduction or negative premium to account for the near-zero risk, but that's not relevant to my point.) So, regulated monopolies such as AT&T had a very strong incentive to boost their fixed assets. Any "investment" (i.e., spending) they could capitalize would go into their rate base, which would allow them to earn more profit. (They also had an equally strong incentive to use the slowest depreciation accounting methods, thereby extending the allowed earnings on those "investments".) It doesn't completely explain their investments in R&D, but it does help explain the very posh nature of the physical plant at the old Bell Labs, for example.

But it goes to show if you're going to waste money, at least you should waste it on something useful.

Not really. The lesson was, "if you're going to waste money, at least convince the regulators that it was 'investment' and not 'spending'".

Jan 2001: stupid reference point.

Selecting Jan 2001 as a comparison point is plain stupid. This is still during the whole dot.com bubble which was an insane anomoly and using this is as dumb as using hurricane Katrina as a reference point for wind speeds.

For anyone that has forgotten, you could get an IT job during dot.com if you could just spell cumputer^Wcomputer. For a more realistic point of reference, choose a point before dot.com, say Jan 1999. Do that and you;ll probably notice some growth.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Yea, I am experiencing this too... This guy from Singapore installed a router here and he was in India at the time. It was really amazing how foreigners can defy physics now. Geez the internet is changing everything.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Disclaimer: I am an IT manager who sets up and runs IT groups in India. So I'm the "bad guy" I guess.

1. Outsourcing is not new. And the reaction by the IT industry is not new. The garment industry was outsourced, the steel industry, to a degree the automotive industry. It happens. The people directly impacted don't like it but as long as it make economic sense, outsourcing will happen. Adapt to survive and thrive.

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.

3. Outsourcing is not easy in the IT industry. I can point to as many failures as successes. Not every company in the US that needs IT resources will be candidates for outsourcing. Not every job will end up overseas. In fact even though my entire IT organization is in India I'll soon be looking for a Systems Engineer in the US because I'm not happy with what I find in India.

4. Salaries for IT candidates in India are increasing very rapidly (think Silicon Valley, 1999). Given the inherent inefficiency of dealing with people great distances away, the economics of outsourcing are getting worse.

5. Decimation means to kill off 10%, not 90% as some posts have said. From Wikipedia: The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth." So the article is correct, this is decimation.

6. I could be wrong on any or all of the above.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

It's offshoring, not outsourcing.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.

And this is the problem, countries like India and China can get away with horrible working conditions, lapses in saftey standards and employee rights that we take for granted in the U.S. I see examples of this all the time with illegal construction workers here in California. Since they are already in the country illegally, they have no insentive (or knowledge?) to follow OSHA saftey standards that a legitimate construction company would have to follow. If you can get away with the same thing with exported labor, exchanging a few lives for $$$ many companies are willing to do this.

So essentially, U.S. companies are deffering those costs by working overseas. I for one think companies should be punished financially in someway or guarantee the same worker rights in those foreign countries.

Another problem, and I think this is the biggest one, is the lack of national pride in the U.S. If the country you live in is say no more important to you then $200 off a plasma TV at Wal-Mart, what are you to care if jobs go overseas? I'm just saying that economically speaking, there is no added value in the tag "made in U.S.A." anymore since it is no longer associated with quality or pride with the average consumer. I suppose an employer sees their employees the same way now, looking at the individual and their qualities instead of "made in U.S.A.". However, if the U.S. does want to stay competitive it still must maintain self interest.

5. decimation can also mean: to cause great destruction or harm to

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

"Another problem, and I think this is the biggest one, is the lack of national pride in the U.S."

I agree but it isn't just about cost. 30+ years ago "Made in the USA" meant quality. Does anyone see it that way today? Often people are willing to pay more for things produced overseas because of higher quality.

We only have ourselves to blame for that.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

You mentioned one possible solution for this problem: americans should buy products and sevices done by americans. But this is essentialy isolation from the rest of the world, if you want that to work properly, because you need to use just your resources. And also because you have to guard your R&D (if you are good enough, your R&D will be better than that of the rest of the world and you do not want cheap products based on your R&D but foreign cheap labor to tempt americans :) . Or, alternatively, if your R&D wont be better, you have to essentialy deny that the rest of the world exists otherwise americans wont buy "domestic but inferior" products.

So, IMO, such isolation wont work - it's something similar to what eastern block tried during Cold War or something which China has been doing for quite a long time and is now ceasing to do.

But what other choice other that isolation is there?

Well, openess.

But openess does not mean "we, americans, can do everything, all of you others can do nothing". So no barriers should be used to block others from access to american market.

But to maintain edge over others (in terms of economic production, standards of living, ...) is like maintaining a "water hill" in the lake - without walls you can to that to some extent only by perpetualy pumping water like fountain (or by manipulating gravity, but I want dwell into such things for now).

In such analogy, such pump should be something similar to what amaricans used in the past to get the edge: good R&D, freedom, ...

Of course, your wealth will always try to flow to poorer countries (because of market forces: cheeper labor, more thus cheaper natural resources, better location, ...) but you can view it also in good light:

1. it is a good reason for your standard of living not to overgrow your own production capabilities (i.e. no deficit in foreign trade which can't be maintained in long term and ends ussualy quite dramaticaly, IMO)
2. you're helping others out from their poor state (but not by just giving them money but by giving them work to do and paying for it) - TheUglyAmerican wrote it: "Salaries for IT candidates in India are increasing very rapidly" - something not possible without US participating in free world trade and I thing far better than just giving Indians money for doing nothing thus making them unable to take care of themselves

So yes, maintaing the edge in free world trade is not easy. But it's same with everything else, whether you're trying to be better skier, better swimmer, better hunter, better mathematician, better painter - you have to work on that, not just sit there and claim you are better.

Same with me: for now I may be enjoying increase in business coming from the US and western Europe to midle-east Eurore but I know that if I go too far (asking too great price not backed by something appropriate: good quality, good performance, ...) my business will go elsewhere very soon - maybe even back the where it came from.

But that's reality (and openess about the reality).

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

While IT workers aren't 'abused' in the sweatshop sense, don't trivialize the challenges American IT workers face. We're not complaining about jobs without free soft drinks, but about jobs where we're doing the work of two or three people for 60% of the salary we could command five years ago. American wages are being eroded much faster than Indian wages are going up, with the difference being pocketed by employers, and any attempt by American workers to ask for more jobs, better wages, or better working conditions are discouraged by the threat of jobs moving to India.

What I fear is something called 'wage arbitrage.' Transnational corporations can go anywhere to take advantage of low cost labor, and skilled workers trapped behind national borders cannot follow. So wherever corporations have jobs, they can keep costs down by threatening to move workers overseas. Governments are desperate to keep these jobs, so they're happy to pass laws at the behest of the corporations, giving them tax breaks or making it illegal for workers to unionize.

So I really don't see it as "America is hurting, but India is turning into a technological superpower." If it were that simple, I'd probably just start looking into migrating. India's day in the sun will only last as long as they don't do anything stupid, like try and tax the corporations to pay for the education system that benefits them or improve the lot of the rural poor. The moment that happens, you'll see a massive shift away from India towards some more compliant country.

Of course, that will raise wages in Sierra Leone, or wherever the jobs move to. But not nearly as much as wages will fall in India, and again, corporations will pocket the difference. It's all a huge shell game designed to transfer as much of the wealth created by labor into the coffers of owners, while giving as little back as possible. Wage arbitrage gives capital a huge advantage in any negotiations with labor. But in the long run, this destroys the middle class, and erodes nations' abilities to invest in the health and education of their citizens, which are necessary for businesses to run successfully. So big business is reaping short term profits while undercutting both demand for their products and the ability of labor to create those products.

IOW, I'm happy to see India doing well, but I think it's part of a long-term trend that is going to hurt everyone.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Disclaimer: I am an IT manager

Dude, you didn't need that disclaimer, your post looks like a powerpoint sheet: a nice bulleted list, it has manager all over it.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

I disagree. I work in the semiconductor industry and I think the tide has turned AGAINST outsourcing. I have *NEVER* heard an outsourcing story that ended well. The kind of outsourcing stories im hearing are "we outsourced our PCB manufacturing and the defect rate is 30%, our board costs are 1/3rd what they used to be, but our field failure rate is 10x and our QC cost is 2x and our customers are pissed." In software same deal ... "the code we got back worked but was unmaintainable. We spent two years rewriting it."

What I *AM* seeing is a hell of a lot of chinese mainlanders being hired as engineers *IN THE US* depressing wages. Companies are starting to demand a LOT more for less money.

Outsourcing is based on a falicy which is that workers are fungible resources. Engineers are not fungible resources and any management that thinks they are has their heads way up their asses. The US *DOES* have a seriously bad management culture which is a far bigger threat than outsourcing IMHO.

Again, this is just one opinion from in the trenches here in southern california.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

"The US *DOES* have a seriously bad management culture which is a far bigger threat than outsourcing IMHO."

A few years ago, I worked as a developer in a fairly large well-known tech company. The progression: Starting there, things were pretty good--well staffed, good morale, nice people to work with. The push for the "bottom line" started creeping in after a year or two on the job--secretaries got laid off, senior engineers got laid off, a website was set up for us to do our own expensing, travel, etc. It was hell. I, a well-trained software developer, getting paid pretty good money, was expected to deal with making travel arrangements, fighting with HR, etc. while my time was being billed to an engineering project. It isn't worth working for a company where my time and talent is simply not valued.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

The US *DOES* have a seriously bad management culture which is a far bigger threat than outsourcing IMHO.

The MBA is the new Visual Basic certification. :-P

-matthew

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

The US *DOES* have a seriously bad management culture which is a far bigger threat than outsourcing IMHO.

Maybe we should outsource the management.

Managers are obselete...

Imagine a company with zero engineers, and 100% managers, it cannot survive.

Now imagine a company with 100% engineers, which spend 5% of their time doing 'management' , it would
still work and turn out a product, see google and apple.

A smart engineer can learn in 6months how to be a manager, a manager though would take 10 years to be as good as an engineer.

After all there are no management 5 year degrees at unis are there.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

The arguement that foreigners dont do as good of work only works for the begginging of any phase of outsourcing. Many americans believed that "jap cars" were inferior to American cars. We now know that they are engineered at least as good if not better than American cars. Some people still hold the xenophobic view that American cars are somehow impossibly better becuase Americans are infallable.

Your reference there is flawed. Japanese cars aren't built by Japanese firms as a cost-saving exercise for American companies. They're built by successful Japanese firms, with excellent research and development who produce a product that's of high quality and is in demand around the world. Their success is driven by the skills of their own people.

Outsourcing is usually (always?) undertaken as a cost-saving exercise. The idea is that a US-based firm can produce the same product/service they're already producing, but at a lower cost to themselves. With this comes the inevitable quality issues, not to mention the fact that we're underpinning the foundation of the outsourced-nations' crappy treatment of their working population.

You might be right that you have only heard the horror stories or maybe you only remember the horror stories. Maybe outsourcing does lead to worse products all the time these days but as the education of India goes up they will be doing just as high quality of workmanship as we will. ... and as India develops, their cost of living will rise in line with their quality of life, and they'll start requiring the sort of pay that their skills should earn. Over here in the UK, there's already cases of 'reverse-outsourcing', where Indian firms set up call-centres amongst the poorest areas of the UK.

RD Offsored Too. Everyone SOL.

So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.

Industrial recovery is not possible while we trade with non free China and your government/corporate masters have you screwed out for RD too.

GE, Microsoft and others have already started moving their research offshore. I'm talking about basic industrial research, like turbine design. "First World" Physics, no longer viable [theregister.co.uk], so forget it. Brains are cheaper, and theoretically free, in Russia and India. The situation is worse in China, where people really are not free.

Our trade was supposed to set the Chinese free, but it's working the other way around. It's just business, right? [slashdot.org], and China is just another big company. Not quite. Our big dumb companies might have you by the balls, read your email [theregister.com], and sell it all to big brother [essential.org], but they can't put you in jail yet. That will take another dissaster like NorthWoods [wikipedia.org] so that everyone is really paranoid and ready for rationing and a WW2 style command economy.

The only way out is lots of wealth creation to raise everyone's standard of living, but it's not happening. With all the mergers, wealth will continue to move to the already very rich owners of those companies. The mergers are the ultimate result of government favoritism of large companies. IT was supposed to be the poster child of new competition and robust US Performance. It has not happened because incumbent companies were allowed to crush new comers, so that "just enough" competition would be left. Now, we all sit under the M$ monopoly, two big media companies, two "broadband" companies, one electric company and a merged OPEC/ExxonMobileRoyalDoubleDutchFuck and wonder where the jobs are and why service sucks. If we can't help ourselves, we will never be able to help anyone else.

Eventually, this will get the rich too. A real depression is no fun for anyone, but those happen when wealth concentration reaches a critical level. When power is concentrated enough, the American Empire will go to war with China, kind of like the great Royal Fuck Festival that was the first World War.

Re:RD Offsored Too. Everyone SOL.

A real depression is no fun for anyone, but those happen when wealth concentration reaches a critical level.

Really? Where do you get your definitions from? Because a "depression" or even a recession (a long term recession constitutes a depression) are not caused by anything like that. Oh wait, you're quoting John Maynard Keynes. Riiiight, I see. Is that what they're teaching in school now? That "hoarding" causes recessions? Good heavens.

When power is concentrated enough, the American Empire will go to war with China

Will it now. Just a quick exercise for you - try to calculate how much of the US economy depends on the Chinese economy. Then do the same calculation backwards. Now tell us about this "war". What are the justifications for it again? Why does it happen? When? How exactly? Please do elaborate. Unless you're just jumbling together "hot topic" words to get some karma like you always do...

M$ monopoly

...ah yes, you are. Silly me, I thought you actually had a point.

Good old twitter. China is evil, "big dumb companies" are evil, "M$" is evil, Kermit the frog is evil and everything should be free. Same broken record but with impressive-sounding words and lotsa links. Karma every time.

Re:RD Offsored Too. Everyone SOL.

Well, doesn't it? Hoarding causes that money not to participate in the economy. At the same time, the money is still there, so the value of the money that does circulate stays the same. So, in effect, less value is participating in the economy. Isn't that a recession? I'm just asking; I'm not an economist.

If someone hoards a huge amount of money and keeps it out of circulation, then the market adjusts and starts to behave as if the money no longer exists, causing deflation, which is an increase in an individual dollar's purchasing power. Now, inflation and deflation are the opposite of each other, and both have their pros and cons.

Inflation is good at fighting unemployment, as the continual decrease in purchasing power is an effective way of circumventing minimum wage laws. E.g. if the minimum wage is 5 dollars per hour, and there was an inflation of 5% during the following year, then the real wage, i.e. the purchasing power of the 5 dollars have decreased by 5%. Thus employers are now effectively paying 5% less to their employees, even though the amount of dollars paid is the same, and this means that it now becomes profitable to employ people for less productive work, resulting in an decrease of unemployment.
The downside of inflation is the reduction in PP, and the higher demands on ROI. If inflation is 5% a particular year, and a company's profits grow only 3% that year, then the real profit of the company has decreased. This also works on a individual level, i.e. I have 5000$ today, wait a year, and then I have lost 5% of my wealth, even though the amount of dollars I have is unchanged. What this results in is that any investment that has a ROI that is less than inflation, is actually making you poorer. No need to wonder why stockholders/owners/investors demand ever-increasing profits from corporations, inflation is the culprit.

Deflation is pretty much the exact opposite. If there's a deflation of 5%, then even investments with a negative ROI are profitable as long as deflation is higher. This makes having money lying on a bank account a good investment, as you'll be able to buy more stuff with that money after a year.
Of course this also increases unemployment, at least unless the minimum wages are decreased at the same rate as deflation.

Another bad/good side of inflation/deflation (depending on if you have debt or have borrowed money to others) is that as the PP of a dollar increases, the real size of a debt also increases, which is bad for those who have debt. Again the opposite is true.

IANA(K)E, which could be seen as a good thing, depending on which school you follow. :)

Re:RD Offsored Too. Everyone SOL.

Hey, you're the first to mention the concept for which I was looking, so you get the reply:

The only way out is lots of wealth creation to raise everyone's standard of living, but it's not happening.

This is correct, in my opinion. The big myth - which was not cited in the article - is that you can actually maintain an economy with high standard of living based on "high value" services alone. The key to an economy is really its ability to produce wealth - hard, physical, tangible goods that, as you said, actually raise the standard of living of that society's citizens. All the dentists and doctors in the world cannot help you if you don't have good tools, good infrastructure, or even good food.

I remember from one of my early economics classes that the only wealth-producing endeavours known are agriculture and manufacturing - the rest of economic activity just shuffles that wealth around.

If the economy of a country switches to being service-based, it is then a slave to the actual wealth-producing nations, because if the nations that have the wealth no longer need or want the services, with what is the service-based economy left? The reason the US economy used to be so robust is it had a good balance between service and wealth production. The shift away from producing wealth locally (I don't mean by ownership, I mean physically) is probably a greater risk than most are able to recognize.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

Why should small/medium sized companies develop software in the US? It's too damn risky. If they compete with or are considered a threat to any of the larger companies, they will just get sued out of existence for "patent infringement". It doesn't even matter whether they have infringed patents, because suing someone for patent infringement is am easy way to cost them a lot of money and not have it immediately obvious about whether you're bluffing. Patents are usually very difficult to read and understand.

This may be the effect of the dot com boom ending

The IT sector hired far more people than normal as a result of the dot com boom. The IT market adjusted after the boom ended. The period they study includes the dot com crash. These jobs may simply have vanished along with the dot coms, rather than being outsourced.

Globalization goes both fucking way..

How about all those Intel, AMD, Dell etc etc in Malaysia, Taiwan and around the world.

Didn't the lower cost of building all the components there help to decrease the prices of computing, encouraging demand. And wasn't the continuosly lowered cost of infrastructure/equipment an integral part of the computing/technological/information/internet revolution. Which incredibly benefited the US economically. Which provided jobs and increased jobs and increased pay scale during the late 90's and early 2000's.

So in other words:

globalization benificial to us: good
globalization detrimental to us: bad

news for ya: globalization works both fucking ways. You think jobs weren't decimated in third world/developing countries when they opened up their markets and have to compete with cheaper US products.

You benefited from it, now its someone else turns.

Or you can ask the US goverment to broke its own agreements and words, and strongarm it way to makes sure the deal is one sided. But don't put your hopes up. God knows it has never done that. And never will. well except maybe for that renmibi thing.. and that textilke subsidy thing..and...

waiting for Flamebait+7 and Troll+7

Don't be so parochial

Does it really matter if jobs go from LA to Las Vegas or from LA to Toronto or from LA to India? Either way, unless you are willing to follow the job and take the prevailing wage, you are still out of work.

It's a fact of life, almost any job that doesn't require your physical presence is relocateable. If the cost of moving raw materials abroad and the finished product back is low enough, and the difference in the cost of doing business is high enough, then everything else being equal you will see job migration.

If you want security from relocation, be a computer-equipment-installation technician. If you want security from offshoring, find a job that is "outsource-proof" such as certain defense-industry jobs.

The biggest issue in my mind isn't offshoring because overseas engineers work for half of what Americans charge, but offshoring of any type because costs imposed by the "American standard of living" are significantly greater than the equivalent costs in countries with a much lower standard of living. As long as we insist on things like clean air, good police protection, something approaching a "living wage" for our lowest-paid workers, good health care, safe cars, good infrastructure, etc. etc. etc., then we will have higher costs to do business here than in countries whose citizens don't demand these things. In a country or region without such costs, the cost of living will be much lower and wages can be lower while still having employees feel well-compensated.

There are parts of America with a relatively low payroll burden on companies and with relatively low costs-of-living. If your big-city job were suddenly transferred to some rural area 2000 miles away where 2/3 of your salary could let you live in a house twice the size of your existing one, but with the nearest big city 3 hours away, would you take the transfer or would you start sending out your resume? How about if it was transferred 10,000 miles away and the salary was 1/3, but even after paying for a flat the same size as the one you have now, you'd still be able to bank a huge amount each month?

Look on the bright side - the world and it's nearby neighbors are a closed system as far as the job market is concerned - no jobs are going to Alpha Centauri Prime any time soon.

I am not a troll. Just a realist.

This is a good thing...

From the perspective of someone who is not American, this is a good thing. It means that unions in rich countries are no longer able to keep the rest of the world poor. Poor people in Romania who have excellent IT skills have the freedom and opportunity to enter the capitalist system and compete on the global market.

The Americans spent 50 years trying to win the cold war so the guy in Romania would have this opportunity. Would you now turn around and say "Sorry, we're going to be implementing some socialist protectionist measures.... we didn't expect American workers to have to compete with you".

Looking at the IT landscape, it seems clear to me that the American IT industry is the most vibrant and resilient in the world. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, HP, Wikipedia, Myspace, Youtube, etc. are organisations which saw the light of day in America. Please don't react in a spastic way when the rest of the world looks at what you're doing and tries to do something similar.

The American president keeps talking about "freedom". For me, freedom includes the freedom to compete with American workers.

Walk the walk....

It's not the globalization.

It's not the globalization.

It's the high-cost of life in the US.

Speculators have worked very hard to keep land and house prices beyond the reasonable capacity of people to pay for them, hence overreliance on credit which increases the prices of the goods often by 100% (20 years at 5%).

In addition, the sprawling lifestyle puts an extra burden on governments who have to maintain an extensive networks of roads, in addition to the people who have to pay a fortune to acquire (also on credit) automobiles and run them.

It's not for nothing that third-worlders can live for a king for $10 per day; over there, people are not burdened by the expensive western lifestyle.

Automobiles are particularly to blame, because this is one expense that can be done without. When people will spend a third of their income to support their automobile, this means that with a proper public transportation system that allows ordinary people to live decently without a car, salaries could be cut by 25% without any diminished quality of life.

When this little fact will be understood by the thousands chambers of commerce, there will be serious moves toward better transit. In addition of lowering the expenses of employers, it will free the roads from millions of otherwise useless vehicles, leaving a free way for what cannot be transacted without a truck, thus cutting down on the time lost in traffic, furthering even more the savings.

Plus, when there are sufficient people using a transit system, they can be self-sufficient or even turn a profit and thus not be an eternal drain on public ressources like roads are (no right-wing wacko is talking about privatizing roads). 100 years ago, transit systems were big business, and railroads were the high-technology.

Re:It's not the globalization.

It is a myth that third world workers can live like kings on $10. At least in India, the fact is that for most things that US residents would consider as necessities, the cost of those things is between 10% and 1000% higher. I speak from personal experience. I've lived in the US (as an H1-B engineer) and in India subsequently. I wanted to share some data points to help with the discussion.

Here are some of the costs:
Housing: The cost of a house in Delhi or Bangalore can range from $100K to $2 million.
As a practical example the flat I live in on the outskirts of Delhi costs, $120K and its
quality is nowhere near that of the two bedroom flat I use to live in on the outskirts
of Seattle. For example, running water is not available for more than an 45 mins a day.
The absolute quantity I am able to use is about 25 gallons per day. Compare this with my
usage of 120 gallons per day in Seattle. Electricity is only available for about 18
hours a day and typically not available when most needed (5-8 am, and 7-9 pm) BTW the
local electric utility charges me at least 2 times more per kWh.

Car: My car (a Honda) costs about $18,000. I pay an interest rate of 15% on the car loan.
It is also less safe. A better model sold in the US costs a little less. The US
model comes with a more poweful engine and is equipped with airbag. Auto insurance
will rarely cover the cost of hospitalization in the event of a serious accident. Delhi
is amongst the most dangerous cities in the world to drive in.

Internet
Connectivity:
Internet connectivity costs about the same per month as it does in the US ($20 pm for
a DSL connection), but the speeds are between 256 and 512Kbps, significantly
slower than that available in the US for a comparable price.

Several other things that relate to quality of life are poorer. But most people already know that.

My income is lower though, by a factor of about 4 to 5. (I earn about 30K a year, ).
So in sum, I'm simply poorer than I was in the US.
I am also less productive than I was in the US.

It is true that compared to the average Indian, with an income of $450 a year, I am fabulously wealthy, but that is an unfair comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be with folks similarly qualified: I am an engineer, with an undergraduate degree from a good Indian school, masters in CS from a reasonably good,(top 20) US program, and an MBA from an Ivy league school.
Nothing specatacular, but probably above average. My peers with such a background would earn significantly more.

Don't get the idea though, that I'm whining here. Indian IT is a bit like the Wild west. The
potential opportunity, for creating new businesses is enormous, and this was one of the reasons
I returned to the country. There was never better time to be a capitalist in India.

Those who oppose the H1-B program on the grounds that it takes away American jobs, and
lowers the wages for American workers, seem to be overlooking a very significant issue. The

So what?

If good people in other countries can do certain things better than Americans, they ought to get the work. It's up to us to compete with them (and each other) instead of whining about the competition. Globalization is helping everyone in the long run. Competition can always be painted as nasty and brutish, but it's the way we get progress. Everyone benefits from it, even if it causes job changes in the short run.

When the Japanese auto manufacturers started sending their vehicles to the United States, nobody took them seriously at first. Then American consumers realized that the Japanese were making better cars, so they started buying them in increasing numbers. The U.S. carmakers (and their unions) simply whined about the competition instead of DOING enough about it. If they had actually competed by producing products that were better than the Japanese products (in reliability, styling and a whole range of issues), they could have fought off the competition. Instead, the unions demanded that they keep their arcane work rules that saved useless jobs in the short run, but which lost a LOT more jobs in the long run. The managements remained in denial that they were that much worse than the Japanese. Even when they DID start improving, it was too little, too late. The culture in Detroit couldn't compete with the rate of change (and improvement) given to us by Honda and Toyota. American consumers benefitted from this competition. The stockholders and employees of the U.S. companies COULD have benefitted, too, but they were both too shortsighted to learn and compete.

U.S. IT is in the position that the U.S. auto industry about 30 years ago. It leads the world, so it doesn't see the need to innovate as much as it did even 10 or 20 years ago. They're arrogant and fat and happy, it seems. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up to us. Foreigners are learning to do the same things we've been doing, but less expensively. So what's the response? The companies and the employees whine about competition. If you can't see the continued pattern (and what to do about it), you're going to have no one to blame but yourselves.

David

American Living Standards ...

Some of you have pointed out that one reason for the disparity in pay which makes outsourcing attractive is the disparity in living standards. I agree. As more and more high paying jobs leave the US for lower cost regions of the world, Americans will have less disposable income. They are already deep in debt. At some point, consumption must fall.

I don't think many Americans understand the extent of the wrenching adjustments that lie ahead. It will not be pleasant.

It's just trickle down.

Over time jobs have continuously moved abroad.
Back in the good old days (you know, when the western world had it's colonizing hat on), we decided it was far cheaper to source raw materials abroad - so we'd say grow cotton in India and import the raw product back to the UK to be refined.
Then we twigged we might as well weave it into cloth abroad (and fired a load of mill workers). Then, realizing we might as well make something out of the cloth abroad before importing it we fired a load of the cloth workers.
Now - at the time there was lots of personal pain for some people - but the benefit was two-fold. The vast majority of people got a far cheaper product and we were forced to up-skill. Do you honestly think we'd be in a better position today if we'd spent a fortune protecting those lost industries?
Same thing is just still happening and will continue to happen - whether you like it or not. You've just got the simple choice whether you want to stand there trying to hold back the sea, or whether you should take a few steps up the beach to get out of the way.
You might get the odd law/import quota protecting your own job, but that's just at the expense of everybody else around you - The USA can't afford to buy everything 'Made in the USA' and expect to keep the same standard of living.

Why do you people hate free trade?

Ah, Slashdot. I find it so ironic that the same people who are for "free software" and "free information" are also against free trade.

The idea of a nation having a comparative advantage (if you're going to talk about globalization, you might as well use the lingo) in certain markets is what this all boils down to.

Let's say you're French. The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.

But here's the problem. What if you live in France and don't want to have anything to do with the wine making business? You don't know anything about wine, grapes disgust you--whatever. In fact, what if you want to just design and make automobiles? Whoops! You will have a hard time competing against the vast hordes of foreign auto makers. Your French workers will require higher wages and better benefits than their foreign counterparts. Much of the steel you need has to be imported from Germany. Your engine blocks have to come from Japan, but only after they're assembled in Canada. You're really having a hard time keeping your costs down.

Your business is going to fail, and the French government will have little choice but to see your company fall by the wayside, or else pass laws to create subsidies that explicitly favor your goods over their foreign counterparts, which is prohibited by GATT and can only be done under very specific circumstances. The French could still tax foreign goods with tariffs, but even then those are highly regulated by international authorities. No, your auto business will soon be out of business.

Globalization's answer to that French auto maker is "well, you could always make wine" and its answer to the unemployed people who worked for that auto maker is "well that's a shame, go work at a winery." Now that's pretty harsh. How do you respond to something like that? You either go work at a winery or you go riot in the streets. When companies and egghead economists alike are so gung-ho about pushing globalization, the human element seems to get lost in the shuffle.

The best argument for globalization has always been "okay then, suggest a better way." It's impossible because the alternative to the free trade system is pretty horrible: Entire industries that create goods with no useful purpose that cannot be sold overseas; a limited selection of goods for consumers; huge increases in the costs of goods for consumers due to reduced competition, and so on. If the WTO allowed for any more artificial barriers to free trade than tariffs, that is exactly what would happen. And even then, eventually getting rid of tariffs anyway, and removing the last barrier to free trade is the stated goal of WTO/GATT.

Those who embrace the trendy new rhetoric that decries our current free trade system either know nothing about it or refuse to acknowledge how much we truly benefit from it. It is far easier, I suppose, to shill the globalization issue to promote another political motive. Don't be used.

How ironic

I'm an american who would really like to go abroad, as it turns out. I have a wide variety of IT and programming skills, but no management experience. I'm very close to quitting IT and teaching english or something else to achieve this goal, but I'm pretty good at all this computer crap. I hate to ditch what I'm good at.

But guess what? Although I speak fluent german, I can't work in Germany or Austria. A company has to advertise for 3 months for an EU resident to fill a slot before they can sponsor a visa for me. And I'm not even picky--I can't find an IT/programming job for an american anywhere outside of the US from Cape Town to Kabul.

Want to bitch about globalization? Bitch about the last trade barrier: Labor. Globalization currently benefits CEO's because the resource they have to start the game, money, is now easily transfered. But labor isn't allowed to be transfered--labor might as well be opium for all the free trade associated with it, but with more positions available. I, for one, can't fucking wait until that shit ends, and I can whore myself out to whomever I please, wherever I please.

No one looks at the cost of reproduction

The big reason Asians can compete with Westerners -- particularly Western technologists -- is the rising cost of reproduction in the West.

The cost of reproduction has risen by a factor of nearly 4 since I was born in 1954, fertilizing the portfolios of landlords, or more properly, land barons, with the decomposing marriages, fetuses and sometimes bodies of the bulk of the baby boom generation, leaving a demographic hole being filled with imported slaves* by those same landlords.

The baronage calls this "progress", even as as the price of homes was removed from the consumer price index while introducing CPI factors like "hedonic value" and "imputed rent" to make it appear "real" earnings have increased over the time period of demographic collapse and loss of ethnic enfranchisement to imported laborers for the baronage.

I call it genocide [geocities.com].

*It is really being too kind to the baronage to call the imported laborers "slaves" since the baronage doesn't have to pay for their human capital upkeep--the rest of us do via social programs. Southern Plantation owners were far more moral than these sorry excuses for human beings.

Figures from my insurance agent sent to me on my birthday:

The two big ticket necessities:
3 bedroom house price increase: 22 times
1954 $ 10,250
2006 $219,375

car price increase: 18 times
1954 $ 1,567
2006 $28,000

Even if we grant that the quality/cost ratio of manufactured goods has gone up so much during the last 52 years that $1,567 for a used car in 2006 is as good as a new car was in 1954, it doesn't bring down the sum of the 2 major debt-service items much:

house+car increase: 19 times
1954 $ 11,817 =$1,567+$10,250
2006 $220942 =$1,567+$219,375

So the debt-service load in a family household has gone up nearly a factor of 20 in the last 52 years.

And don't kid yourself that it didn't hit hardest at the peak child-bearing potential of the mid-to-late boomers who were paying 20% mortgage rates when they were trying to form families in the early 1980s [geocities.com].

Look at these foreclosure rates peaking within the first 10 years of boomer's trying to form families:

Year $ value of mortgage loans foreclosed (in millions)

1965 944
1966 1,034
1967 957
1968 865
1969 364
1970 321
1971 438
1972 478
1973 577
1974 715
1975 1,086
1976 1,129
1977 868
1978 723
1979 683
1980 917
1981 1,563
1982 3,282
1983 4,240
1984 6,163
1985 8,675
1986 13,942
1987 18,373
1988 18,859
1989 18,189
1990 22,862
1991 17,105
1992 12,408
1993 6,852
1994 3,422
1995 2,506
1996 2,138
1997 1,805
1998 1,470
1999 1,022
2000 900

Has household income kept up? Hardly...

average household income increase: 13 times
1954 $ 4,137 (one wage earner)
2006 $54,000 (two wage earners)

So household income has gone up only about 70% as much as the essential household debt service in the last 52 years.

Oh, but wait--that "household" in 1954 was one income and the income was relatively stable--the woman stayed at home and raised the kids.

How can we factor not only that both parents must work in 2006 and not only are each of their jobs less secure, but the effective income of the household, adjusting for risk of not being able to meet debt payments for a substantial period of time?

Here's a realistic option: We can reasonably say that the odds of both parents being out of work at any given point of time in 2006 is comparable to the odds of the father being out of work in 1954. Hence the reliable household income--the income stream that can service debt without foreclosure--is approximately 1/2 of the household income. Certainly we can say that there w

Re:Rhetoric

Are we being manipulated? If so by who...

You hit the nail on the head, there, man. The Democrats, and the clearly unthwartable propaganda machine they've built that has won them all their impressive power, have finally swayed Slashdot and CNN away from their traditionally pro-authoritarian views.

Some people will claim that a rise in political stories has something to do with the upcoming elections. Those people have clearly been bribed.

Re:DUH!

Are you high? China is a prime example of globalization at work. We get a whole lot more stuff for our money from China than we could produce ourselves for the same cost. At the same time, China gets a lot more money selling to us than it would selling to itself.

Globalization isn't something just corporations are pushing. Most liberal egg-head economists are pushing it too. They push it, because the math works out, it makes sense, and has been demonstrating its usefulness for literally hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Louis XIV drastically turned around the French economy over 300 years ago by breaking down trade barriers, and there are still people who aren't convinced it works...

Re:We're all guilty of this.

Good luck finding anything with the "Made in the USA" label. I don't remember the last time I saw it. Shoes, clothes, cars, electronics... Been to Walmart lately? When companies can get cheaper labor with little or no labor or environmental restrictions in foreign countries, then who can blame them for moving? Some say the solution is to remove labor and environmental restrictions in America. I believe that would result in the US becoming just another 3rd World nation. I figure we should bring back tarriffs. If a country has shitty labor or environmental laws, slap a tarriff on their products to make them just as expensive as their American counterparts. But I'm not an economist, so maybe I'm missing something important.

Welcome to "rent seeking"

As with most economic concerns like this, of course there are both winners and losers to globalization. The losers are the US workers and firms who were formerly employed in this industry. The winners are the workers elsewhere, and anyone who can now pay less for IT services (and less for products and services in general because the businesses in question can now pay less for IT services).

The gains from doing this are large, but very spread out. The losses are small, but concentrated. As a result, those who lose out have a big incentive to try and stop this from happening - more so than those who would gain from it. They may attempt to have the government regulate the practice. This is known to economists as rent seeking, when one group seeks the uncompensated transfer of wealth from others (people who buy IT) to themselves through government intervention. These Other People have to expend more resources to get the same things done. This is not a spectacularly noble cause, though it often is hailed in the name of "saving jobs".

But then, if our first concern should be about saving jobs, we ought to do away with computers entirely so there is more work to be done for paper-shufflers in offices. We can save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of office secretaries! Indeed, we could get rid of machines entirely and go back to simple hand tools for everything. Except, well, not.

Of course, that doesn't stop it all from happening. Take textiles. The average US family spends $160 more a year on textiles because of import quotas. Each job saved costs $221,000 a year. This is paid for by other people. Yay.

Who is this "you all"?

You all said that globalism was a good thing, but now you can't take it?

I have no problem with "globalism" PROVIDED that the country getting the jobs has the same level of regulations and protections that we have (or higher).

The problems I have with "globalism" is when companies off-shore because the other country has FEWER worker protections or environmental regulations than we do. Yeah, it's great for your CEO's bonus if you can work 10 year old kids for 12 hours a day at $5 a week making tennis shoes. But this isn't about your CEO's bonus.

We should be bringing everyone else UP to our standards rather than racing to the lowest level out there. But we are racing to the bottom. That is the problem.

Re:Who is this "you all"?

We should be bringing everyone else UP to our standards rather than racing to the lowest level out there. But we are racing to the bottom. That is the problem.

Of course. Governments have consistently failed their populations by caving in to special business interests, and changing the international commerce rules to only suit them.

Proper regulations would have entailed the use of tariffs to level the playing field, by raising the price of products made by cheap (or slave) labour to a level equivalent to the cost of domestic labour.

This way gives the incentive for the exporting countries to raise their wages, and the extra prosperity means that the "poor" countries will become rich enough to afford products made by "rich" countries, thus increasing their exports, and, most importantly, maintaining a healthy trade balance.

By exporting jobs to the third world, the US has seriously damaged it's manufacturing capability, and it's ballooning commercial deficit do not look well.

In fact, the US economic situation could very well copy the phenomenon that basically destroyed the spanish economy [straightdope.com] 400 years ago, turning the richest european country into one of the poorest.

Riots set anti-globalization back in the U.S.

In my opinion, one of the worst things to happen to the anti-globalization movement, and whole argument in general, in the past several years is its association with leftist fringe groups and sometimes-violent street protests. The first thing that many people think of today when they hear the words "anti-globalization" is a rioter, and this doesn't do very much to help it be taken seriously. Those protests, at least in the U.S., ended much real discussion about globalization by turning the whole thing into a farce. All people had to do was look on the news and see that it was the forces of rationality and authority versus the lunatic fringe, and that was it. (Granted, a lot of media outlets were only happy enough to portray it this way, with various levels of subtlety, but this should be expected.) Whatever salient points the argument might have had, evaporate when you're perceived as being mainly supported by bored college students with nothing better to do than go protest something.

If you want to garner support from blue-collar, red-state America now, you can't say "globalization," you have to say "outsourcing" or "offshoring." That's because the g-word has a strong association with protesters and radical fringe groups; no sane middle-class gainfully-employed person wants to associate themselves with anything "anti-globalization" anymore, lest they end up on some sort of FBI watch list. It's that 'blue collar' crowd who should really be the major backers of anti-globalization, but to date they have been notably absent; I think this is because of a large reluctance on many people's part to do anything that reeks of "dirty hippies." And it's tough to get deeper in hippie territory right now than "anti-globalization."

Violent protests may have been effective in the 60s but today they're cliche; I can't think of a faster way to let your opponents marginalize and demonize you in the press, and frankly to have the general public revel in watching you get tear gassed on TV. Average people don't have much tolerance or sympathy for rioters, regardless of the motivation or politics; it's no longer an acceptable mode of political discourse. This situation may be different in other countries -- it seems like riots and mass demonstrations are accepted by the public rather differently in some European countries. But here in the U.S., riots don't play in Peoria. They're counterproductive.

I tried to explain the anti-globalization position to too many people over the last few years to and have had more people pipe up "hey, aren't those the folks who were causing riots down in New York?" to think that those protests can possibly be constructive. It doesn't matter whether it's the protesters or the cops who start the escalation; if you have a protest and it turns into chaos -- particularly televised chaos -- then you and any arguments or positions that you might be associated with lose a lot of credibility.

The "rads" might think that they've won now, but really, I think that the logic that globalization might not be such a hot thing, has finally come into the light despite the efforts of fringe groups, certainly not because of them.

Re:Speak for yourself I never liked globalization

That you are trying to convince people that various companies decided in favor of offshoring so that they could make better lives for those "little brown and yellow paupers in Asia and the Middle East...is laughable if not patently absurd. They don't give one rat's about these people - their only concern is a way to make the company's short-term balance sheet look good.

Re:Speak for yourself I never liked globalization

You've never actually listened to Democracy Now have you? Amy Goodman has broken a lot of stories with serious investigative journalism like following the deposed president of Haiti Aristide to Jamaica after he was ousted in U.S. backed coup. Or being the first to report on the use of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon against the Iraqi people which was latter admitted by the U.S. government:

See: http://democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/15 16227 [democracynow.org]

followed by: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/1 7/1515223 [democracynow.org]

As for Noam Chomsky he has been documenting U.S. war crimes in places from Nicaragua to Vietnam for 40 years now. He is an American hero and if the MSM dared to give him a voice and people were made aware of the level of violence the U.S.government has committed against the world we might see new leadership in the U.S. and live in a much more ethical country. Of course we will never see that because it would threaten the corporate bottom line.

If you were to listen to Democracy Now and read a Chomsky book you might actually learn something. Of course it's much easier to not to read or listen and just smear with a cheap ad hominem attack, right?

Re:Speak for yourself I never liked globalization

Or being the first to report on the use of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon against the Iraqi people which was latter admitted by the U.S. government:

Not correct. White Phosphorus, although a chemical, is not a chemical weapon within the meaning the the Chemical Weapons Convention [bbc.co.uk]:

The CWC is monitored by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague. Its spokesman Peter Kaiser was asked if WP was banned by the CWC and he had this to say:

"No it's not forbidden by the CWC if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement.

"If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use.

"If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons."

WP - the arguments

So WP itself is not a chemical weapon and therefore not illegal. However, used in a certain way, it might become one. Not that "a certain way" can easily be defined, if at all.

The US can say therefore that this is not a chemical weapon and further, it argues that it is not the toxic properties but the heat from WP which causes the damage. And, this argument goes, since incendiary weapons are not covered by the CWC, therefore the use of WP against combatants is not prohibited.

White phosphorous is no more of a "chemical weapon", as normally understood, than napalm. Or course, flame weapons have been subject to controversy of their own.

As for Noam Chomsky he has been documenting U.S. war crimes in places from Nicaragua to Vietnam for 40 years now. He is an American hero and if the MSM dared to give him a voice and people were made aware of the level of violence the U.S.government has committed against the world we might see new leadership in the U.S. and live in a much more ethical country. Of course we will never see that because it would threaten the corporate bottom line.

There are other [opinionjournal.com] views [frontpagemag.com] about Chomsky. And it isn't the corporate bottom line I would worry so much about....

Left-Wing Monster: Pol Pot [frontpagemag.com]

While Pol Pot was carrying out his genocide, numerous American leftists functioned as his apologists. Notable among these was the American-hating MIT professor Noam Chomsky, who viewed Pol Pot as a revolutionary hero. When news of the "killing fields" became increasingly publicized, Chomsky's faith in Pol Pot could not be shaken. He initially tried to minimize the magnitude of Pol Pot's atrocities (saying that he had killed only "a few thousand people at most").[64] He suggested that the forced expulsion of the population from Phnom Penh was most likely necessitated by the failure of the 1976 rice crop. Wrote Chomsky, "the evacuation of Phnom Penh, widely denounced at the time and since for its undoubted brutality, may actually have saved many lives."[65] In a 1977 article in The Nation, Chomsky attacked those witnesses and writers who were shedding ever-brighter rays of light on Pol Pot's holocaust; he accused them of trying to spread anti-communist propaganda. In 1980, when it was indisputable that a huge proportion of Cambodia's population had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky again blamed an unfortunate failure of the rice c

Balancing is when both parties get equally screwed

There is no balancing involved whatsoever. BOTH American and third world I.T. workers make LESS as companies scour the world for the cheapest wages they can find. And the I.T. work only benefits a tiny sliver of the billion + people in both China and India something like quite literally .001%. How can you honestly call something that benefits .001& in the third world a little bit while the rest of the world is suffering a setback a balancing? It's a disingenuous use of that word i.e. a lie. What's more I think you people who peddle these falsehoods are engaging in deliberate mendacities i.e. you are shilling to cover some ones ass in the elite. Shame on you I hope you sleep very poorly at night.

Re:Boo Freaking Hoo

Good points, all. But I know a lot of the Indians taking our jobs (I had to help train them, you know... bah). In all cases, they were educated and now make up the upper-middle class in their country. These are not prison laborers, and they are not working in sweatshop conditions. These same people would try to come to the US to work if the market in India wasn't so good. The reason they have our jobs is that they make about half of what we do, not $0.60 per hour. They are happy, generally nice people who are just glad to be working in such a lucrative field. Your arguments probably make a lot more sense in the manufacturing industries. Unfortunately, there probably is not much of a moral argument against outsourcing in IT.

Re:Boo Freaking Hoo

Most US workers do not "charge" their employers -- instead, they work for that employer for a rate that is set by the employer, and most employees say "okay" and go along.

Salaries and hourly rates for IT workers are generally in-line with other professions in the US. A master plumber or mechanic makes between 50k-100k per yer in most of the US, for example, which is very similar to what a programmer/analyst with similar experience and training would make in the IT world. Also, while a help desk analyst might make $12 or $15/hour, that isn't very much different from folks in other similar types of professions. Heck, a person can make $8-10 an hour in some parts of the US flipping burgers.

Problems start when you start mixing and matching labour from economies with radically different levels of expenses. A person making minimum wage in the US could be very well off in many parts of the world, even though many people find it difficult to live on that same wage in a number of places here in the US. Why? Because it doesn't cost $500/month for a basic apartment in those parts of the world.