Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:40:26 -0700
From: Thomas Leavitt <thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: As It Tries to Cut Costs, Wall Street Looks to India
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Dave,
While I share some of Bob's concerns (it certainly doesn't thrill me to see
systems administration jobs being shipped to India), I have to say that it
is ironic of Bob, who has benefited by the choice of a Finnish company to
"outsource" various chunks of its operations overseas, to criticize American
companies for finding inexpensive but high quality talent in India.
Does anyone really think that the Ivy League graduate whose potential job
is taken by the $35,000 year Indian research analyst is going to suffer
tremendously? The likely outcome of a significant number of new hires in
India is wage inflation there... eventually, what we're going to get is wage
equalization on a global scale - as we have to some extent today across
Japan, North America, and Europe. It may not be all happy days for American
workers in these sectors, but they're certainly not going to be reduced to
penury. Unlike manufacturing workers paid 35 cents an hour, these folks in
India have a heck of a lot of other options if they feel abused - including
migrating to the U.S. or Europe, or setting up shop on their own - and the
employers can't just up ship and relocate shop to a lower wage area when
people start demanding wage increases (as is happening in Mexico, where
workers paid $1.26/hour are being out competed by Chinese labor paid a
quarter of that or less) - India is pretty unique in that it has the
educational infrastructure and the widespread knowledge of the English
language necessary to make this happen at all.
We managed to absorb the entry into the labor marketplace of half the
nation's populace (women) over the last fifty years without catastrophe for
the incumbent labor force, I'm confident we'll be able to do this with India
as well. And, ultimately, what we'll have is a that many more people capable
of buying American products because they're being paid first world wages. I
should also point out that people should get some perspective here - the
fact that these folks are being paid $35,000 a year, already, says a lot
about the likely ultimate outcome - while Ivy Leaguers may shudder at the
prospect of working for $35k, a hell of a lot of Americans would be quite
happen to be paid anything close to that. The companies in question have
already implicitly realized that in a global marketplace, they've got to pay
people a decent wage, or risk losing them to the competition.
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt
From: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 17:29:02 -0400
>From: Bob Hinden <hinden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>Dave,
>
>Doesn't anyone understand that this doesn't scale. First it was the
>manufacturing jobs, now it is the well paying knowledge based jobs. If
>most of the good jobs are outsourced there won't be anyone here with the
>money to buy the products and services that these companies
>product. Everyone will loose.
>
>Henry Ford raised the wage he paid his workers to give more people enough
>income to buy the cars he was producing. This outsourcing trend is just
>the opposite.
>
>Bob
--
Thomas Leavitt, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire
Resume at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/personal/resume/
Phone: 408-591-3342 / Email: thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / Fax: 815-371-2804
Wired since 1981. Internet-enabled since 1990. Web-enabled since 1993.
Older, wiser, and poorer, post-crash. :)
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