[IP] more on US firms that outsource are "Benedict Arnolds": Kerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 07:52:52
To:dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc:"Jon M. Powers" <powers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on US firms that outsource are "Benedict Arnolds": Kerry
Dave Farber wrote:
> From: "Jon M. Powers" <powers@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> One thing that I have not seen analyzed very much in the off-shoring
> discussions I have seen is the question of why there is so much excess
> labor capacity in the countries to which US jobs are being off-shored.
> Having excess labor capacity in these countries drives/keeps wages
> down, even the wages of so-called high-skill jobs.
What is the reason for excess labor capacity, you ask? Well, India has
just about the largest pool of educated, english speaking middle class
people in the world. And an exchange rate which makes an Indian rupee
worth just about 2% of a US Dollar in the currency market, but where the
purchasing power of a rupee is far more than that of a dollar.
Out of a salary of forty thousand rupees a month (yes, less than a
thousand dollars a month), I can buy a vicks cough drop for my sore
throat for a rupee. I can rent a large three bedroom apartment in a
nice part of town for INR 7000. I can buy a Suzuki subcompact car for
INR 300,000. On the other hand, a 512K broadband internet connection
costs me INR 3500 a month - about 10% of my salary :)
So, any system where a company in India gets paid in US Dollars for
contracts for work, they can afford to pay their employees far higher
than the going rate in rupees, but still a fraction of the going rate
for a similar job in the USA.
> I heard the economist Robert Pollin talk about this issue on the
> Progressive Radio.
>
> (link http://www.progressive.org/radio/radioarc3.html)
>
> He suggests that one of the root causes of excess labor in these other
> countries is the role of US, EU, and Japanese ag subsidies that
There is a significant amount of crossover from rural / farming
communities to urban communities, but agriculture in India is
traditionally heavily subsidized, even without US / EU subsidies,
This is because India is still nominally a socialist country in its
politics and as per its constitution, and because over 75% of the Indian
population still lives in villages and works on farms - sometimes the
same way their ancestors used to work, with an ox drawn plow and lots of
manual labor ...
Plus, thanks to the high salaries that software jobs fetch in India, a
lot of people are motivated by a perfectly natural urge to earn far more
than what they do, and increase their standard of living. That, in
itself, is a strong impetus to push them into computer science courses
in India's several hundred universities.
And let's not forget computer software courses at the hundreds of
thousands of "software training centers" around - ranging from
nationwide chains like NIIT and APTECH to hole in the wall outfits that
teach whatever the current "fad" is ... back during Y2K they were all
teaching JCL, CICS, DB2 etc. Later, "web technologies" and then
"m-commerce" ... now? I guess software QA seems quite popular.
> Seems to me that the farmers in the developing countries would prefer
> to stay on the land and not migrate to urban areas where they add to
> the labor pool. This is probably why the developing countries are
You know something? A lot of the farmers in India depend entirely on
rain. They are small / marginal farmers who would basically go bankrupt
and/or heavily in debt to the local banks (or worse, the local loan
shark + pawn broker) if the rains failed, or if their meager crops
failed for any other reason.
So, when this does happen, they move en masse to the nearest city, where
lots of new offices and apartment buildings are being built (quite a few
of them to house new software companies, and more programmers / QA
analysts etc), and start working as bricklayers, masons, etc.
> I think any efforts to solve the off-shoring "problem" must address
> US/EU ag subsidies and their effects of driving people off the land in
> other countries.
It is a facile theory, but just that. A theory. Sure looks great on
paper though.
srs
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