Thoughts, news articles, and comments about the de-evolution of
The United States of America
into an impoverished, third-world nation of flag-waving wage slaves.
Look, I don't know how to put it any gentler than to say that these bastards
who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to
be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we
control. That is what democracy is supposed to be about-- we, the people, in
fucking charge.
(Dude, Where's My Country? Michael Moore,
Warner Books, 2003, p. 148)
Table of Contents
Latest Bad News from The News...
Mayors Say Requests for Food and Shelter Are Up (The New York Times, Dec. 18, 2002)
To_Machine_Shops_Paying_Obsolete_Wages_____by_Mark_Smith
Blue Collar Jobs Gone- White Collar Next (Business Week, Feb. 3, 2003)
I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Having worked for several large organizations, I can attest that the more people you have in an organization, the stupider it becomes. Picture the giant dinosaur with the pea brain- such brains can not pull off the vast secret conspiracies that seem to delight so many kooks and crackpots.
What I do believe in is greed- good old fashioned greed. As they said during the Watergate hearings, "follow the money". And where is the money leading to these days, when you follow it? Let me give you a hint: The number of rich have been decreasing while getting VERY MUCH richer while the number of poor have been increasing while getting steadily poorer, and alot of this is directly due to pro-rich policies of certain republican presidents.
Where does this lead to eventually, if you follow it to its logical conclusion? It leads to somewhere between Tijuana and Calcutta. It leads to a place that no sane person- rich or poor- really wants to live in. It leads to a place called Bushville.
Now I don't want to place the blame for this solely on whichever puppet happens to be president at the time, and I've got nothing against the presidency. We have the best presidency and politicians money can buy. Remember- "follow the money". Whoever pays the piper calls the tune.
For those of you who mistakenly think that you're the only boat in the harbor that hasn't had your REAL wage lowered when the tide went out, please go to this handy online inflation calculator:
http://www.plan.ml.com/family/inflation-calc.html
Type in some wage that you used to make way back when, type in an average inflation rate1 of say 5%, and see where you should have been today, if you had just stayed even. Oh, and one other thing: make sure you're sitting down before you do this.
1) Inflation has varied anywhere from around 3% to as high as 18%.
Latest Bad News from The News...
April 5, 2003} Two years have passed... and employment has fallen by almost 2.4 million jobs during that span... worse than the early 1990's. Manufacturers reduced employment for the 36th consecutive month.#1
1) The Orange County Register, 4/5/03 Business p. 1
Millions of Illegals equals BILLIONS of Dollars
 |
millions of Illegals = BILLIONS of $$$ Getting the Rich Richer "Illegal Immigration" should be renamed for what it is: in-sourcing, which goes hand-in-hand with out-sourcing. The goal for both is the same: getting the rich even richer via reduced labor costs. Out-sourcing sends jobs out to lower-wage areas, whereas in-sourcing brings lower-wage workers to jobs that can't be out-sourced. The net result is the same: average Americans are getting screwed in their economic ass (and yet they keep electing idiots like Bush who think in&out sourcing is good for the county). Jobs such as carpentry, lawn maintenance, construction, truck driving, restaurant work and the like; if you thought with a job like that you were safe, you were wrong. You see, if they can't out-source your job to some poverty stricken third-world nation, then they'll just have to "in-source" the third-world nation instead. This results in the rich getting even richer, and since the rich run the politicians who run the country, don't expect things to change. Republican politicians support out-sourcing, and Democratic politicians support in-sourcing Either way, you're screwed, and there's not a damn thing you can do which will stop it. You may as well bark at the moon, for all it's worth. At the end of the day, the rich still run this country, and they are running this country into the ground. When it gets too bad for them here, when they've turned the entire country into a giant suburb of Tijuana, they'll have the money to leave. As for all the legislative "threats" to "really crack down this time", it's all political bullshit. All they are trying to do is scare the Mexicans here illegally into shutting up about any low wages or mistreatment, and be the good wage slaves the rich desire. The Politicians of this country has absolutely ZERO interest in sealing up the border or shipping all the illegal aliens out of the country in some sort of "Auschwitz Express" train. |
The New York Times
December 18, 2002
Mayors Say Requests for Food and Shelter Are Up
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The nation's mayors said today that this year had brought the largest increase in demand for emergency shelter in a decade, a result of a sluggish economy and the rising cost of housing and health care.
And they said requests for food aid were second only to the peak year 2001, underscoring what they called a crisis in helping the needy.
At the same time, the mayors said in their annual survey on hunger and homelessness, they received less money to care for the poor and disadvantaged, a reflection of the federal budget, a drop in private charitable contributions and a shift in attention to the threat of terrorism.
"The war on terrorism has certainly moved the focus away from domestic problems," said Mayor Bill Purcell of Nashville. "But we mayors are dealing with homeland security and domestic security simultaneously. We hope that the release of this report will help the federal government and the nation understand what we must all do for the needy."
Mark Smith's Comment} "Moving the focus" has probably been the goal all along. Starting wars has been a long-time political tool to divert attention away from domestic problems. Who cares the country is going down the toilet- we've got a WAR to prepare for!!!
An administration official said in an interview today that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would provide $1.12 billion for programs for the homeless next year, a $28 million increase over this year.
In the survey, to be released on Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that the demand for food aid rose throughout the country by 19 percent, with working families topping the list of the most needy. The demand for emergency shelter was more varied, with St. Louis reporting the greatest increase — 64 percent — while the overall average was also 19 percent.
More worrisome, the mayors said, is the growing evidence that the lack of food and adequate shelter for the working poor is becoming an endemic problem. There has been a steady rise in emergency food and shelter requests in the nation's cities since the mayors began their survey in 1986, with no sign that the problems are abating.
Mark Smith's Comment} "Working families topping the list of the most needy" and "the working poor" not being able to afford food and shelter- HELLOOOOOO???? Is anybody out there besides me reading this???? What is the foundational purpose of working, if not to put food on the table??? Now we find out there IS no table (i.e. shelter) and there IS no food even if there WERE a table!!! How long do the rich in this country expect the poor to put up with this- holding honest full-time jobs while living in shopping carts??? I don't want to sound like a 60's radical, but do the words "revolution" come to mind???
Another point to make: people should be making enough to pay for shelter and food. That should be the minimum wage for whatever area people live in. For employers to pay wages so low that the only affordable housing is a cardboard box, then to add insult to injury OUTLAW living in cardboard boxes because it offends the sensibilities of the rich who caused this poverty in the first place- this is yet another outrage that should have people rioting in the streets. Instead, the sheep-like masses just continue to bend over and take it up the ass without Vaseline.
"The world's richest and most powerful nation must find a way to meet the basic needs of all its residents," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, president of the conference. "We need a recommitment to help people put a roof over their head and have a nutritious meal every day."
Nearly two-thirds of the 25 cities surveyed said they had to decrease the amount of food they provided to the poor this year, rationing meals and food donations to ensure that no one went hungry. The cities also reported that people remained homeless for an average of six months, and that 73 percent of the homeless families were headed by single parents.
"This report shows that the country's economic problems are visited most strongly on children and the working poor," said Doug O'Brien, vice president for policy at Second Harvest, a network of nonprofit food banks that provides most of the food distributed by charities.
Mark Smith's Comment} The hypocrisy of the Republican Party is hereby proven. While espousing "family values" to win elections they have pursued policies which are in fact harming families. This hypocrisy originates with their religion- Christianity, so it's no wonder the more rabid political party in this country- the Republican party- is also the more fundy Christianized.
Second Harvest released a report last year showing that private charities were feeding more poor people than the federal government.
While the mayors lauded President Bush for acknowledging the role of private charities in aiding the country's poor and disadvantaged, they said the administration should increase its support for food assistance and housing.
The housing crisis seemed the more intractable problem in the survey. Several mayors and experts said that the demand for emergency food often stemmed from a poor family's inability to pay both rent and grocery bills. With more families priced out of the housing market, the demand for public housing has exploded.
Mark Smith's Comment} Again, how long does the government expect us to bend over and take this kind of treatment? Building your own houses, for poor people, is outlawed, be it out of wood or cardboard. Jesus said that even the birds of the sky have nests- what do the working poor in the USA have??? The poor in Tijuana, Mexico, are at least allowed to build their own homes- why not the poor in the USA??? Is it better to have them sleeping on sidewalks or in dumpsters??? If the government is going to allow employers to pay third-world wages which are too low to live on, the government should at least allow people to live as good as the poor in third world nations.
For a quick example: where I live, in Orange County California} The "family values" Republican party has passed a law making it illegal for a family with four children to rent any apartment with less than three bedrooms. Three bedroom apartments in this county go for about $1,300 a month if you're lucky. A man working full time, making even above minimum wage- say $7 per hour, will gross about $1213 a month average, which results in an actual take home pay of less than $1,000 a month. Even without counting food, electricity, clothing, or bus passes, please explain to me how this man is expected to LEGALLY raise his family here???? I pull out my calculator, and I just can't see how it can be done. And please, don't tell me the mother of four kids will be able to afford $1,200 in child care costs so she can also get a minimum wage job bringing home less than her daycare costs.
The simple fact is this: slavery has been replaced in this country with something that saves the rich employers even more money: wage slaves. With the old slavery, the plantations had to provide housing, health care, dental work, food, and clothing for all their slaves. This, I guess, turned out to be too expensive for the industrial Scrooges. Instead, its been replaced with the new wage slavery. In the NEW system, given the same man in the above paragraph, the employer pays this slave $1,000 a month, and lets his slave figure out how to pay for housing ($1,300 per month), food for a family of six ($600 a month), health insurance ($400 a month), utilities ($200 a month), transportation ($400 a month) etc etc etc. The new plantation owners then all move into gated communities, hiring private armed police forces to keep them safe from the very working poor they themselves created.
Where does religion fit into all of this? Religion is the drug that keeps the poor people dazed and confused, keeps them accepting their poverty with gladness- keeps them believing that it is somehow more "blessed" to be poor, sleeping on a cold wet sidewalk, than to rise up and kick the shit out of the rich bastards who have gutted the middle class in this country.
In Miami, for instance, there is a seven-year waiting list for public housing.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams of Washington said it would take a coordinated effort on many fronts to combat homelessness, including new federal financing for housing, job training, substance abuse treatment and mental health counseling.
President Bush vowed this year to end chronic homelessness within 10 years, and two-thirds of the HUD money will pay for homeless shelters and related social service and prevention programs. An additional $35 million will pay for programs to help people who live on the streets, said Philip Mangano, director of the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness.
"The money is modest," Mr. Mangano said, "but it comes at a time when most states and localities have had to cut funding that affects the homeless."
The mayors asked the president and Congress to enact what they called a national housing agenda that would substantially increase the amount of low-cost housing.
"We know what we need to do," Mayor Purcell said. "What we need is funding to build the right kind of housing."
Adding their voices to the demand for more food assistance, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution last week declaring that hunger was a "national problem that undermines the ability of children to learn and grow, of adults to be productive and the elderly to live in dignity."
The group asked the states to put in effect federal changes that streamline the food stamp program and asked the administration to increase nutritional programs by $1 billion.
They also urged Americans to donate their time and money to combat the two problems.
To Machine Shops Paying Obsolete Wages by Mark Smith
“The bitterness of poor quality lingers long
after the sweetness of low-wages are forgotten”
Because of the short-sighted managerial greed of some, an entire industry has been gutted of its best and brightest. Open up any Sunday classifieds and look under "Machinists" and it is evident that many of you have the audacity to be offering Machinists today the exact same hourly wage2 many Machinists were making twenty years or more earlier. The fact that you can do this in public, in good conscience even, shows that you indeed have no conscience. Of course, it's not really the same wage they were making twenty years ago, is it? In reality, it's a hellava lot worse!!! For if you were to be paying your Machinists, in real money, what they were actually earning twenty years ago, their $10 per hour from back then would now have to be raised to $26.50 per hour, just to have kept even with inflation. If that seems unreasonable or hard to believe, go to the Merrill Lynch Inflation Calculator1 http://www.plan.ml.com/family/inflation-calc.html and see for yourself. In reality, Machinists as a whole have gone not just a little bit, but significantly backwards in actual hourly earnings. This slippage into poverty and all it entails (living in barrios, many Machinists on Food Stamps, no money to save for retirement etc.) is their reward for having stuck with the profession all these years. This should not be so.
And how is this affecting the Machining profession???
It has replaced crafts-manship with crap-manship, replaced Machinists with Operators, and replaced common sense with Harvard MBA stupidity. Machinists who have half a brain or more have gotten out of the trade in droves. Of course, the assassination of "livable wages" hasn't been the only reason for the brain-drain going on. The "Genghis Khan School of Management" mentality hasn't helped either.
Genghis Khan School of Management
Many shops have never allowed us Machinists the time to do a job right, but
always found the time to do the job over. In short-sighted greed they thought they were saving the
company money by putting six dollar an hour can't-speak-no-English button
pushers in charge of half-million dollar machining centers, but then stood
around and scratched their heads after their "operator" (they don't
even bother calling them "Machinists" anymore) crashed it, or
ran it into the ground thru lack of simple maintenance, thus creating the
world's largest paperweight. And from what remains of the real
Machinists, more and more has been required from workers earning (in real
wages) less and less. Literally for them, the situation has become
"the more I've learned, the less I earn."
Machinists who have spent ten or twenty years busting their asses to work themselves up from the shop floor to become CNC Programmers or Tool Makers are now making less real money than they did while pushing a broom as a beginning apprentice- and some wonder why the bad attitudes??? Some wonder why it's hard to hold on to good help? Can machine shop owners really be that dense? Yes, they can, and they are.
Well Paid Machinists -vs- Bargain-Basement Machinists
Machinists at TRW Aerospace in the 1960's, while being paid a decent and fair
wage, built the Pioneer 10 spacecraft- and it's still operational today.
In our day and age, using low-wage operators in low-bid machine shops via
million dollar CNC's, NASA's track record is this: they are losing over half
of their spacecraft to failure. And why not- when most of these
"operators" in the machine shops could actually make more
money flipping burgers or parking cars. We've all seen, in the light of 9/11,
what low-wages have accomplished in the airline security trade. The very first
recommendation after 9/11 was to increase the wage of the security screeners at
airports, in recognition of the age-old common sense adage of "you get what
you pay for." You CAN'T get good quality and dedication from people who are
being cheated out of a good living- period. This is common sense. The MBA's and
shop owners may be scratching their heads over this (common sense not being a
required course at Harvard) but experienced, educated, shop-hardened cynical
Machinists across the country know exactly what's been going on. As my
grandfather always told me...
"You can't get something for nothing"
Translated: You can't get something (good Machinists) for nothing (i.e. poverty level wages).
1) http://www.plan.ml.com/family/inflation-calc.html
Family Life in (George) BushLand
Episode #723, aired May 4, 2002
Daddy
has a great job in administration,
He makes a lot of money at the Enron Corporation.
Uh
Oh! Bankruptcy!
Gotta move, gotta move, can't pay no bills
Gotta move, gotta move, outta Beverly Hills
Daddy
got a new job is it the bomb,
Telecommunicating down at WorldCom.
Ooh-eee!
Bankruptcy!
Gotta move, gotta move, we're bouncin’ checks
Gotta move, gotta move to the apartment complex
Daddy
got another job, hope he's smart,
Workin with the blue light down at Kmart,
Holy
crap! Bankruptcy!
Gotta move, gotta move, aint nothin in the fridge
Gotta move, gotta move underneath the bridge
Went
to Disney, laid off there
Then came WorldCom, US-Air
Adelphia, WinStar, and Dell too
QuestCom, Napster, and more taboo
We're all desperate, Mom's on crank
Daddy took a pistol to the bank
Now our life's all full of thrills
Cause we're all back in Beverly Hills!
Blue Collar Jobs Gone- White Collar Next
From: Feb. 3, 2003
By Pete Engardio, Aaron Bernstein, and Manjeet Kripalani
With Frederik Balfour in Manila, Brian Grow in Atlanta, and Jay Greene in
Seattle
http://www.businessweek.com:/print/magazine/content/03_05/b3818001.htm?mz
| The New Global Job Shift |
| The
next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They
include basic research, chip design, engineering--even financial
analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper? Who wins? Who
loses? |
The sense of resignation
inside Bank of America is clear from the e-mail dispatch. "The handwriting
is on the wall," writes a veteran information-technology specialist who
says he has been warned not to talk to
the press. Three years ago, the Charlotte (N.C.)-based bank needed IT
talent so badly it had to outbid rivals. But last fall, his entire 15-engineer
team was told their jobs "wouldn't last through September." In the
past year, BofA has slashed 3,700 of its
25,000 tech and back-office jobs. An additional 1,000 will go by March.
Corporate downsizings, of course, are part of the ebb and flow of business.
These layoffs, though, aren't just happening because demand has dried up. Ex-BofA
managers and contractors say one-third
of those jobs are headed to India, where work that costs $100
an hour in the U.S. gets done for $20. Many former
BofA workers are returning to college to learn new software skills. Some are
getting real estate licenses. BofA
acknowledges it will outsource up to 1,100 jobs to Indian companies this year,
but it insists not all India-bound jobs are leading to layoffs.
Cut to India. In dazzling new technology parks rising on the dusty outskirts of
the major cities, no one's talking about job losses. Inside Infosys Technologies
Ltd.'s (INFY ) impeccably
landscaped 22-hectare campus in Bangalore, 250 engineers develop IT applications
for BofA. Elsewhere, Infosys staffers process home loans for Greenpoint Mortgage
of Novato, Calif. Near Bangalore's airport, at the offices of Wipro Ltd., five
radiologists interpret 30 CT scans a day for Massachusetts General Hospital. Not
far away, 26-year-old engineer Dharin Shah talks excitedly about his
$10,000-a-year job designing third-generation mobile-phone chips, as sun pours
through a skylight at the Texas Instrument Inc. (TXN
) research center. Five years ago, an engineer like Shah would have made a
beeline for Silicon Valley. Now, he says, "the sky is the limit here."
About 1,600 km north, on an old flour mill site outside New Delhi, all four
floors of Wipro Spectramind Ltd.'s sandstone-and-glass building are buzzing at
midnight with 2,500 young college-educated men and women. They are processing
claims for a major U.S. insurance company and providing help-desk support for a
big U.S. Internet service provider--all at a cost up to 60% lower than in the
U.S. Seven Wipro Spectramind staff with PhDs in molecular biology sift through
scientific research for Western pharmaceutical companies. Behind glass-framed
doors, Wipro voice coaches drill staff on how to speak American English. U.S.
customers like a familiar accent on the other end of the line.
Cut again to Manila, Shanghai, Budapest, or San José, Costa Rica. These
cities--and dozens more across the developing world--have become the new back
offices for Corporate America, Japan Inc., and Europe GmbH. Never heard of
Balazs Zimay? He's a Budapest architect--and just might help design your future
dream house. The name SGV & Co. probably means nothing to you. But this
Manila firm's accountants may crunch the numbers the next time Ernst & Young
International audits your company. Even Bulgaria, Romania, and South Africa,
which have a lot of educated people but remain economic backwaters, are tapping
the global market for services.
It's globalization's next wave--and one of the biggest trends reshaping the
global economy. The first wave started two decades ago with the exodus of jobs
making shoes, cheap electronics, and toys to developing countries. After that,
simple service work, like processing credit-card receipts, and mind-numbing
digital toil, like writing software code, began fleeing high-cost countries.
Now, all kinds of knowledge work can be done almost anywhere. "You will see
an explosion of work going overseas," says Forrester Research Inc. analyst
John C. McCarthy. He goes so far as to predict at least 3.3 million white-collar
jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries by
2015. Europe is joining the trend, too. British banks like HSBC Securities Inc.
(HBC ) have huge back offices
in China and India; French companies are using call centers in Mauritius; and
German multinationals from Siemens (SI
) to roller-bearings maker INA-Schaeffler are hiring in Russia, the Baltics, and
Eastern Europe.
The driving forces are digitization, the Internet, and high-speed data networks
that girdle the globe. These days, tasks such as drawing up detailed
architectural blueprints, slicing and dicing a company's financial disclosures,
or designing a revolutionary microprocessor can easily be performed overseas.
That's why Intel Inc. (INTC )
and Texas Instruments Inc. are furiously hiring Indian and Chinese engineers,
many with graduate degrees, to design chip circuits. Dutch consumer-electronics
giant Philips (PHG ) has
shifted research and development on most televisions, cell phones, and audio
products to Shanghai. In a recent PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT
) Senior Vice-President Brian Valentine--the No. 2 exec in the company's Windows
unit--urged managers to "pick something to move offshore today." In
India, said the briefing, you can get "quality work at 50% to 60% of the
cost. That's two heads for the price of one."
Even Wall Street jobs paying $80,000 and up are getting easier to transfer.
Brokerages like Lehman Brothers Inc. (LEH
) and Bear, Stearns & Co. (BSC
), for example, are starting to use Indian financial analysts for
number-crunching work. "A basic business tenet is that things go to the
areas where there is the best cost of production," says Ann Livermore, head
of services at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ
), which has 3,300 software engineers in India. "Now you're going to see
the same trends in services that happened in manufacturing."
Mark Smith's Note} I remember seeing a Michael Moore ( http://www.michaelmoore.com ) movie called "Roger and Me" about thousands upon thousands of blue-collar GM automotive jobs being exported from Flint, Michigan, down to Mexico. In the movie, they interviewed the executive head of personnel (a white collar job) about how the company was screwing over its loyal workers. The unsympathetic white collar executive didn't seem to care- after all, HE still had HIS job. At the end of the movie, it was learned that he too had been fired- after all, with no personnel there's no need of a personnel department executive. I laughed at the poetic justice of this, and it brought home the fact that for most people, they really don't care about problems until it becomes THEIR problem. Maybe with millions of white collar employees and executive now losing their job to underpaid foreign labor, just as blue collar workers have lost their jobs over the past few decades, maybe NOW we'll get some action to stop this madness- the madness of the gutting of the United States of America. Maybe there will be enough people jobless and homeless and rioting in the streets now to stop this senseless "hari-kari" of our job base.
The rise of a globally integrated knowledge economy is a blessing for developing
nations. What it means for the U.S. skilled labor force is less clear. At the
least, many white-collar workers may be headed for a tough readjustment. The
unprecedented hiring binge in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America comes at a
time when companies from Wall Street to Silicon Valley are downsizing at home.
In Silicon Valley, employment in the IT sector is down by 20% since early
2001,
according to the nonprofit group Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
Should the West panic? It's too early to tell. Obviously, the bursting of the
tech bubble and Wall Street's woes are chiefly behind the layoffs. Also, any
impact of offshore hiring is hard to measure, since so far a tiny portion of
U.S. white-collar work has jumped overseas. For security and practical reasons,
corporations are likely to keep crucial R&D and the bulk of back-office
operations close to home. Many jobs can't go anywhere because they require
face-to-face contact with customers. Americans will continue to deliver medical
care, negotiate deals, audit local companies, and wage legal battles. Talented,
innovative people will adjust as they always have.
Indeed, a case can be made that the U.S. will see a net gain from this shift--as
with previous globalization waves. In the 1990s, Corporate America had to import
hundreds of thousands of immigrants to ease engineering shortages. Now, by
sending routine service and engineering tasks to nations with a surplus of
educated workers, the U.S. labor force and capital can be redeployed to
higher-value industries and cutting-edge R&D. "Silicon Valley doesn't
need to have all the tech development in the world," says Doug Henton,
president of Collaborative Economics in Mountview, Calif. "We need
very-good-paying jobs. Any R&D that is routine can probably go."
Silicon Valley types already talk about the next wave of U.S. innovation coming
from the fusion of software, nanotech, and life sciences.
Mark Smith's Note: Free Trade Can't Work} What many people fail to realize is that there is no way in hell a free country can compete- economically- with a slave state economy, such as China, if Free Trade is in place. A PhD Engineer working in China can be forced to work for one penny an hour, if that's what the government says he'll do. What's his alternative- a bullet to the head, for which they'll charge his family a dime??? How in hell can ANY American Engineer compete with that? He can't. So given the reality of this situation, even a country like India will eventually loose many jobs to China, as has Viet Nam and Cambodia already. The greed of international businessmen knows no bounds, and if they can have China make their widgets for a penny less than VietNam or the Philippines, damn if they won't spends billions to facilitate that. For all practical purposes, China has become the official SLAVE LABOR SUPPLY for the rest of the world.
Globalization should also keep services prices in check, just as it did with
clothes, appliances, and home tools when manufacturing went offshore. Companies
will be able to keep shaving overhead costs and improving efficiency. "Our
comparative advantage may shift to other fields," says City University of
New York economist Robert E. Lipsey, a trade specialist. "And if
productivity is high, then the U.S. will maintain a high standard of
living." By spurring economic development in nations such as India,
meanwhile, U.S. companies will have bigger foreign markets for their goods and
services.
For companies adept at managing a global workforce, the benefits can be huge.
Sure, entrusting administration and R&D to far-flung foreigners sounds
risky. But Corporate America already has become comfortable hiring outside
companies to handle everything from product design and tech support to employee
benefits. Letting such work cross national boundaries isn't a radical leap. Now,
American Express, Dell
Computer, Eastman
Kodak and other companies
can offer round-the-clock customer care while keeping costs in check. What's
more, immigrant Asian engineers in the U.S. labs of TI, IBM, and Intel for decades have played a big, hidden role in American tech
breakthroughs. The difference now is that Indian and Chinese engineers are
managing R&D teams in their home countries. General Electric Co., for example, employs some 6,000 scientists and engineers in 10 foreign
countries. GE Medical Services integrates magnet, flat-panel, and diagnostic
imaging technologies from labs in China, Israel, Hungary, France, and India in
everything from its new X-ray devices to $1 million CT scanners. "The real
advantage is that we can tap the world's best talent," says GE Medical
Global Supply Chain Vice-President Dee Miller.
That's the good side of the coming realignment. There are hazards as well.
During previous go-global drives, many companies ended up repatriating
manufacturing and design work because they felt they were losing control of core
businesses or found them too hard to coordinate. In a recent Gartner Inc. survey
of 900 big U.S. companies that outsource IT work
offshore, a majority complained
of difficulty communicating and meeting deadlines. As a result, predicts Gartner
Inc. Research Director Frances Karamouzis, many newcomers will stumble in the
first few years as they begin using offshore service workers.
Mark Smith's Note} Hooray!!! Maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel!!! Let us all hope that the offshore outsourcing continues to screw up.
A thornier question: What happens if all those displaced white-collar workers
can't find greener pastures? Sure, tech specialists, payroll administrators, and
Wall Street analysts will land new jobs. But will they be able to make the same
money as before? It's possible that lower salaries for skilled work will
outweigh the gains in corporate efficiency. "If foreign countries
specialize in high-skilled areas where we have an advantage, we could be worse
off," says Harvard University economist Robert Z. Lawrence, a prominent
free-trade advocate. "I still have faith that globalization will make us
better off, but it's no more than faith."
If the worries prove valid, that could reshape the globalization debate. Until
now, the adverse impact of free trade has been confined largely to blue-collar
workers. But if more politically powerful middle-class Americans take a hit as
white-collar jobs move offshore, opposition to free trade could broaden.
When it comes to developing nations, however, it's hard to see a downside.
Especially for those countries loaded with college grads who speak Western
languages, outsourced white-collar work will likely contribute to economic
development even more than new factories making sneakers or mobile phones. By
2008 in India, IT work and other service exports will generate $57 billion in
revenues, employ 4 million people, and account for 7% of gross domestic product,
predicts a joint study by McKinsey & Co. and Nasscom, an Indian software
association.
Mark Smith's Note} Wouldn't it be nice to have those FOUR MILLION JOBS back here in the USA, rather than four million more homeless people pushing shopping carts??? Does anyone else besides me even CARE about this shit????
What makes this trend so viable is the explosion of college graduates in
low-wage nations. In the Philippines, a country of 75 million that churns out
380,000 college grads each year, there's an oversupply of accountants trained in
U.S. accounting standards. India already has a staggering 520,000 IT engineers,
with starting salaries of around $5,000. U.S. schools produce only 35,000
mechanical engineers a year; China graduates twice as many. "There is a
tremendous pool of well-trained people in China," says Johan A. van
Splunter, Philips' Asia chief executive.
Mark Smith's Note} $5,000 a year works out to $2.40 per hour. Please, all you Free Trade NAFTA idiots out there, please explain to me how in the hell ANY accountants in the USA can compete against that??? And yes, I know ALL the Free Trade arguments- I spent an entire YEAR debating both sides of this damn topic while I was on my college debate team.
William H. Gates III, for one, is dipping into that pool. Although Microsoft
started later than many rivals, it is moving quickly to catch up. In November,
Chairman Gates announced his company will invest $400 million in India over the
next three years. That's on top of the $750 million it's spending over three
years on R&D and outsourcing in China. At the company's Beijing research
lab, one-third of the 180 programmers have PhDs from U.S. universities. The
group helped develop the "digital ink" that makes handwriting show up
on Microsoft's new tablet PCs and submitted four scientific papers on computer
graphics at last year's prestigious Siggraph conference in San Antonio.
Hyderabad, India, meanwhile, is key to Microsoft's push into business software.
This is no sweatshop work. Just two years out of college, Gaurav Daga, 22, is
India project manager for software that lets programs running on Unix-based
computers interact smoothly with Windows applications. Daga's $11,000 salary
(NOTE: = $5.28/hr) is
a princely sum in a nation with a per capita annual income of $500, where a
two-bedroom flat goes for $125 a month. Microsoft is adding 10 Indians a month
to its 150-engineer center and indirectly employs hundreds more at IT
contractors. "It's definitely a cultural change to use foreign
workers," says Sivaramakichenane Somasegar, Microsoft's vice-president for
Windows engineering. "But if I can save a dollar, hallelujah."
Corporations are letting foreign operations handle internal finances as well.
Procter & Gamble Co.'s (PG )
650 Manila employees, most of whom have business and finance degrees, help
prepare P&G's tax returns around the world. "All the processing can be
done here, with just final submission done to local tax authorities" in the
U.S. and other countries, says Arun Khanna, P&G's Manila-based Asia
accounting director.
Virtually every sector of the financial industry is undergoing a similar
revolution. Processing insurance claims, selling stocks, and analyzing companies
can all be done in Asia for one-third to half of the cost in the U.S. or Europe.
Wall Street investment banks and brokerages, under mounting pressure to offer
independent research to investors, are buying equity analysis, industry reports,
and summaries of financial disclosures from outfits such as Smart Analyst Inc.
and OfficeTiger that employ financial analysts in India. By mining databases
over the Web, offshore staff can scrutinize an individual's credit history,
access corporate public financial disclosures, and troll oceans of economic
statistics. "Everybody these days is drawing on the same electronic
reservoir of data," says Ravi Aron, who teaches management at the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Architectural work is going global, too. Fluor Corp.of Aliso Viejo, Calif., employs
1,200 engineers and draftsmen in the
Philippines, Poland, and India to turn layouts of giant industrial facilities
into detailed specs and blueprints. For a multibillion-dollar petrochemical
plant Fluor is designing in Saudi Arabia, a job requiring 50,000 separate
construction plans, 200 young Filipino engineers earning less than $3,000 a year
(NOTE: = $1.44/hr) collaborate in real time with elite U.S. and British engineers making up to
$90,000 via Web portals. The principal Filipino engineer on plumbing design,
35-year-old Art Aycardo, pulls down $1,100 a month--enough to buy a Mitsubishi
Lancer, send his three children to private school, and take his wife on a recent
U.S. trip. Fluor CEO Alan Boeckmann makes no apologies. At a recent meeting in
Houston, employees asked point-blank why he is sending high-paying jobs to
Manila. His response: The Manila operation knocks up to 15% off Fluor's project
prices. "We have developed this into a core competitive advantage,"
Boeckmann says.
It's not just a game for big players: San Francisco architect David N. Marlatt
farms out work on Southern California homes selling for $300,000 to $1 million.
He fires off two-dimensional layouts to architect Zimay's PC in Budapest. Two
days later, Marlatt gets back blueprints and 3-D computer models that he
delivers to the contractor. Zimay charges $18 an hour, vs. the up to $65 Marlatt
would pay in America. "In the U.S., it is hard to find people to do this
modeling," Zimay says. "But in Hungary, there are too many
architects."
So far, white-collar globalization probably hasn't made a measurable dent in
U.S. salaries. Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss the trend. Consider
America's 10 million-strong IT workforce. In 2000, senior software engineers
were offered up to $130,000 a year, says Matt Milano, New York sales manager for
placement firm Atlantis Partners. The same job now pays up to $100,000.
Entry-level computer help-desk staffers would fetch about $55,000 then. Now they
get as little as $35,000. "Several times a day, clients tell me they are
sending this work off shore," says Milano. Companies that used to pay such
IT service providers as IBM, Accenture, and Electronic Data Services $200 a hour now pay as little as $70, says Vinnie Mirchandani, CEO of IT
outsourcing consultant Jetstream Group. One reason, besides the tech crash
itself, is that Indian providers like Wipro, Infosys, and Tata charge as little as $20. That's why Accenture and EDS,
which had few staff in India three years ago, will have a few thousand each by
next year.
Outsourcing experts say the big job migration has just begun. "This trend
is just starting to crystallize now because every chief information officer's
top agenda item is to cut budget," says Gartner's Karamouzis. Globalization
trailblazers, such as GE, AmEx, and Citibank, have spent a decade going through the learning curve and now are ramping up
fast. More cautious companies--insurers, utilities, and the like--are entering
the fray. Karamouzis expects 40% of America's top 1,000 companies will at least
have an overseas pilot project under way within two years. The really big
offshore push won't be until 2010 or so, she predicts, when global white-collar
sourcing practices are standardized.
If big layoffs result at home, corporations and Washington may have to brace for
a backlash. Already, New Jersey legislators are pushing a bill that would block
the state from outsourcing public jobs overseas. At Boeing Co., an anxious union is trying to ward off more job shifts to the aircraft
maker's new 350-person R&D center in Moscow (page 42).
Mark Smith's Note} I can only hope that there WILL be a backlash. I hope there will be rioting in the streets, like is happening in Venezuela as I write this. I hope mobs of unemployed and homeless Engineers and Accountants and Architects storm the gated communities of the assholes that are selling this country down the drain, overpowering the hired goons / rent-a-cops that defend these islands of prosperity from the reality they've created for the rest of us. I hope that Americans will cease falling for "Weapons of Mass Distractions" designed to get their minds off the really important things that affect all of us on a daily basis. I hope that enough Americans will have been pushed up against the wall to finally do something about this shit. I hope, but don't expect, because we Americans have become all too willful sacrificial sheep.
The truth is, the rise of the global knowledge industry is so recent that most
economists haven't begun to fathom the implications. For developing nations, the
big beneficiaries will be those offering the speediest and cheapest telecom
links, investor-friendly policies, and ample college grads. In the West, it's
far less clear who will be the big winners and losers. But we'll soon find out.
Mark Smith's Note} It's no damn mystery what the hell is going to happen. These economists have only to visit Flint, Michigan "to fathom the implications". Flint Michigan used to be a nice place to live, with lots of high paying jobs and nice neighborhoods. Now, after its job base was massacred by General Motors, it's a fucking ghost-town hell hole of despair. For anyone who wants to "fathom the implications", economists included, I suggest you rent the video "Roger and Me" (http://www.dogeatdogfilms.com/rogerme.html) which documents what happened to Flint. Everyone needs to learn that what's happened to Flint is now going to happen to the country as a whole. Flint was the "proving grounds" for how to fuck over our country, and now that fuck-over is coming to YOUR home town!!! Are you ready??? Have you got your shopping cart picked out already???
(snatched off the internet)
Joe Sixpack started his day early having shutting off his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) at 6 A.M. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking with coffee 9MADE IN COLUMBIA), he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG). Then he put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (ASSEMBLED IN MEXICO) to add up his Bank of America checking account (ACCOUNTING CONTRACTED OUT TO INDIA) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while.
He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and lit up a joint (MADE IN MEXICO) then turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA). As he sat there dozing in and out, he wondered... why can't I find a good paying job... in AMERICA???
Bush Says Outsourcing is GOOD for the USA
The Seattle Times, Tuesday, February 10, 2004.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001854367_bushecon10.html
WASHINGTON — The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Mark Smith here} Maybe we could outsource Bush's job also? I'm sure we could find somebody in India to do his job for alot less money. In fact, let's fire all of our politicians and outsource their jobs overseas- THEN maybe they'd understand how their STUPIDITY is wrecking this country.
IF blue collar jobs AND white collar jobs are all outsourced, just what the hell jobs does that leave the USA??? How are we supposed to pay our bills? That is ALL our jobs- white and blue collar! Are we all supposed to just meekly take this shit, crawl into cardboard boxes and live on sidewalks till we die???
The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the U.S. economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
Mark Smith here} Yes, it's a GOOD thing to destroy entire industries, destroy lives, wreck families, throw women and little kids out on the street because Bush & Co. sent all the jobs overseas.
The report, which predicts the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of an effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign.
In his message to Congress yesterday, Bush said the economy "is strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to his tax cuts and other economic programs. He said the nation had survived a stock-market meltdown, recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was finally beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner of America."
The president repeated that message during an afternoon "conversation" on the economy at SRC Automotive, an engine-rebuilding plant in Springfield, Mo., where he lashed out at lawmakers who oppose making his tax cuts permanent.
"When they say, 'We're going to repeal Bush's tax cuts,' that means they're going to raise your taxes, and that's wrong. And that's bad economics," he said.
Democrats who want Bush's job were quick to challenge his claims.
Campaigning yesterday in Roanoke, Va., Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, questioned the credibility of the job-creation forecast.
In an evening appearance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said it would come as a "news bulletin" to the American people that the outsourcing of jobs overseas is good for the country."I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq," he said. "I don't think we need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new president who's going to create jobs in America."
Mark Smith here} At least SOMEbody has some common sense! Yes, it WOULD be nice to have jobs... especially since if too many of us do NOT have jobs, we might be likely to riot and loot and burn down stuff.
"These people," he said of the Bush administration, "what planet do they live on? They are so out of touch."
Mark Smith here} Can I get an "amen!" here? As to "what planet", for Bush his world was one of never having had to work a day in his life, of having been born into wealth and power, of never having to worry how to pay the rent, or if he'd be hired for the job. He has no clue and yes, he IS out of touch.
Last year's Economic Report of the President predicted that 1.7 million jobs would be created in 2003. Instead, the nation lost 53,000 jobs. In Bush's three years in office, 2.2 million jobs have disappeared.
Since the Great Depression, it has never taken this long for the economy to begin creating jobs after emerging from a recession. After the last recession ended in 1991, it took 14 months for employment to begin expanding. Current problems with the economy have gone on nearly twice as long, 26 months...