Elysian Shadows

mattheweston wrote:The current environment for business in the US is not in a state that is conducive to support keeping jobs in the US. As long as companies can make their products cheaper in foreign countries, they will continue to do so thus depriving Americans of those jobs. The way to solve this problem is to give these companies an incentive to keep the jobs stateside. I know it's not popular but, tax cuts for the wealthy would solve some of this but only if you had some kind of mechanism in place to make sure that the money was spent in the US to keep jobs here. Keeping the jobs here would in turn help unemployment thus helping the economy.

Personally, I'm not a fan at all of subsidizing inefficiencies by focusing on protecting jobs. If jobs are to be created,then do something like: create a big project with a reliable positive outcome, make it easier for people to start their own companies, and/or lessen the cost of school and increase research grants (especially for ambitious undergrads who have a hard time getting funding). There are of course other things you can do, but those are all proactive objectives with the idea of obtaining a new outcome since the current one doesn't hold in a competitive environment. Besides, most politically created jobs suck (yay for paper pushing, trash sorting, and assembly lines). "Job creation", to me, has become such a dirty political word.

Create real opportunities for people to pursue innovative ideas and change the status quo of salaries that increase at a rate less than that of inflation all while "workers" increase their average productivity (which has been a general trend since the late 70s if I'm not mistaken). In a relatively stable system with positive economic growth you'd have salaries increasing above inflation to account for growth in the market (so long as productivity is increasing too, which it is). Of course, this doesn't happen when people want to protect their job that has the same output now as 40 years ago while having large pay raises (but it still shouldn't really decline with inflation). It also doesn't happen when that money gets more and more focused in the upper echelons of society. Of course, that's been the trend with political and economic power for centuries and things usually level out somehow - sometimes through obsolescence of the upper echelons (landed aristocracies), sometimes through benevolence (though I'd say this is rare... or perhaps me being hopeful), but usually through rather violent shifts and changes.


Before I go off on a major off-topic rant (I have a passion for economics and history) I'll get back on topic. I've made it clear that I think protecting jobs for the sake of protecting jobs is the wrong way to go, but I recognize the concerns for the lowering standards and insecurity of the average "worker" (personally I hate that term because it denotes a group of people who don't own their creative ideas and are cogs in a system as opposed to innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, etc). I think that allowing companies to move operations offshore is entirely legitimate, but that companies that do so are also largely responsible for systemic unethical practices that happen in their overseas operations. Also, whistleblowers need to be afforded proper protection to make that legally enforceable.

I also think that the US media draws way too much attention to moving jobs overseas since it's only a tiny fraction of most sectors of the economy that have actually done so. Primary industry (resources) is an obvious one in some cases but that's usually because of a lack of economical deposits and is thus hard to avoid (though, rather than for the purpose of simply preserving jobs, I think a small base should be maintained for security reasons - the current issues with China and rare earth metals are a good example). Secondary industry (manufacturing) has disproportionally moved overseas, except in the cases of US prison labour (which as a side note, is actually quite extensive since a great deal of US military personnel gear and certain other items are produced by prison inmates, which represent ~25% of the world's prisoner population).

In many cases, I think that outsourcing as a general practice should be carefully considered because it has a lot of potential to degrade the quality of the workplace culture. It's often used as an easy way out by companies who have crappy cultures (and usually correspondingly low productivity) to get around that. This is sometimes the fault of sentiments within the company (I'd take a shot at unions, but they're not always bad and they're not always the culprits), but it rarely solves it since you get all kinds of in-fighting and discontent. A tight knit work environment that boosts up its employees, provides the proper tools, training, etc. has a lot of advantages over one that is cut off. I wouldn't say that an outsourced company is always totally cut off, but it often is.

And to address your point on tax cuts mattheweston, there's actually little evidence to show that such tax cuts work well. It's more accurate to say there's evidence that shows an increase/decrease may temporarily increase/decrease voter contentment and may even boost spending (although this is debated, especially since everyone increasing their spending on a static number of goods creates artificial inflationary pressures). In fact, constant fluctuations in taxes, policy, etc. are more likely to scare off business and investment than anything. You get politicians on one side saying one thing, on another side saying another thing, and another guy flip-flopping (although I know in the US it's usually 2 political figures rather than 3) and that results in businesses that can't formulate an accurate business plan for investors because they don't know what the hell is going to happen.


And if all goes well, this will start an intellectual debate... or a flame war, or perhaps people won't care... one of those 3 .

Nice essay. I agree with the majority of what I could bear to read.

I love this guys posts. They are good and in detail. He uses proper punctuation and it isn't an eye soar.

I love this guys posts. They are good and in detail. He uses proper punctuation and it isn't an eye soar.

Thanks

*Deep breath*

Okay, well i define out sourcing as moving a job that other wise could be done in america(place A), to somewhere else, india, china, (place B)
Now, if the reason is because the job bets done better in place B, well that one thing.. but that is not the case most of the time, the job is moved because its finically cheaper.

Here is the problem in my opinion... big companies like IBM used to be a family business, run by smart engineers and business men. They cared about their employees, but today in the global village, companies are run by accountants, that only care about the bottom line... but here is the dangerous part.

While their bottom line might say we sacked a dude that was being paid 100k, and replaced him with someone that we're paying 20k. here is the reality of the situation..

Most of these jobs are in india, and the turn around to do work, is exponentially increased. i send Gupta Sharish a work order, and he is sleeping, he gets it and send a confirmation and perhaps a request back, but im sleeping. i get it and this goes on and on. and only gets compounded where there are issues, which there always are.

okay, thats just the immediate impact, while bad, its not the worst, lets look at the long term... we are sending all these jobs to india, because it cheaper. well greate, our own people are not interested in becoming IT specialists, well because there just are less jobs. so now over time, (which im sure duck will agree with if he is interested in econ), the standard of living rises in india, and as a result inflation creeps in and inevitably they will charge more for what they do, to the point where its not cost effective on paper to send the jobs over... now here is the scary part, by this time we dont have enough senior it specialists to cover the jobs, and effectively we are the the mercy of mr sharish... also not to mention all the money that is leaving the country.

and dont give me this the media over plays it... its the one thing they dont cover enough. IT companies outsource more that half the work at least. my dad maintains a employee database, he says that he never sees a smith or jones. its all asian/indian.

anyways, i think americans are over paid, but also over taxed. i think the govt needs to put tarrifs in place that makes it less lucrative to ship work out doors.

From a software engineer's perspective, I am not a fan of outsourcing - at all. It all goes back to that simple rule in application development:

Pick two of the following:
- Cheap
- Right
- Fast

You simply can't have all three... If you want it cheap and fast, it's not going to be right. If you want it right and fast, it's not going to be cheap!

In my experience, projects are off-shored in an attempt to obtain all three. And, since it will undoubtedly fail, there is ALWAYS rework. I've inherited three off-shore projects in my career. All of them were buggy, incomplete, and filled with SLOPPY, junior-level code. Many of these shops will put their senior guys on the potium while they are trying to win your business, then they transition to a junior team to "complete" the work.

But...perhaps I'm a little jaded and bitter.

No I agree trufun, in pritams case they chose him because of his talent... not because its cheaper. But when it comes to businesses all they know is its cheaper and they could care less about quality. They don't see the buggy code, they just see profit.

Well said, avansc.