Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>]

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:31  AM, Roger Austin wrote:

>  Git a grip. Compared to our family and friends in the manufacturing 
> area who have permanently lost their low paying jobs to latin america 
> and beyond, we have nothing to whine about. The IT bubble silliness 
> caused a lot of IT workers to consider themselves much more valuable 
> than they were. Businesses paid much too much for IT staff and woke up 
> to that fact over the last few years.
>  For those IT workers with moderate skills or skills in only one area, 
> I would suggest they take advantage of the continuing education 
> offered in this area.

All you say is true, but the problem is much going to be much more 
pervasive than we've seen in the past. Certainly the manufacturing 
industry has been hit hard in the US, and I believe it was just the tip 
of the iceberg. We are beyond the point where the old advice of keeping 
your skills up is going to help. No amount of retraining is going to 
help an IT worker if in the next 10 years 50% of the technical jobs go 
to India and China.  Read the article carefully-- we're not talking 
about just low-level programming jobs here, but rather the outsourcing 
of entire projects, including high-level hardware design. All this on 
top of increased global competition by foreign companies.

It is true that what's happening right now has been affected by 
overstaffing caused by the Tech. Boom, W2K, etc. Regardless of the 
cause, outsourcing of all sorts of IT jobs has gone past the pilot 
project stage and has entered the rapid expansion phase. Soon every 
company in the US (including those who sent a file cabinet to the 
Caribbean to avoid paying US taxes) will be looking to outsource 
everything from IT to accounting to entire divisions. No amount of 
retraining is to going to help when 1 out of every 2 IT jobs is sent 
overseas.

And general retraining isn't going to help either since outsourcing in 
all sectors is going to cause a large drop in the total number of jobs 
available in the US. And if you thing this is just wild speculation, I 
invite you to explain how this can't happen given:

1. Companies in the US will have to compete globally, which means 
lowering costs using the same methods as their competitors who will be 
also sending jobs to the cheapest location.

2. Both highly skilled and unskilled labor can now be done offshore.

3. New companies are popping up all over the globe that will compete 
directly with US companies, and hire no US workers at all, yet take a 
significant part of the markets.

Want to retrain in accounting? There are skilled accountants who speak 
English in Ireland and India who will work for a fraction of the cost.  
And the same goes for any sort of professional activity that can be 
done in whole or part remotely.

The fact is, the US has enjoyed a period of advantage compared to the 
rest of the World, and that period is coming to an end within our 
lifetimes. And at least for me the answer is to do something else than 
hourly labor.

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 08:09  AM, Josep L. Guallar-Esteve 
wrote:

> On Friday 31 January 2003 03:07 am, Jason Laughlin wrote:
> >  I've long believed that the best
> > arrangement possible would be to earn a US salary while living in a 
> > 3rd
> > world economy (my father was in diplomatic/military service abroad, 
> > so I
> > know this works well).
>
> Aside from government officials from a rich country living in a
> not-so-rich-country, this just doesn't happen. Not even during the 
> dot-com
> era.

Perhaps not while working for someone else. One of the main things I 
looked for when setting up a business was the requirement that I 
wouldn't have to be any one place in person, and do everything over the 
internet or on the phone.  I've never lived abroad, but I would imagine 
that any place that has a significantly cheaper cost of living would 
also have side affects like poverty, lack of infrastructure, not to 
mention a dearth of good entertainment. But I'd like to be proven 
wrong! Hey, I hear Budapest is nice...


___________________________________________________________________
No place better demonstrates the worst aspects of both the American
character and public policy than the nation's highways.
        -- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC