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To: Amy J who wrote (16590)	2/3/2004 8:48:27 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

would you prefer to be competitive to China, or not? there's no way the US can be competitive with China or India. with wage differentials exceeding an order of magnitude, the stretch is too big. whatever your job is, if you are a knowledge worker, there is a 70% probability that there is somebody in India who can do the job just as well for less than 15% of what you make. and chances are, more and more of these people will get the opportunity to displace American workers as business processes are outsourced. that doesn't mean protectionism is the answer. (although one can expect to hear a lot of protectionist drumbeating during the election campaign season.) the answer is massive deflation and bankruptcies and depression in America. just watch.

To: Amy J who wrote (16590)	2/3/2004 9:43:49 AM
From: fatty	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

>I owe it to the people who want to retire in this country, to work hard, like they did for us while we were growing up, to be worldwide competitive, and hopefully give them a competitive country they may continue to comfortably retire inside of while I am working competitively. What if you work very hard but the Chinese and Indians work harder? What if you do a much better job than your parents but still won't get as good a retirement as your parents? What if your million dollar house is bought by an Australian Starbuck clerk thanks to the further depressed currency? I think it's time for responsible politicians to educate the mass to accept defeat early so it won't hurt as much later on.

To: Amy J who wrote (16590)	2/3/2004 6:20:42 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 306849

Hi AmyJ, I want US companies and their products to be competitive in worldwide markets. Of course I don't have the answer as to how to achieve this, I don't think anybody does. My sense is that the following is true: (good) - US markets are best for incubating products real time - US markets are the most lucrative - US universities and defense investments (DARPA) produce world class concepts for new companies - US engineering universites are world class. (bad) - US taxes are high and skewed towards payroll taxes - US workers cost more than almost any other worker based on cost of living and infrastructure, among other things. I think you need to look at these factors in total to determine what is the optimum approach to create world class companies in the future. Just taking a chinese worker vs. a US worker, and making a blanket statement that the Chinese are smarter and cheaper and therefore better is not the right approach to creating world class US companies in my view, because hiring the chinese worker in China removes some of the value add of items 1-4 (the good things) on my list above. Hiring offshore workers shifts the capex market offshore, we have seen this with Intel and their shrinking ASPs. Sure Intel gets a one time benefit of a cheap worker, but we as a nation lose our expensive long term investment in IP. Is that wise? Maybe for Carly Fiorina and her quarter by quarter perspective but not for the US technology industry as a whole, it seems to me. Juniper networks might be an american company, but I can almost guarantee you the next Juniper will be indian, unless Juniper R&D gets moved back to the US. We keep coming back to this argument that chinese and indian engineers are better/smarter/faster. But even after temporary work visa cap cuts, there are still more work visas available than employers want to use these days. To me this means the offshore talent is no so much smarter than local staff as to merit a work visa. What this says to me is that the staff isn't so much better but cheaper. Well, anywhere is cheaper than here, does that mean US multinationals should be allowed to shift their entire workforces to Bermuda to avoid taxes? As far as protectionism is concerned I don't think anybody is advocating that. Otoh we don't have a totally free market wrt labor in the US anyway, so congress could very easily say that tech products that are sold here have to be engineered here, in the US, similar to the laws they use for japanese car imports. I don't know. I know that Juniper just got the US govt contract for Gig-BE and spending my tax dollars to hire some indian engineers doesn't make me happy at all. That contract should be reevaluated and given to Cisco imho.