Yiwu, they have a few things wrong: <The group estimates that exports of software and services--mostly to the U.S.--will rise to $12.20 billion in March from $3.96 billion in 2000, despite the sharp downturn in the U.S. economy.>
What sharp downturn? The US economy is growing and has been all along. There was a slowdown to near zero, but there was no downturn, no recession, no depression, no collapse. Unemployment barely moved upwards.
< If growth trends hold, the association predicts that exports could reach $40 billion or more by 2009.>
Great news. That means something like $100 billion in value is created because Indians are producing about 3 times as much value for the software dollar as Americans [which is why the exports are booming]. That's a big economic turbo boost. Americans and the rest of the world will enjoy the software that those people produce and it's cheap compared with having Americans do it.
<U.S. executives routinely say they find the quality of work in India to be as good as or better than the work done at home. That's partly because even low-level employees who answer phones in call centers are likely to have college degrees.>
It's because there are hordes of motivated Indians with high IQs who need work and are pleased to be paid well. It's nothing to do with call centre operators having college degrees.
<"These are the crown jewels of the American value chain you're losing here," Clemons said of the loss of white-collar jobs. "If you begin losing the upper end, you affect a lot of people on the chain.">
From a narrow perspective of the USA, yes, the work is being done cheaper and better elsewhere [better because they can hire smarter people in India as the vast reservoir of smart people is barely tapped].
But on the "American value chain", they are taking a narrow point of view. The USA value chain extends around the world, as do China's and India's. That is a good thing. It means Americans can buy cheap software Made in India and cheap, amazing, CDMA-powered phragmented photon cyberphones Made in China and so can everyone. The money flows around the world in one big value chain. Yes, losing those absurdly expensive "white collar jobs" affects a lot of people. That's great. A lot of people are better off. One overpaid person loses their job and dozens of others are better off, including Americans. That's a good thing.
Even the white collar workers are better off because it's better to be just one of the crowd in a rich world than Chief of the Mud Huts in a poor place. The white collar people in the USA can buy cheap stuff Made in India and China. They just have a narrow short term view of their own pay in the immediacy of the job they have. They see concentrated benefits [for themselves] and diffuse costs [for everyone else], which is the curse of the democratic world. They don't have a broader economic view.
<In India, where education is inexpensive, the knowledge pool is building up. Some 20 million people graduated from various degree programs in 2001, but only 2.5 million found jobs in 2002, meaning the rest are young, educated and ready to go.> Woohoo. That's a lot of software that can be developed and CDMA phones which can be made. That's good for the USA and good for Indians. Uncle Al KBE can print another big bundle of US$ because those people will want to be paid in US$. A few clicks and some PayPal money will be winging it's way to the cyberbank account of millions of Indians. They can log on to eBay, Yahoo! and WalMart and go shopping! Chinese can do the same. They are doing the same. Then they can click here snowadventures.co.nz and book a tour to NZ for some fun! [If they can read Japanese]
<Clemons put it this way: "What troubles me about India is that they've done proactively what we are having to do reactively.
"There's a culture of inquiry here. I've never met so many smart, so incredibly inexpensive people.">
Well duh! There are 1 billion people in India. That means 10 million with a 99 percentile IQ. They have been economically imprisoned. He should expect to meet a lot of cheap, smart people. There are some more in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Tibet.
With China and India both getting the state off the backs of the population, that would be about 2.5 billion people, some 40% of the world, doing something useful for a change. That is a vast turbo-charging because the benefits come at the margin; one Einstein freed from the rice paddies makes a huge difference to everyone. Okay, they aren't all Einstein, but 40% of the world is still a LOT of margin.
With 6 billion people adopting a Gung Ho Genki Dama way of life, with all the capital, technological and intellectual gains of the 20th century to work from, we are at the cusp of the most amazing period in biological existence. This is bigger than the invention of DNA!!!! That's a 4 exclamation mark superlative. Let alone trivial things like the invention of fire, the wheel, the industrial revolution, and sheople. Note 1.
Mqurice
PS: Things could go bad. There are still plenty of megalomaniac murderous morons who wish to dominate with threats of violence, and confiscate rather than create in peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, longevity, fun and love in synchronicitous bliss. They have their drooling, atavistic, chimpoid dominance hierarchy territorial proclivities to murder and steal festering in the lower regions of their brains. Fortunately, when those chimpoids get stroppy, over Taiwanese running their own show, or by declaring Islamic Jihad on everyone else, freedom-loving Westerners have got big noocular bombs and super accurate cruise missiles and soon nano technology gremlins to shove in their face.
It's ironic that peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, longevity, fun and love in synchronicitous bliss can only be achieved by keeping the chimpoids at bay with threats of violence, which is the language that animals use to get their way. They aren't strong on reasoning and look blankly at you if you mention Gung Ho Genki Dama, or Peace, Light, Harmony, Happiness,... etc.
Note 1. I actually think it's bigger than the invention of the universe, but that bumps into Goedel's self-referential theorem. nl.ijs.si Can It be bigger than the universe within which we are constrained? Hmmm. I'm out of my depth there. I'd ask Google, but I don't think even Google has it figured out yet. |
