Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (17285)	2/14/2004 5:09:09 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Tradelite, RE: "Realities Make 'Offshoring' Hard to Swallow" The writer isn't plugged into the international corporate competitive realities. Here's what's wrong with his assumptions: RE: " One big one is that labor markets are either at full employment, or will get there real soon." India is getting tapped out, and China is calling us (even as recently as yesterday mind you) to hire educated people from here because they are tapped out. Even People's Daily acknowledges they can't find enough sufficiently educated workers out of their unemployed. The world is beginning to look like it's having an education crisis, meanwhile, the writer doesn't appear to be plugged into this yet. RE: " the end of communism -- which suddenly has dumped a billion underemployed, low-cost workers into the global labor pool" What he ignores is: a) Their system isn't as efficient b) It takes years to train a billion unemployed people c) In fact, they are already tapped out and can't find enough trained workers, but this writer isn't not aware of it. This actually buys the USA some time (probably 4 years) to get to the next level of competition & more innovation. RE: "the arrival of the Internet and the digital revolution have suddenly made it possible for many of those workers to compete against tens of millions of U.S. service workers in sectors once immune to trade." And the auto industry workers didn't have to compete with Japan in the 80s? RE: "we could have an extended period of job dislocation and wage stagnation." He's obviously not plugged into Silicon Valley, where suddenly a faucet has been turned on about 5 days ago, out of the blue we're suddenly hearing people looking to hire people. Last night was thinking, haven't seen so many emails asking me to help people find people from recruiters since 2000. Obviously, it's still a tiny fraction of what it was in 2000, but at least the faucet has suddenly been turned on -- maybe CEOs liked the quarterly reports enough to start some hiring? But it's not for engineers, it's the business and administrative people that initiate follow-on employment of engineers, so time will tell if they seek out engineers here or there. On the mid to high-end, I suspect here, and even on the entry-end I suspect here too since China & India are already getting tapped out. RE: " standard model is that in a world of free trade and free-floating currencies, countries won't run big trade imbalances." It's interesting that this "standard model" was okay, back when this standard model worked in our favor, back when we were stealing people PhDs from other countries. Now that some aspect of this has reversed, we want to change the rules and be inconsistent? The writer should at least acknowledge this aspect, otherwise it sounds a bit inconsistent. If currency floats, we'll see spiraling inflation overseas, that would spread here. So this would need to be done in incremental stages so it doesn't take down our global and USA financial systems. Blindly suggesting to float currency is ignoring prudent steps to minimize the financial system risks. RE: "McKinsey & Co. estimated that every dollar of service activity transferred to India generates only about 5 cents in additional U.S. exports." Sure, for Bush's Smokestack companies. Meanwhile, for hard-working hightech, it generates more than 2Xs revenue from international countries, and we turn around and use this money to employ 2Xs more employees HERE in the USA. Take the international revenue away, and USA headcount goes down since it is living off of the international revenue. Quite contrary to what the writer probably intends. RE: " Finally, the standard model relied on by defenders of offshoring assumes a world of perfect competition." The govt probably needs to step in and ask China to start enforcing IP theft, or else. RE: " But it turns out this calculation is based on the assumption that the economy will be as successful in finding jobs for displaced service workers as it did in the past, when the service sector was largely protected from global competition." Why doesn't the writer ask why Bush is offshoring Biotech PhD students to South Korea and the like, because he is against stem research here? He should read the Mercury News reports - they have way more of a clue on this. Scientists go where they can conduct research. Why isn't this reporter even taking a TINY glance at our lack of support for the public universities and research? Innovation creates jobs. RE: "Nor have any of the briefs filed in defense of offshoring even taken a stab at calculating what happens to income" Offshoring allows you to pay the existing USA workers more. Does the USA want more USA people employeed at half the salary, or does the USA want to protect the salaries of all the currently employed people by employing some people overseas? Pick one or the other. Not both. RE: "What I've yet to see, however, is even a educated guess as to what those jobs might be." Is this writer that unplugged from new innovations, not to have any idea as to where the new jobs are? Maybe he could have conducted some research before writing the article. This writer should start reading Mercury news, to learn about the underlying issues at work here - Washington DCs government policy is poor and hurts new innovation - and then people wonder why we don't have higher wage jobs, when they've shut the faucet on new innovation, like even this here: "President Bush's stance on stem cell research has hindered them and could contribute to a brain drain of talent overseas. U.S. losing edge in stem cell research" mercurynews.com My personal favorite is how we spend $100B on a war, but only increased our spending on mathematics by only $120M, while foreign countries are kicking our butts on math. Go figure ! At least CNN knows about some of the more traditional service jobs, though for some reason they don't mention the new emerging jobs: "Where the jobs will be " money.cnn.com Regards, Amy J