Much ado has been made recently about outsourcing. Well paying jobs are being stolen from overseas, we are told, leaving only work that illegal immigrants will do in their place.
In a sense, this is true. Lots of decent jobs are being done for pennies in other countries, where the value of the dollar to their puny currency holds greater sway. If a job costs, say, $10 and hour plus benefits here in Texas, and you can get someone in India to do it for $3 an hour and no benefits, then it starts to make sense to export that job to India and let the other guy do it. Three bucks can buy you an awful lot of chicken from KFC in India, but won't even score you a proper McDonalds Value Meal here.
Some jobs you can't export. I defy anyone to export bus driving jobs to India.
Some jobs are easier to export, namely rote functions that require a minimum of technology to maintain communications. An example of this are the handful of jobs outsourced to India at my place of employment. It is only because of my high level of skill and great resources of personal charm and arrogance that enabled me to continue working there...a lesser of two evils to be sure. Since none of us ever see a server (the datacenter is located 30 miles away) our jobs are baseed around remote management tools, a ticket system, and phones. If these tools are present, you can do this work. Thing is, those tools can be located here in Texas, or in Nebraska, in Hawaii, on the top floor of a parking garage, in India, or even in orbit if one wanted to export jobs there. (India is probably cheaper than orbit.)
A concern many people have is that this will create selection pressures that will enable the local folks of say, India, to do better work than us Americans and take away even more jobs. This may be so, but...the education of such people must come first, and without that, they won' tbe untangling string for the Nike corporation, much less troubleshooting Linux and Windows servers.
So I'm not worried. Why? Because of «A HREF="http://internationalreporter.net/scripts/linesDetails.asp?id=156"»this«/A»:«BLOCKQUOTE»Astrology is Science, and is allowed to be taught in Indian Universities for degrees and research work for interested students. The Hon.'ble Supreme Court rejected the plea of scientists that Astrology should not be taught in Universities as a subject of science. The Full Bench accepted Astrology as Science and allowed the Universities for teaching and issuing degrees and research work in Astrology.
In a landmark judgement, a full bench comprising Justice S. Rajendra Babu and Justice G.P.Mathur dismissed a petition filed by scientists in the matter of P.M. Bhargava and others challenging an Andhra Pradesh High Court Order that Astrology is not science and should not be taught in the universities. «/BLOCKQUOTE»And I thought attempts to remove evolution in schools and replacing it with Ignorant Design was bad.
So this works in our favor, in a manner of speaking. Allowing frivolous subjects to be taught in universities draws away talent that could otherwise be productive. (You are invited of course to consider what might be frivilous. I have my own list...much fun will be had in debating said lists) With a smaller pool of properly educated citizens, the threat of brain drain and outsourced jobs becomes far less. Who wants to hire someone to secure Red Hat Enterprise by consulting a star map and worrying about Mars rising?
The same thing applies here in the ol' U.S. as well. On one hand I don't mind so much, I call it job security. ..an uneducated populace is highly unlikely to replace me in my job, and employers will pay a premium. On the other hand, a vast pool of idiots means slower advancement over all, as they must be coddled and shown how to use everything. Gripping hand, not all nations will be as stupid as India just was, and we need as many educated people as we can get to make decisions and create wealth for ourselves.
So don't worry about outsourcing just yet. When they outsource CEOs and elected officials, then we can worry. Meanwhile, let's educate ourselves.
"I wouldn't patch today. Mercury is in retrograde." heh.