Wednesday, March 03, 2004
An interesting take on outsourcing
I found this link on the sidebar from Eric Raymond's blog. As "The Angry Economist" states, America's strength is its willingness to lose jobs. That is the case NOW, and was the case for the ENTIRE history of the United States. I remember reading in David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations about textile manufacturers who faced a backlash from workers who would lose their jobs when a new technology was brought in. The owner went in over the weekend, smashed up the OLD machinery, thus ensuring that those workers didn't have any job to come back to.
That's not nice, but it's in sharp contrast to the guilds and labor action that typified Europe at the time. Granted, one of the things that helped America was that we had a SMALL population, which meant people could usually find a job elsewhere (low supply makes that happen).
We still seem to be good at producing jobs. Our current 5.6% unemployment rate is lower than historical averages, and lower than the 70s. We're doing pretty good. Most of the pain comes from the fact that people don't want to disgorge the salary increases which came from the boom 90s. Unfortunately, that will have to happen...somewhat. Indian programmers are already getting more expensive, and combined with the falling dollar, they are more expensive still. So, it's not going to be a dramatic shift.
America is GOOD at producing work. Trust that. But be flexible.
I found this link on the sidebar from Eric Raymond's blog. As "The Angry Economist" states, America's strength is its willingness to lose jobs. That is the case NOW, and was the case for the ENTIRE history of the United States. I remember reading in David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations about textile manufacturers who faced a backlash from workers who would lose their jobs when a new technology was brought in. The owner went in over the weekend, smashed up the OLD machinery, thus ensuring that those workers didn't have any job to come back to.
That's not nice, but it's in sharp contrast to the guilds and labor action that typified Europe at the time. Granted, one of the things that helped America was that we had a SMALL population, which meant people could usually find a job elsewhere (low supply makes that happen).
We still seem to be good at producing jobs. Our current 5.6% unemployment rate is lower than historical averages, and lower than the 70s. We're doing pretty good. Most of the pain comes from the fact that people don't want to disgorge the salary increases which came from the boom 90s. Unfortunately, that will have to happen...somewhat. Indian programmers are already getting more expensive, and combined with the falling dollar, they are more expensive still. So, it's not going to be a dramatic shift.
America is GOOD at producing work. Trust that. But be flexible.
