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I picked up the February issue of WIRED and read the article by Daniel H. Pink titled The New Faces of the Silicon Age: How India Became the Capital of the Computing Revolution. Pink tells me that there are many programmers in the U.S. who are angry. Their $70,000 per year jobs flew away to India, where well trained, English speaking, professional programmers do them for $11,000 per year. These Indians are servicing American companies, like GE, HP, IBM, Citibank and Dell.
The Indians are happy about this. Educated people with jobs paying 22 times the per capita wage, are entering the middle class. Pink agrees:
"Isn't the emergence of a vibrant middle class in an otherwise poor country a spectacular achievement, the very confirmation of the wonders of globalization - not to mention a new market for American goods and services."
I think the emergence of a middle class in India is wonderful news. But as one of the Indians the author interviewed said, pretty soon his good job will go to China and other poorer countries. The Indians know it and we should be clear about it: Big Business is seeking the lowest wages all over the world.
Pink thinks that change is good. We have done it before when we went from farming to manufacturing, and then again from manufacturing to knowledge work. Yes, let others do the knowledge work. We in the U.S. are good at "innovation, creativity and changing the world."
Innovation. Sounds great. But in practice it means replacing people with machines. This increases the "productivity" of workers. The goal of many multinationals is to bring "productivity" to infinity, that is, to have zero employees.
Besides, "innovation, creativity and changing the world" can be done by people everywhere. Americans do not have a lock on brilliant ideas.
Pink says that the change represented by white collar outsourcing is so disorienting because it is happening very quickly. Maybe. I think the main reason people are upset is that they see clearly that Big Business is seeking a way to lower wages all over the world. It is obvious to them that business thinks workers are expendable.
Personnel offshoring is not inevitable, as Pink seems to think. It happens because it is encouraged by our government. We are constantly pushing for deregulation: Business, do as you please and do not worry about employees. Taxes are oriented to automation (getting rid of people) and to reward money over people. Another way our government has helped business and hindered workers is by removng the teeth from the NLRB, so that unions are dying.
The way I see it, the future of workers, both blue and white collar, is dire. Unless we make changes, such as:
1 - REGULATION - We must insist that business consider the needs of its workers and the society it is part of
2 - TAXATION - Use the tax system to discourage offshoring and to encourage the hiring of workers
3 - NLRB - Revitalize the National Labor Relations Board to allow unions to flourish as a counterweight to business
4 - GLOBALIZATAION - Change it from free trade controlled by powerful multinationals to fair trade that allows independent local industries to blossom in other countries. As an example of such independent businesses, look at the pharmaceutical companies in India that are challenging the big international drug cmpanies
Job outsourcing destroyes the American economy. It must be reduced through government intervention.
