Tuesday, July 06, 2004
The Outsourcing Problem
In all this business of the Evil Bush and his anti-gay, anti-Arab, pro-war Evil agenda, we've all been distracted from perhaps the biggest economic issue of our time, Outsourcing.
This is a global economic shift: as the world shifts to interconnected capitolism and as trade barriers come down, we'll see all jobs that are potentially electronic or mobile shift to the least expensive countries. As that happens, our living standards will come down, theirs will come up. Eventually, the whole world will equalize to an relatively uniform midling standard. Which means lower overall living standards in the U.S., Australia, and Europe.
This is innevitable and unstoppable. Trade protections will only create artificial bubbles that will cause economic shocks and huge dislocations when they finally burst. This is ECONOMIC ENTROPY and is a fact of physics.
Our only possible hope to maintain our accustomed living standards? Find a way to BE OUT FRONT and take advantage of the shifting tides. By that I mean, re-orient our economy to take advantage of new technologies, creative industries, and high-end, personal service for an educated and prosperous workforce.
BUT WE AREN'T DOING THAT. To do that, we'd need to do these things:
1. Invest and be out front on new technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnologies, and microelectronics. Sadly, we are losing ground on this to Japan and Korea.
2. Invest in education so our system is AT LEAST as good as those in India and Rumania, and our workers can compete on the soon to come level playing field. Sadly, our educational system is far behind these up-and-coming soon to be new first world countries.
3. Re-orient our social morality to re-introduce courtesy, politeness, inclusiveness, and a help-they-neighbor attitude that will make companies want to do business locally rather than abroad. Take advantage of Americas multicultural nature to make us the one country that IS and UNDERSTANDS the world, so that the world looks to us to lead the way with entertainment and marketing products that speak across cultures and transcend differences, and make us a sole supplier of world-wide reach. Sadly, instead, we are inculcating people with selfishness, divisiveness, and violence, and making us a parriah not just to other countries but to our own companies, who don't want to work with our own attitude-poor workers.
If we don't start attacking these three issues NOW, America will be a third-world country by the time I'm ready to retire....
The New York Times > International > Europe > Voters in Much of Europe Seem to Want the Ins Out: "All parties, in other words, are struggling to deal with a new era in Europe, where social protections have become too expensive and a globalized economy, with jobs being outsourced to Poland, Slovakia and, especially, China, has made vigorous economic growth almost a memory."
This is a global economic shift: as the world shifts to interconnected capitolism and as trade barriers come down, we'll see all jobs that are potentially electronic or mobile shift to the least expensive countries. As that happens, our living standards will come down, theirs will come up. Eventually, the whole world will equalize to an relatively uniform midling standard. Which means lower overall living standards in the U.S., Australia, and Europe.
This is innevitable and unstoppable. Trade protections will only create artificial bubbles that will cause economic shocks and huge dislocations when they finally burst. This is ECONOMIC ENTROPY and is a fact of physics.
Our only possible hope to maintain our accustomed living standards? Find a way to BE OUT FRONT and take advantage of the shifting tides. By that I mean, re-orient our economy to take advantage of new technologies, creative industries, and high-end, personal service for an educated and prosperous workforce.
BUT WE AREN'T DOING THAT. To do that, we'd need to do these things:
1. Invest and be out front on new technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnologies, and microelectronics. Sadly, we are losing ground on this to Japan and Korea.
2. Invest in education so our system is AT LEAST as good as those in India and Rumania, and our workers can compete on the soon to come level playing field. Sadly, our educational system is far behind these up-and-coming soon to be new first world countries.
3. Re-orient our social morality to re-introduce courtesy, politeness, inclusiveness, and a help-they-neighbor attitude that will make companies want to do business locally rather than abroad. Take advantage of Americas multicultural nature to make us the one country that IS and UNDERSTANDS the world, so that the world looks to us to lead the way with entertainment and marketing products that speak across cultures and transcend differences, and make us a sole supplier of world-wide reach. Sadly, instead, we are inculcating people with selfishness, divisiveness, and violence, and making us a parriah not just to other countries but to our own companies, who don't want to work with our own attitude-poor workers.
If we don't start attacking these three issues NOW, America will be a third-world country by the time I'm ready to retire....
The New York Times > International > Europe > Voters in Much of Europe Seem to Want the Ins Out: "All parties, in other words, are struggling to deal with a new era in Europe, where social protections have become too expensive and a globalized economy, with jobs being outsourced to Poland, Slovakia and, especially, China, has made vigorous economic growth almost a memory."
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