Stephen Cathers, in The University of Southern California's Daily Trojan posits that the movement of 'knowledge worker' jobs from USA shores is not a bad thing, and in fact is a good and necessary thing. In response to what he calls the 'Protectionist' platforms of candidates Kerry and Turner he asks:
...What makes the current dispute any different? The main difference between the present fight and previous battles is that white-collar workers are the ones who feel threatened this time.
This is supposedly important because knowledge workers are losing their jobs, and "everyone knows" that knowledge work is "America's future." When reminded that over time America has gone from agricultural to factory to knowledge work (which includes information technology), New Jersey State Senator Shirley Turner, author of protectionist legislation, told Wired, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge." Of course, this assumes that more jobs won't be created in promising fields like biotechnology and nanotechnology, while discounting the fact that more discoveries and inventions are yet to come in areas we can't predict. Politicians are hardly the best people to figure out what future innovations will transform the economy. While the rest of us are still in the dark, protectionist politicians have somehow figured out a way to divine America's future, and apparently it looks exactly like the present.
...All these objections don't mean that the cost to workers who lose their jobs is not a valid concern, only that protectionism is a poor solution. More innovative and less destructive responses are called for. For instance, the McKinsey Global Institute's report on outsourcing concluded that "as part of a severance package, and for a small percent of the savings from offshoring, companies could purchase insurance for their displaced workers that would cover their loss in wages for the time a worker is unemployed."..
K-Collector Topics: innovation knowledge work Outsourcing platforms AmericaA couple of comments from another list I am on...
>You should see the offshore-written code I'm responsible
>for cleaning up at the job I've been at for the last couple
>of months... Oy.
>In a 20-year software career I've still not witnessed an
>actual example of a successful "off-shoring" of a software
>project.
I wonder how much they are getting paid to clean up... and will it be reported in the 'savings' numbers?
Posted by: Valdis at February 23, 2004 01:20 AM