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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
"We didn't hear any complaining while the U.S. exploited the rest of the world." Readers respond to the most recent package of Salon stories on offshoring.
Apr 9, 2004 | [Read the original story "How India Is Saving Capitalism" and the letters in response.]
I read with interest the first of your series on outsourcing to India, and the letters in response to that article.
India is succeeding because of two things -- cost and skills. They are winning contracts because of cost, but customers are staying because they provide quality service, worth every penny of their "cheap" rates. It is a fact that a few years down the road, if Ghana or Laos or Swaziland were cheaper, U.S. companies will move their business there. Many Indian techies recognize this and are attempting to move up the value chain.
All this talk about "slave wages" and "bonded laborers" is balderdash. The fact of the matter is outsourcing has injected lots of money into the Indian economy, and it is trickling down into the lowest levels. That "emaciated ditch digger" laying fiber optic cable would starve if not for that job.
-- Padmaja Narsipur
Ms. Mieszkowski has done a poor job of writing an article on outsourcing. It helps neither the American audience, nor the Indians who are at the receiving end of all the rant.
The following are some of the facts that are missed:
1. The world of business runs not on socialistic structure, but on the rule of economics. People are greedy everywhere and they will stay the same forever. Whenever and wherever things are made available cheap, people will opt for that, rather than paying a high price for the goods or services. People go to Wal-Mart not out of love, but for cheap prices.
2. It seems from the reader responses that it is OK to screw a foreign worker, be it a Mexican, a European, an East Asian, a Chinese or now the latest fad, the Indian I.T. worker, but it is never OK to screw an American worker on the job market. What kind of moral equation is this?
3. America became rich because of the free market economy. America became rich by playing war games on foreign soil. America became rich by exploiting foreigners living in foreign lands and by exploiting first-generation immigrants for 10+ years before they became successful.
4. Coke and Pepsi destroyed the local soft drinks industry in India. The multinational publishing houses destroyed the local publishing houses everywhere including India. The U.S. has destroyed pretty much the agriculture industry in India. South India has some of the highest suicide rates in the world.
5. As an American Indian, born in India, raised in India, now working for America I am not complaining. Why? I simply understand the rule of the economics.
6. My elderly mother, living in India, is a victim of globalization. Her agricultural produce does not fetch the prices it used to. Thanks to globalization, she now depends on her son (me) to get by. Or else, she will die early without proper nutrition or access to healthcare.
7. Am I complaining? Not at all. I am doing my share, going to places where my job skills are accepted. I keep learning and adapting to the new industry standards, so that I can keep my job.
-- Krishna Kannan
For years high-tech workers have been developing technology that put many people below their social class out of work.
Friends who were high-paid typesetters became obsolete with the advent of desktop publishing. Factory work that didn't go overseas became highly automated thanks to robotics.
Now that the very technology they invented is being used against them they see it as a "tragedy." I see it as more of a belated karmic payback.
-- John Scott
It is interesting how the coverage of foreign outsourcing has ballooned as soon as white-collar jobs are on the line. Where were all the media and the huffing, outraged public when American factories, mines and shipyards closed and millions of blue-collar jobs were lost? If the middle class had more ethical and democratic considerations (overriding their comfort and the convenience of lower prices) in the past, and the issue was addressed when it started at the bottom of the ladder, this might not be happening now.
A few years ago I visited Italy on a business trip. To protest the disadvantageous renegotiation of their contract, the worker unions took to the street in Florence. But not only them: I saw stores, cafes and offices emptying, bosses and employees filing to the main square hand-in-hand (literally!). The American people could learn something from them. Timely protest is not unpatriotic: It is the basis of democracy. They need to learn that political and industry leaders are not always working for their good; only the people can protect the people.
-- Ana B.
It makes little difference whether the jobs go to India, China, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Africa or Sweden. Destroy the American middle class and totalitarianism is sure to follow. This is not rhetoric, it is history. Liberal democracy cannot and will not exist without a robust middle class of merchants, skilled laborers, and both blue- and white-collar workers to fill the socioeconomic gap between the wealthy and the wretched.
And I have a message for the Behlendorfs of the world: They who sow the wind reap the whirlwind. Don't assume that the inevitable totalitarianism I mentioned above will be corporatist. It could turn out to be fascist, with a home-grown, American Hitler with his finger on the button controlling 20,000 nukes. If I were an engineer in Bangalore, I would be very, very nervous.
-- Rob Anderson
