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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
How India is destroying the American middle class: Readers respond to Katharine Mieszkowski's "How India Is Saving Capitalism."
Apr 6, 2004 | [Read the story.]
You disappoint me greatly in that you do not ask why wages are so low in India. Indians pay less for food, housing and services because many of their agricultural, construction and menial workers are held in debt bondage and victimized by caste discrimination. This is common knowledge, which you ignored.
I feel sure that you are aware of the very good information on bonded labor and the denial of civil rights to one in every six Indians at the Human Rights Watch Web site. Check the "Broken People" document. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both recommend sanctions against India. Check the Amnesty site also. The book "Disposable People," by Kevin Bayles from Antislavery International, also explains the bondage practiced in India.
"Red China Blues," by Jan Wong, details some of the abuses of workers in China. Even better, "China's Workers Under Assault," by Anita Chan, includes accounts by Chinese journalists working undercover in sweatshop factories. Including accounts of beatings and murder. Amazon sells these books.
Offshoring jobs to countries that have low costs because of their repression of their citizenry brings that repression to bear on Americans. People have made the point that U.S. companies buy a lot of services already from Europe. Well, Europeans no longer shoot labor organizers. They no longer practice slavery or feudal bondage. They must compete on their innovation and energy, not their willingness to send out a goon squad. Competition with any country that maintains labor and civil rights will never cause massive unemployment or drop the floor out from under wages.
Apologists for India say that their tech workers are not bonded or oppressed. I agree. Their tech workers come from the hereditary higher castes. But check Arundhati Roy's book "Power Politics" for a description of emaciated workers digging ditches by candlelight -- to lay fiber optic cable. A bonded workforce cuts costs for infrastructure. And for food and housing. So Indian professionals can charge less for their work.
You probably know that the U.S. Congress passed sanctions against trade with Myanmar (properly called Burma) last year. Coerced labor, often unpaid, contributed to the building of a pipeline there for an American oil company. American companies will readily take profits that rest on violence done against the poor.
I very much dislike your deliberately omitting the daily violence done against India's working poor from your discussion.
-- Patrick Tibbits
I have been pleasantly surprised with Salon's coverage of the white-collar outsourcing phenomena. Statements about blameless CEOs and developing-country riches stand alongside the more typical Salon fare about the new imperialism and cross-continental, brown-skinned sisterhood. Salon, as opposed to, say, Lou Dobb's hourly rant and corporate blacklist, has chosen to grapple with the technological underpinnings, cultural realities, and multifarious economic implications of developments that are complicating the standard litmus-test arguments about globalization.
-- Jaffer Abbasi
Wow! All those poor oppressed capitalists ... and I did not even know they were in such imminent danger. Thank heaven for those barefoot Indian bicyclists, bravely coming to the rescue of the endangered entrepreneur. I'm so relieved to read that there are actual idealists involved, people with enough vision and courage to not only hire cheaper labor overseas but also press the battle lines forward and provide the terrified capitalist with tools to take the fight to the enemy.
I bet this guy Behlendorf does not even realize what a selfless heroic figure he really is. Above all, we've seen the enemy and it is us. I can now serve my sentence at the nearest Wal-Mart, in the earnest hope of eventual rehabilitation. I can now be secure in the knowledge that the Great Enemy has finally been unmasked, and take heart in the most recent California state budget proposal -- a small but important victory in the War That Must Be Won. California will reduce higher education enrollment by 10 percent, and for the first time, qualified applicants to California's state universities will be turned away. Our shrewd politicians, allied with our courageous Capitalist Idealists, will inevitably be victorious as they hunt down and destroy the wicked, ignorant, greedy American middle class -- job by job, and school by school.
-- Richard Rosenberg
I just read the article on CollabNet and its outsourcing of jobs to India. After finishing it the first question that comes to mind is, "Why should I give a shit if companies that don't provide jobs to Americans are successful?" As a former technology worker with 27 years' experience who can't get a serious interview, never mind a job, why should I care if they succeed or not? It will not benefit me or my unemployed/underemployed friends in any way.
So who gives a crap? I'm sure the capitalists among us are thrilled with the result, but it ain't doing anything for me. Of course, when I tell them that I now earn one-third the salary I made two years ago, working at a retail job for which I am vastly overqualified, they'll call it "improved productivity" and tell me it's a good thing for the economy. Screw 'em. I'll be voting Democratic for the first time in my life come November.
-- Maurice Savard
