India says outsourcing jobs good for U.S.

NEW DELHI, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- In 1999, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer thought India was plagued by high levels of piracy and was not the best place to hire new staff.

Five years later, Ballmer is a changed man. When he came to India in November, Ballmer was stunned by the growth of India's information-technology sector.

"I was on holiday here in 1983 and on a business visit in 1995, but what I see today is just stunning, not only in terms of the number of engineers but also in terms of the market," he said.

Microsoft India has about 800 employees, whom Ballmer describe as smart, capable and innovative. The southern city of Hyderabad is home to Microsoft's India campus -- it's largest outside the United States.

"I am quite sure of hiring hundreds over the next 12 months," Ballmer said.

Microsoft's interest in India's IT industry is just the tip of the iceberg. The world's biggest software developer also depends on India's skilled labor to handle troubleshooting and customer-care calls from across the world.

Microsoft is among many U.S. companies that have set up back-end shops in India to cut billions in costs by hiring skilled but inexpensive workers in India and other countries. Citibank N.A., British Airways, General Motors, IBM, Intel and Hewlett Packard are some of the leading multinationals that have routed customer-care calls to Indian cities.

The issue of outsourcing, though profitable in India, has threatened to chill warm bilateral relations between New Delhi and Washington because the country remained an increasingly popular destination for U.S. companies, which cut their jobs in the United States. That prompted some U.S. lawmakers to threaten firms that outsource their jobs to countries like India with tax disincentives. And though U.S. President Bush, who backs outsourcing, won the November election, the issue dominated the campaign.

Washington has also used the issue to urge India to open up its markets.

"The American people will find it less difficult to accept outsourcing if India helps generate more American jobs by supporting trade liberalization in the World Trade Organization and further opening its markets to U.S. exports," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in India earlier this year.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country does not see outsourcing as an obstacle in its relations with Washington and hoped an objective view will emerge on the backlash against it in the United States.

"We do not see outsourcing as an India-U.S. issue," he said in an interview to the Financial Times. "I do hope that objective view will emerge, which will see this as a win-win situation for both countries, and, in fact, for all countries involved."

India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said Washington would ultimately gain from outsourcing.

"I think this dispute about outsourcing is highly exaggerated," he told the BBC. "For every dollar that is outsourced by American business to India, U.S. insources at least $10 of business from India."

He added: "What do they (U.S.) outsource? They outsource low-end jobs, call centers, and help centers. What do they insource? They insource orders for capital goods, for technology, for design, for brands, for trademarks, for intellectual property."

He said the gains of U.S. business through insourcing far outweighed losses through outsourcing.
International Intelligence - Analysis - UPI.com

Steve Ballmer


Dreamer

Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer
Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!
I said dreamer, you’re nothing but a dreamer
Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!
I said ’far out, - what a day, a year, a laugh it is!’
You know, - well you know you had it comin’ to you,
Now there’s not a lot I can do

Dreamer, you stupid little dreamer;
So now you put your head in your hands, oh no!
I said ’far out, - what a day, a year, a laugh it is!’
You know, - well you know you had it comin’ to you,
Now there’s not a lot I can do.

Well work it out someday

If I could see something
You can see anything you want boy
If I could be someone-
You can be anyone, celebrate boy.
If I could do something-
Well you can do something,
If I could do anything-
Well can you do something out of this world?

Take a dream on a sunday
Take a life, take a holiday
Take a lie, take a dreamer
Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream along...

Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer
Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!
I said dreamer, you’re nothing but a dreamer
Well can you put your hands in your head, oh no!
Oh no!
Dreamer - Supertramp songs lyrics song lyric

It's all relative. Things like cell phones and clothes are cheaper for Americans because of an improvement in technology and production capabilities; and obviously because instead of a factory filled with decently-paid American workers it's being produced in bulk by slave labor in China and Mexico. Granted an automobile with a combustion engine is cheaper now, but try buying an electric, or plug-in hybrid. We have our special toys for the rich just like our parents did yesterday, and our grandparents before them. Drew Carry fails to mention that with new technologies comes more complications. The things themselves might be cheaper but the ultimate cost of living is greater. Ever since our days of the hunter-gatherer things have gotten more sophisticated (and consequently in Drew's eyes 'better'), but the average weekly working hours have been going up since, too.

In a more practical and shorter-term perspective Drew Carry is right on a lot of points. However, with any concentration of capital, there's inevitably going to be someone that's exploited. The average American has greatly benefited from globalization but average global poverty has not only increased but the poorest are even poorer. In the analogy Drew seemingly cringes at, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", in the global scene we are the rich and the majority of the world is the poor.

Would I rather live today than live during the gilded age? Hell yes. In that sense Drew Carry is right. But he is dead wrong in the insuination that the 'invisible hand' constantly drives prosperity in the positive direction with little to no contribution. The only reason why the average American doesn't have to suffer all-day shifts in the most horrible of conditions for pennies a day isn't because of the wonders of the glorious free market but because of labor movements. He's wrong in the insinuation that there aren't class struggles. He's wrong that the rich won't find any way they can to exploit the middle class and widen the gap.

He's right that it's naive and ignorant of history to assume that Americans on average have it worse than they ever did, or that the condition of the middle class is entirely doom-and-gloom. However, he's probably more naive and ignorant of history if he assumes there aren't class struggles. Likewise he fails to mention the countless families that have gone bankrupt because the father had successive heart-attacks, or the 80-year old woman that has to keep a part-time job at McDonalds because she can't afford her medicine. All of such things are byproducts of the great invisible hand that Drew seems to pray to. Things are better (for Americans) now, but don't go into the future blindfolded assuming that the ruling class is going to point you in the right direction. If they could they'd lead you off a cliff and take your wallet.