Unofficial CS Presidential Poll

[2chairs]

Originally Posted by relaxnsmoke

I'm not attacking anything. I have a policy issue with the direction of outsourcing. That is my right as an American. My is over how the Heritage Foundation has anything to do with Bush-Kerry debating this issue. I want the Candidates to speak.

http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/BrettSchaefer.cfm

http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/TimKane.cfm

You have every right as an American to have a policy issue with outsourcing. My point is that outsourcing is not the "boogy man" that so many people think it is. There are great advantages we can reap from it.

I stand corrected on the three authors working at the Heritage Foundation.

Still... one should not dismiss all that comes from any source. I would be less than intellectually honest to dismiss everything that comes out of the Brookings Institution (liberal.) In fact, I read much of their work to get a different perspective....and to know what the "enemy" is thinking.

In a few moments, I'll post some other stuff on outsourcing for you and others to peruse.

[2chairs]

BTW: Mr. Freidman is a self-proclaimed liberal who I have read for many years.



What Goes Around...
By Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 2/26/04

BANGALORE, India -- I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue.

Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long distance - answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for global banks - I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.

Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Consider one of the newest products to be outsourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks, founded three years ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these basic animation jobs from Americans. For 20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie companies, first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, preproduction, finishing and marketing of the animated films, though, always remained in America. Indian animation companies took the business away from the other Asians by proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of characters and the digital painting of each frame by computer - at a lower price.

Indian artists had two advantages, explained Ashish Kulkarni, C.O.O. of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so they could take instruction from the American directors easily, and they were comfortable doing coloring digitally." India has an abundance of traditional artists, who were able to make the transition easily to computerized digital painting. Most of these artists are the children of Hindu temple sculptors and painters.

Explained Mr. Kulkarni: "We train them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format." But to keep up their traditional Indian painting skills, JadooWorks has a room set aside - because the two skills reinforce each other. In short, thanks to globalization, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artists can keep up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.

But here's where the story really gets interesting. JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic about the childhood of Krishna. To write the script, though, it wanted the best storyteller it could find and outsourced the project to an Emmy Award-winning U.S. animation writer, Jeffrey Scott - for an Indian epic!

"We are also doing all the voices with American actors in Los Angeles," says Mr. Kulkarni. And the music is being written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games for the global market but outsources all the design concepts to U.S. and British game designers. All the computers and animation software at JadooWorks have also been imported from America (H.P. and I.B.M.) or Canada, and half the staff walk around in American-branded clothing.

"It's unfair that you want all your products marketed globally," argues Mr. Kulkarni, "but you don't want any jobs to go."

He's right. Which is why we must design the right public policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly networked world, where every company - Indian or American - will seek to assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those Americans hurt by the outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid and just start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what seems to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the surface, what's going around is also coming around. Even an Indian cartoon company isn't just taking American jobs, it's also making them.

[2chairs]

The reality of outsourcing
Bruce Bartlett (2/17/04)

Last week, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw ran into a buzz saw. He committed a major gaffe, which in Washington means he spoke the truth, by defending the concept of outsourcing -- contracting with foreigners for information technology services. With a lack of job growth being the central economic issue in the country today, Mankiw's comments were assailed across the political spectrum. President Bush quickly distanced himself from his aide's remarks, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., repudiated them, and many Democrats called for Mankiw's dismissal.

There is at least one person in Washington who knows precisely how Mankiw feels: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Back in 1974, Greenspan held the same position Mankiw now holds. Shortly after his confirmation in September of that year, Greenspan participated in an economic summit. At the time, the United States was in the middle of the deepest recession of the postwar period and inflation was rising rapidly. That year, the Consumer Price Index would rise 12.3 percent.

Greenspan was asked whether the Ford administration's policies were benefiting the rich over the poor. He replied: "If you really wanted to examine who, percentage-wise, is hurt the most in their incomes, it is Wall Street brokers. I mean their incomes have gone down the most."

Needless to say, Democrats had a field day attacking Greenspan for seeming to worry more about the problems of rich Wall Street brokers than those of common people. Although he quickly apologized, many observers believe that Greenspan was permanently scarred by the incident and forever afterward became far more circumspect in his public and even private comments.

Of course, when one gets caught in one of these Washington firestorms, there really isn't much one can do except apologize, hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. That is what Mankiw is doing. Unfortunately, the result is that debate on serious issues is often short-circuited and the political establishment draws erroneous conclusions. In this case, it may conclude that the issue of outsourcing is radioactive and everyone may rush to support ill-conceived legislative fixes with harmful economic consequences.

Here is the offending statement in the Economic Report of the President that has led to calls for Mankiw's head: "One facet of increased services trade is the increased use of offshore outsourcing in which a company relocates labor-intensive service industry functions to another country. ... Whereas imported goods might arrive by ship, outsourced services are often delivered using telephone lines or the Internet. The basic economic forces behind the transactions are the same, however. When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically."

One would have a hard time finding a reputable economist anywhere who disagrees with this analysis. No nation has ever gotten rich by forcing its citizens to pay more for domestic goods and services that could have been procured more cheaply abroad. Nations get rich by concentrating on doing the things they do best and letting others produce those things they can produce better and more cheaply. It is called the specialization of labor, and it is the foundation for economic growth. That is why even Democratic economists like Janet Yellen, Laura Tyson, Brad DeLong and Robert Reich have come to Mankiw's defense.

What is different about outsourcing and why it has aroused so much protest is that it is affecting workers who thought they were immune from international competition. Blue-collar workers in manufacturing have been suffering from outsourcing for 100 years. It is worth remembering that textile jobs in South Carolina today were originally outsourced from Massachusetts. While in the short run, the transition was painful for Massachusetts textile workers, they soon found better jobs in new industries. That is why per capita income there is and always has been far higher than that in South Carolina.

It would be grossly unfair to say that it is OK to move manufacturing wherever production is cheaper, but wrong to subject information technology services to the same competition. It is mostly because of the Internet and the fact that IT people know how to use it that they are getting attention disproportionate to their numbers. Moreover, if we hadn't just gone through a painful economic recession, most of these people probably would have already found new jobs and the problem of outsourcing would not be worth writing nasty emails about to politicians and people like me.

In any case, even if the federal government tried to stop outsourcing, it cannot. We can put quotas and tariffs on goods that cross our borders, but it is impossible to stop people from importing software and data over the Internet. The only response that is possible is to adapt, innovate and stay ahead of the curve.

[KingMeatyHand]

I have a simple rule to making and keeping friends.. divert any and every conversation away from politics and/or religion. That being said, anyone else excited about football season?

To roll with the thread digression a bit more: since I make most of my money from web development, outsourcing scares the hell out of me. Try to bid against an Indian coding/design firm sometime. Most charge $8, or under, an hour. Sure their communication is crap and their work (most of the time) resembles that of a drunk grinder monkey, but most companies only see the bottom line.

While I may not lose my job to outsourcing, my company will lose jobs to it. While a company might get a cheaper product by outsourcing, it will (once again, usually) be an inferior one (not to mention help skew the pricing of my industry to ridiculous proportions).

[megasolo]

uhhh which ones against taxes on Cigars

[KingMeatyHand]

Originally Posted by megasolo

uhhh which ones against taxes on Cigars

good, relevant call

[summerkc]

For any of you out there who are voting for the Democrats ask yourself these questions:

1. Who would the terrorist rather win the election? Bush who will send Marines to kill them or Kerry who will send lawyers to prosecute them in an international court where they will be found not guilty and released?

2. Who do you trust to better use your money you earn, YOU or the Government? How would you rather invest for your retirement, where would you rather send your kids to school, what health care you want, etc? 10% of the population pays 90% of the taxes so any tax break that would do anything for the economy goes to the "rich".

3. Who do you want making American policies, American leaders or the French, Germans, and Russians? Once we start giving in to other countries we might as well start surrendering like France. The international community should not have ANY say into how we think we should defend ourselves.

4. Do you think that anybody should be able to marry anyone else? Why not two brothers or two sisters marry? They might love each other just the same as any other couple and would like the benefits of being married. How about People and animals? A lot of people really love their pets, now they can get married!

I believe that this is one of the most important presidential elections ever, so please think through the issues, and vote! Don't let anyone spoonfeed you your ideas, liberal or conservative.

Just my two cents...

[summerkc]

Oh, and another thing, why do liberals get all angry and defensive when you call them liberals? If someone calls me a conservative I say, "you're darn right I am!"

[ff6849]

Here's a letter from a Kerry supporter

Dear Sir,

I am a senior citizen. During the Clinton Administration I had and extremely good and well paying job. I took numerous vacations and had several vacation homes. Since President Bush took office, I have watched my entire life change for the worse: I lost my job. I lost my two sons in that terrible Iraqi War. I lost my home. I lost my health insurance. As a matter of fact, I lost virtually everything and became homeless. Adding insult to injury, when the authorities found me living like an animal, instead of helping me, they arrested me. I will do anything to insure President Bush's defeat in the next election. I will do anything that Senator Kerry wants to insure that a Democrat is back in the White House come next year. Bush has to go. I just thought you and your listeners would like to know how one senior citizen views the Bush Administration.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.
Sincerely, Sadaam Hussein

[smokemifyagotem]

Things I PERSONALLY have experienced w/ Bush as President.

1. I've been in the IT industry for 5 yrs now and let me tell you - outsourcing was hapening way before Bush came into office. Its the liberals that decided to make it a political issue.

2. I am nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE near the top 2% of wage earners in this country and I have recieved a fat tax rebate for the past 3 yrs - including that $300 check. Seriously, why are the Dems saying Bush's tax policies hurt the "poor". I fall under this catagory and Im lovin it!

[smokemifyagotem]

ps - Did anyone catch the part of Edwards speech last night when he went off on a rant about all the things they would do to secure the country (and not once mentioned HOW they would do it...). The best part was when he said something to the effect of "we will secure the loose Russian nukes".
WHAT, I said!! They Will?!! HOW?!! If they know how FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CALL THE WHITE HOUSE IMMEDIATELY and tell them. WHY would you sit on this vital info when millions of lives are at stake!!!!!!!

[WACigar]

Please note, this is a tongue in cheek reply; I'm not looking to make enemies with people who obviously have a different opinion of George Bush. I think it is all a matter of perspective. As I see it, President Bush has the entire world hating us (including long time allies), he's gotten 900+ American soldiers killed in order to avenge his daddy, he has created some of the biggest budget deficits this country has ever seen, rewards people for having kids by giving them tax breaks the rest of us don't get, he prevents research from being conducted that could save human lives, and he feels it is his right to tell two loving humans that they can't marry. Is my perspective just "off?"

[Lord Hammer]

Originally Posted by WACigar

Please note, this is a tongue in cheek reply; I'm not looking to make enemies with people who obviously have a different opinion of George Bush. I think it is all a matter of perspective. As I see it, President Bush has the entire world hating us (including long time allies), he's gotten 900+ American soldiers killed in order to avenge his daddy, he has created some of the biggest budget deficits this country has ever seen, rewards people for having kids by giving them tax breaks the rest of us don't get, he prevents research from being conducted that could save human lives, and he feels it is his right to tell two loving humans that they can't marry. Is my perspective just "off?"

As in life, you can't be the "Boss" by being everybodys friend...you have to lead and you will make enemies. As far as the World is concerned who gives a damn...they didn't have a Sept. 11th nor are they the repeated target of any of these radical groups. Sure they're gonna hate us...we fight back and they are afraid of our reactions and how it will change their cozy little lifestyle when they would rather sit back and not get involved. Any soldier lost is one too many but this is war, we lost many more lives on another war, i won't mention, that did nothing to ensure the safety of our homeland and our families. Having kids is a HUGE responibility and with college tuitions getting into the hundreds of thousands of dollars i don't know if my kids will even get that option so i'll take whatever i get and be grateful for it. As it is at 42 and self-employed i haven't had health insurance for almost ten years and if social security doesn't last a little longer i'm screwed unless i saved some cash. Now, two humans marrying? I'm no lawyer but if the Church would approve it then so be it...i'm not qualified to be the judge on a moral and ethical question such as that. Bush has his flaws, personally i think Daddy did a better job, but we don't need another Liberal in the oval office in my opinion. That said, i don't get all upset about peoples political viewpoints and i believe that as Americans we all have the right to free speech. I don't choose my friends by their political beliefs, religion or ethnicity...friend Just my two cents...Peace

[summerkc]

Originally Posted by WACigar

he has created some of the biggest budget deficits this country has ever seen, .... he prevents research from being conducted that could save human lives,

deficits have never killed or hurt anyone. Ever met a person and they said "I lost my job because of the deficits" or "I can't feed my family because of the deficit"? The only reason that Clinton had a budget surplus was because he cut defense spending like a madman, and look where that has gotten us...

As for stemcell research, this is a topic where the dems have completely lied about it to further their agenda. Stem cell research has NOT BEEN BANNED, just no more federal funds are going to develop any more embrionic stemcells, the original strains of stemcells that were developed still get government funding and adult stemcells also still get funding, just no more embrionic stem cells can be created with government funds. This isn't saying that private industries are not allowed to create them, they could create as many as they want, just not with federal funds. So if you have no moral problem with stemcell research, make a donation to a private research lab.

It is sort of like the abortion issue, even though it is legal, the government will not pay for a woman to get an abortion. There is too large a percentage of taxpayers that are completely against it to use their money for it. (And no, the war does not apply in this case because the government's main purpose is national security and protecting its citizens. Whether the war did make us safer is up to debate, though I whole heartedly believe it did)

I wish the democrats would tell the truth sometimes, and not the "Michael Moore" truth.

(Man I love politics)

[Treyjo43]

Originally Posted by Lord Hammer

Now, two humans marrying? I'm no lawyer but if the Church would approve it then so be it...i'm not qualified to be the judge on a moral and ethical question such as that.

Umm, it seems you forgot a little thing called the sepearation of Church and State