Jeremy wrote:
] You appear to be refuting the thesis of the article on the
] basis of an exception in a specific industry. I do not
] believe your argument (that a real problem exists in IT/EE) is
] incompatible with Drezner's overall assessment that offshore
] outsourcing does not affect most jobs.

I'm not sure I buy the idea that 90% of jobs cannot be offshored, but no I'm not specifically disputing that here.

Since you asked...
People basically need:
1. Things.
2. Information/Entertainment.
3. Healthcare.
4. Security.

Everything else is related to one of those four categories. You can outsource all of 1 with the exception of buildings/realestate and infrastructure like sewer systems, and all of 2, although the "art" piece is likely to remain here for a while. Seems like more the 90% of what people do. But what do I know?

] A point that Drezner raises in his article, and that you do
] not directly address in your response, is that employment
] trends have as much to do with the large-scale structural
] shifts brought about by technological development as with the
] labor policies of big business.

I don't dispute that there are other factors. Offshoring did not create the current environment. Offshoring is being used to prolong it. As the economy takes off companies in the tech industry are hiring in Asia to increase capacity instead of hiring in the United States. Over the long term this poses a threat to the idea that the US is a technology leader. Thats the whole reason for this debate. No new R&D is being done in the U.S. Its all being done in India. That is the fundamental subject at hand when "offshoring" is being discussed. This author, like everyone else on his side of the table that I have yet read, argues that we're not really moving R&D offshore. He is wrong about that, as a matter of fact, and this discussion cannot proceed until we're all on the same page with that.

] As I've stated before, my view is that the source of the
] problem, as well as the solution, is education.

I don't agree with this. We're not offshoring jobs because the people over there are smarter. We had that problem in 2000. Its a skills mismatch and what it looks like is monster.com is overflowing with job opportunities while there is a slew of people who can't seem to find work. Meanwhile we're sending stuff overseas and bringing people in from overseas. An education problem is apparent when you have too many jobs and you can't find the right people to fill them. We have the opposite problem. We have too many people and we don't have jobs for them.

We're exporting jobs because the people over there are just as smart, but also cheaper.

Domestically, the problem is that we have a lot of smart people with nothing to do. Producing more smart people, or smarter people, isn't going to solve the problem, its going to exacerbate it. You're increasing the supply of things you already have too much of.

You cannot increase the price of apples by making more apples.

Of course, the markets work their magic quite accurately. We're not training more science/engineering people. We're training less. Enrollments in university Computer Science programs are down 15% this year from last year. I'm not talking about ITT tech or the local Cisco Certification factory here. I'm talking about MIT/Stanford/Berkeley...

RE: The Outsourcing Bogeyman