We are being trained to compare ourselves to & compete with CHINA AND INDIA

[elehhhhna]

We have an alternative. We COULD compete with ...oh...I don't know...EUROPE?

It's an important and urgent economic policy decision.

So. Which way do we go?

[Hekate]

1. Ah, you noticed. For quite some time now our white-collar professionals have been competing w/ wages

...in places like India and China. First it was the blue-collar middle class, but they got around to the professionals eventually. When an engineer's job is outsourced, it's pretty damn tough to find an equivalent job. When a computer programmer in the US is up against someone just as good who can live on a tenth of what the American used to get because they live in an economy where others live on pennies, it sucks unbelievably.

That's what Lou Dobbs used to rant about all the time before he decided that the real villain was poor brown people moving here to get jobs as maids and tomato pickers.

Hekate

[notadmblnd]

2. I don't think we couldn't begin to expoloit our people the way China and India do

With the forced slave labor and the way they exploit children. There's no way we can compete.

[El Pinko]

3. Considering that there are a lot of better-educated English-speaking professionals in India & China-

The fact is that we should be more competitive with them. The implication of your post is that those are "3rd world" countries and that competing with them is beneath us.

While I vehemently object to US policies that have shipped so many US jobs abroad, the fact is that over the last 20 years, while we have sent a generation of young people to school to learn how to be doggie therapists and interior designers, China and India have turned out a generation of brilliant engineers, scientists, IT people doctors, etc. etc.

The fact that China and India are now competitive with US really shows what they're doing right and we're doing wrong, and Europe is almost as vulnerable as we are in this respect.

We need to be teaching young people valuable skills for a global marketplace, not how to apply kelp wraps to rich womens' cellulite!

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Did yu tinkadat all by yerseff?

[El Pinko]

5. I take it you disagree but are incapable of responding in a coherent or polite way...

There's some truth to the OP's point, but there's some truth to mine as well. Millions of kids are taking out huge student loans to go to private "colleges" and "professional schools" where they are being taught menial skills. It is a problem. We'd be better off training them to be mechanics or plumbers - at least those jobs make decent incomes.

[Stinky The Clown]

25. You know damned well what I meant

[notadmblnd]

6. So you're saying that my IT skills won't be valuable again

until I'm willing to work for 10 grand a year or when I'm willing to sell my children into slavery, or will it be when I become willing to make defective and poisonous products for human consumption? Because those are some of the things we're going to have to be willing to do in order to compete.

[El Pinko]

7. I hope they will be.

There's two sides to the problem - there's the unfair trade laws that force Americans WITH skills to compete with people who are willing to work for peanuts abroad - those need to be repealed ASAP.

But there is also the problem that we do not produce enough engineers, scientists etc. and that vvoid is being filled by India and China.

The Indians and Chinese workers and professionals are not the villains here...

[notadmblnd]

9. I know engineers who have been layed off from GM

I worked with a civil engineer who spoke 6 languages and couldn't get a job in his field. He settled on IT. And you are right, it is not the people. It is their governments and how they allow the exploitation of human beings by Multi National Corporations. Maybe someday after this administration finishes shredding our constitution and the rule of law no longer matters at all.. we'll be able to finally compete?

[El Pinko]

14. GM's obviously being hammered, but engineers are still highly sought-after nationwide.

I wish I had gone into a scientific field instead of the arts. I'm just lucky I'm fluent in a foreign language and was able to get work as a translator. My graphic design degree was useless.

[Hekate]

24. One time my sister got laid off she was shuffled into one of those nifty retraining schemes. BUT...

... apparently the folks running the program were unaccustomed to dealing with people who had a college degree and experience in computer engineering and subsequent experience as a technical writer. She says they gave her a lot of tests but seemed to be wanting to get her into a virtually minimum wage "career." More like a welfare-to-work thing than something geared to professionals.

She's been bounced around a bit by now. She worked for one place where she ended up "supervising" a team of 10 Indians who were located in India. Then her job was outsourced too. Again.

My husband got out of the industry and began teaching college at a fortuitous time (1990). He had a very good run as a programmer-systems analyst, and then as a teacher to those who wanted to change careers and get into the business. But over the last several years jobs for his students have been drying up, and as a consequence so have his enrollments.

The bottom line of outsourcing our jobs is that American workers are competing with people who earn Third World wages. We can't attain any kind of standard of living on Third World wages anywhere in the United States.

Hekate

[allalone]

8. speak for yourslef, I have no intention

of sitting in a windowless factory painting cheap trash with lead paint.

[El Pinko]

10. That's really not at all what I am saying.

Part of the solution is to get rid of trade agreements that force skilled Americans to compete with skilled people abroad who can afford to work for peanuts, but the other part is that we need to stop sending kids to schools to get useless skills. There is a serious dearth of US graduates in several fields, most notably engineering.

But there is a huge surplus of kids with degrees in psychology, social work, etc.

I have two sons, and if they insist, they can go get liberal arts degrees or go to design school, but the fact is that in many cases, graduates in those fields end up working at Kinko's for bupkis.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article2403006.ece


The university degrees that may add nothing to lifetime’s salary
Alexandra Frean, Education Editor
The expansion of university education has reduced the value of some degrees to zero, as more young people join the workforce as graduates, research suggests. Recent male graduates in arts and humanities are earning no more than those who left education after A levels, a study from the Institute of Education has found.

....

Anna Vignoles, Reader in Economics of Education in the department of economic, social and human development at the Institute of Education, who led the study, said that a university degree still had a high value in the labour market. However, a surplus of graduates in some nonscientific subjects could mean that those with degrees in the arts or humanities may soon find that they are not able to earn enough to compensate for the amount that they paid for their university education.

“New graduates in these subject areas are earning similar amounts to those with just A levels,” she said. “Some graduates in highly valued subjects, such as accountancy, will continue to profit from the amount they spent on their degrees. But others may gain only a small, or even a nil, return to their investment in higher education.” She added that graduates in arts and humanities subjects, such as history, art, French or English literature, had among the lowest earnings.

[TahitiNut]

11. Guess what, Sherlock. The "doggie therapists and interior designers" HAVEN'T BEEN OFF-SHORED!

They still have their service sector jobs! :grr:

It's the folks with IT and engineering degrees that're asking "do you want fries with that?"

(Sheesh!)

[allalone]

13. good point.

someone said something the other day about the fact that we can't make anything anymore.
and that's true. Manufacturing plants all over the country in ruins, just rusting away.

[TahitiNut]

16. Just visit Flint, Michigan. Or Saginaw. Or Detroit.

Southest Michigan is been RAPED.

[El Pinko]

15. Bu they make low wages - and what happens when economy contracts & rich tighten their spending?

People in those luxury pamper-the-rich-and-wannabe-rich service jobs the first kicked to the curb...

[allalone]

17. oh please, rich people give up their luxuries?

rudy' wife wants an extra airplane seat for her handbag. oh, won't pay for it. wants it gratis

[kineneb]

19. or the poor, humble piano teachers

Web cam just doesn't work for learning "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star".

[TahitiNut]

20. I'd be happy to play like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day"

Sadly, I have no talent for musical instruments. I just love listening.

[AndyTiedye]

18. We Haven't Heard From a Lot of Unemployed Doggie Therapists or Interior Designers

Interior design was probably quite a good field to be in during the recent real estate boom.
Maybe not so good now, but we haven't been hearing from unemployed interior designers.
We haven't heard from any unemployed doggie therapists or kelp wrappers either.

We have heard quite a bit about unemployed engineers. So have all the college kids deciding on a career.

I work with some good engineers from India and China, and some who are not so good,
and I don't think the average is any higher there than here.

What are the "skills" our people lack? Being able to live in California on a Bangalore salary?

[fujiyama]

23. The truth bothers many here

I've seen plenty of threads bitching about outsourcing, but few posts in those threads address that our educational system has many problems and many won't admit it and will simply say it's because "people are turned away because of outsourcing". It's all a bunch of excuses. India and China drill their kids on basic math skills when they're young. I was speaking to a coworker of mine (a very intelligent engineer that has a masters degree from GA Tech) and he lives in an upscale district here in SE MI but he was bothered by the lack of math education in middle school his daughter goes to. I actually think that standards have been lowered even more in the last few years so the problems will continue to get worse.

[Rex]

12. Sad, ain't it?

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. I doubt that we will be able to compete with India alone, much less India and China.

[fujiyama]

22. Asia is where the massive economic growth is

Europe has many admirable qualities like a great social safety net, but the reality is also that it is plagued with high unemployment and is also at risk of facing the same stiff competition from India and China.