Dave,

For sure, many people have been negatively impacted by the changes I spoke
of.  Many of those people are my friends.  When I worked for IBM we were
told that the main product my group worked on was being shipped to India.
Two days later there were contractors from India in house and we were to
begin showing them the ropes on our jobs.  A few days later, the
contractors were gone and a more reasoned, slower approach was taken to
the product migration.  We were all told that there would be new jobs for
all of us when they brought in a new product.

I saw the writing on the wall and baled out.  About nine months after I
baled, they laid off about 60 percent of the people in the group.  Many
of them are friends of mine and many of them were still looking for work a
year later.  So I am completely familiar with the negative impact of
off-shoring jobs.

My main point was that over the years, unemployment has remained
relatively constant but the number of people in the US has grown and the
types of jobs have changed.  That can only mean that there are more jobs
than there were thirty years ago and many people have made the transition
from the previous types of jobs to the new jobs.

I am not saying that people are wining about the off-shoring of jobs.  I'm
just pointing out that I don't think it is a disaster of epic proportions
or that it will be the eventual downfall of the US.  It will b difficult,
but we will eventually make the shift to a new economy.

As far as haves verses have-nots, that is a somewhat different point.
And, personally, I am often sickened to hear of CEOs making 100 plus
million bucks a year.  I personally don't think anyone is worth that kind
of money.  However, if a CEO comes into a company and raises their profits
by a billion dollars a year I can see why the stock holders might disagree
with me.

Later.

--
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
Carnegie Mellon University.
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel:    (412) 268-9081


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html