Just a quick comment. There is one major hurtle in the U.S. that has to
be overcome before companies are motivated to keep the jobs here. We as
Americans expect to be paid top dollar wherever we work. And we expect
and shop for the lowest prices and top quality. You know that new
Pentium 4 PC you just bought for $400 or laptop for $1000 as an example.
Well the big message underlying all of that and they answer industry has
come up with is to send jobs outside. The fact is that the richer an
economy is the greater expectations people in that economy have for
themselves. One solution that would help, though it is in no way the
solution for all of this, is to increase the number of H-1 visa's for
international persons back to the level that the Clinton administration
had them. If they are here working, the larger portion of the dollars
they earn stay in our economy and we win. We are moving down the path of
the "Tragedy of The Commons." For those not familiar with this, it is
where a town or group of people have a green common area that will
support feeding of one cow per family in the community, but one or two
families add a second cow and there is still enough to support the two
new additions. So other families follow suit and the resources, green
grass, are exhausted and none of the cows can eat. So all lose.
So what our "families" are doing is buying the milk and butter from
neighboring communities rather than maintain their own cow.
I know some of you are probably saying "what is all this got to do with
the price of beans?" Ah, just a parallel.
Thanks for reading my view s.
__________________________________________________
Terri Hedgpeth
Disability Specialist
__________________________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: VICUG-L: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Poehlman
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 8:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What goes around
I don't think anyone who is upset at the number of jobs disappearing is
blaiming one country or another. I doubt that anyone sees this as a
call
for extreme measures. The fact is that for every company who is doing
it
right, there are many who are doing it rong and the big factor here is
that
our jobs are disappearing and something needs to be done about it.
When I read this article, I was thinking of all the disabled people who
could do those call center jobs and all those young bright college grads
here in the us who could do animation.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Altschul" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 4:58 PM
Subject: What goes around
What Goes Around . . .
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
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.
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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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
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
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