Monday, March 08, 2004

Iran suffers the highest rate of "brain drain" in the world. 4:47:09 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Unless someone can point me to significant new export industries for the US, I remain extremely skeptical of all claims of a bright future for the US.  The trade deficit is a monster growing at uncontrolled speed in the background of any debate on the topic of US competitiveness. 11:22:45 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

IBM's is at the core of IT offshoring  The WSJ rips IBM's claim that it is adding jobs to its US workforce.  Basically, the slight of hand works like this:  a company outsources thousands of IT jobs to IBM.  IBM quickly moves to offshore them and radically cuts the pay/benefits of those that remain.  The net result is a net gain in jobs (from the few that remain after the offshoring).  IBM is basically a big blue job destruction machine.  For example: Bonny Berger, a computer programmer in Elizabeth, N.J., had worked for AT&T for 21 years when she likewise was moved to IBM in 1999. Within four months, the project she was working on was moved to Canada and she was put to work updating software used to collect unpaid bills. After five months, she says, she was told that work would be moved to India and that she would train a replacement. Ms. Berger moved on to yet another IBM task. But in March 2002 she was told to retrain a replacement from Canada, after which she got a layoff notice. NOTE:  remember that each good IT job outsourced destroys up to 4.5 other jobs in the general economy.  NOTE2: The speed of this realignment in the economy is something that should concern everyone.  Prayer at the alter of the invisible hand is misguided.  The invisible hand is a vengeful god that rains economic destruction down on the non-competitive.   It has no special place in its heart for Americans. 10:55:37 AM    Comment_ Trackback []