Across the street (M.G. Road, if I recall correctly) from the Honeywell campus in Bangalore (700 engineers 2 years ago, now at 2000) is the Indian Institute of Management, a top-flight school. With 2000 engineers (oh, and the lower-cost! center about 400 miles south growing), the management experience is coming fast and furious.
Pete
Just wondering. So 21% of the work force is employed by the government.
Did that also include military btw?
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
Just think, if we outsourced the govt and moved all the govt workers to India not only would we save a bunch of $$$$ but it would solve the population problem too. Do Indian tigers like bureaurats?
State of Indiana did just that less than a year ago, outsourced some of their Unemployment claims processing to India. REALLY created a ruckus with those unemployed from manufacturing outsourced to India!!!!
A perfect example of Neo-conservatie statistics! Pick a number out of the air and proclaim it the truth.
18.3 divided by 112 is 16.3%. Ed also posted a small correction. The total work force is 138 million so the percentage of government employees is 13%. Add 1.4 million for the military and you are still only at 14.3% I believe this is close to the lowest percentage of government employees in the world.
Yep, half the US workforce is employed by the government. And they're all transgendered lesbian black muslims. And they're all getting married in san fransico right now!
I say let's fire all those slackers and privatize whatever it was they were doing! :)
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
Personally, I'm more interested in what to retrain a 50 year-old software engineer for. :-) Everything that I've been able to think of is either at risk for offshoring, won't pay much more than pan handling, or the training will take me past retirement age.
I came across this article by Rich Heintz that has some nice sound bites in spite of misspelling HP CEO Carly Fiorina's name. It's oriented towards hi-tech but the points apply to any high skill job:
I particularly like the way he made this point:
And whose fault is that? As Fiorini and her cohort in the campaign, Intel CEO Craig Barrett, tell it, America's education system is woefully lacking. They say schools act more to block budding math and science students than to foster them.
When in doubt, blame education. Yet wasn't it that same woeful education system that trained the talent that created our tech revolution - that made offshoring possible? Blaming the school system is simply an attempt to deflect any real discussion of the long-term consequences of offshoring. It is offshoring that will hurt education, not the other way around.
Think about it. Why should American students study math and science when the companies they would work for might sell them out at the first opportunity? In other words, Fiorini and Barrett want workers smart enough to do the job, but dumb enough not to see the handwriting on the wall.
Bob S
Just running the math mentally. No particular reason to get your nickers in an uproar. Now would you care to answer the question?
As to what the rest of the world does, is that supposed to mean something to me?
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
AH HA! There is the problem! :-)
See my responce to Jonathan.
On 17 Feb 2004 15:39:42 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (Bray Haven) vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
I suppose the argument, though, is that the same folk who lost their jobs will in the end stop buying imported stuff if it gets too expensive due to import duties. Also, in _theory_ at least import duties are ploughed back in the common wealth.
**************************************************** sorry.........no I'm not! remove ns from my header address to reply via email
Spike....Spike? Hello?
Right, now all of a sudden the manufacturer who employs an all-US workforce has the cheaper product, and will start gaining market share.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
Yeah, it includes military. But read on. I misread a Labor Dept. stat, and the actual number for the US total workforce is around 138 million.
Ed Huntress
opportunity? In
This is the kind of thing that disturbs me, far more than any "displacements" in specific product or service areas. It's messing around with the whole structure of motivation and sense of purpose.
Ed Huntress
I can attest that Monday was wonderful on the overloaded highways. Drive the limit and then some here and there. Get to work early and have a pleasant trip. All bankers, and Government workers of all kinds, school / college/.. out so they don't have to know what day it is or was.
I'd say 50% at least that day.
Martin
Hmmm, wonder why they didn't think of that :o) Greg sefton
You would be wrong. It takes less than a 15 percent increase in traffic on a freeway to go from doing the limit to a traffic jam. Counter-intuitive but that's the way it works. Just like adding more roads does not always make the traffic situation better. It some times makes it wose. Eric
At this moment, the dollar is a depressed currency against all of the other important currencies. We used to laugh at the Canadian currency because it was nearly valueless against our dollar. Now others laugh at us because the dollar is nearly valueless against the Mark, Yen, Pound, etc. Yessiree, third worlddom here we come!
Regards,
Marv
Bray Haven wrote:
Marv, the drop in the dollar's value is intentional, not that we wouldn't have to change some things to prevent it from happening on its own. The Japanese, the Europeans (especially the Germans), the Asian Tigers, and now, in this last week, China, are all up in arms about it. They don't want the dollar to fall. They want their currencies to remain cheap relative to the dollar.
Letting the dollar fall is our government's way of dealing with our trade deficit. It's already having an effect. When the dollar is cheap, goods are more expensive for us but employment is likely to increase. With unemployment currently reigning as one of the top political issues, and with an election coming up in November, is it any surprise the feds will take a big long-term risk with the dollar in order to boost employment between now and election day?
It shouldn't be.
Ed Huntress
Except that the price he charges for his product won't have actually fallen. In fact he'll probably be able to increase prices because of the hobbled competition.
That makes every consumer effectively poorer, because the price of goods will have been artificially inflated, and he won't be able to buy as much.
Gary
That is, the ones who hadn't lost their jobs. The ones who got the new jobs are a lot richer, eh?
Ed Huntress
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