Quote from Covertibility:
Kia and Samsung make commodities. I keep hearing this garbage about cheap high tech researchers waiting overseas like I heard the same garbage during the 80's that the Japanese will lead the way and dominate the technology field in the future.
Well, I keep hearing this garbage, that just because similar things happened in the past and worked out just fine, things will undoubtedly always work out in the future. The assumption that history always repeats itself is wrong. It often does, but certainly not always. The Roman Empire was attacked many times. It did not fail the first attack, it did not fail the tenth attack either. But eventually it did fail. It was actually a process - one small piece of the empire at a time.
You seem to completely ignore the fact that we live in a totally differenet world now. In just about every respect it has nothing in common with the world even 10 years ago.
Technological, logistical and political changes have been huge. Advancements in computing, internet, telecommunications, airline industries, collapse of Communism and end of the Cold War. It's just a tip of the iceberg of changes, yet this is more then enough to invalidate any historic comparison.
You keep insisting that it's only grunt work which is in danger, ignoring all the rest of the argument made here, that its pretty much all IT, Accounting, Engineering etc. Jobs ranging from $50K to $250K. If this is grunt work, I do not know what is not. Let alone the fact that it can happen with science and R&D in the future as well.
You keep insisting that it's good for bottom line of american companies and nobody's arguing. I get a very warm feeling when I realize that Bill Gates and Larry Ellison will become wealthier yet. The issue here is not them, though, but the american middle class, those former IT workers, accountants, engineers etc who may not be able to find jobs even remotely comparing in quality and pay to the the jobs they just lost.
Like another poster mentioned, for top-researchers there's already an international labor market, at which you have to compete with the world's best. I guess, your kind of response is only human, because who wants to face up to the fact that already now or at the last within ten years for every worker in the West there are ten Indians/Chinese waiting to do his job for a fraction of what he earns under abominable conditions? A taste of this can be had by watching the development of companies like Samsung and Kia. A few years ago they were considered low end producers of poor quality products. Nowadays Samsung can take on any premium brand in electronics and Kia produces the best-selling 4x4 in Holland. Its undeniable that countries like China have a strong comparative advantange in the form af a highly motivated, cheap and within a number of years also well-educated workforce. Whether the large middle-class in the West will be able to sustain it's standard of living is at least doubtful, imo.
