RE: The Journal News: Flow of jobs overseas has human toll

Very well put. I applaud you. Can I steal some of your words for later use?
John


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Naughton [mailto:mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 3:57 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: The Journal News: Flow of jobs overseas has human toll


One sentence that struck me in this article was, "Teachers, nurses,
musicians, psychologists and construction workers are safe for now." It
seems to me that construction workers are only safe as long as there's
something to build. With businesses moving off-shore, there won't be any
commercial construction, and if no one else has a job there won't be an
residential construction, either.

Musicians are only safe as long as other people have disposable income to
buy their products. Teachers are only safe as long as schools have enough
money to pay them (how safe to the teachers in your local school system
feel these days?). Health care workers are basically in the same boat.

I may be missing something, but I don't see how you can have an expanding
economy based on everyone selling services to everyone else. To really be
expanding, someone has to generate new wealth, and the only one of those
professions that does that, arguably, is construction.

I don't think the problem is capitalism so much as it's our overall "me
first" culture that cuts across political and class boundaries. We haven't
built a society based on people caring about each other -- we've built one
based on me going after what I can get and you going after what you can
get and both of us telling ourselves that that's the best way to be. As
individuals, we may behave differently with people we know and/or feel
close to, but look around: all businesses want to do is maximize profits,
all consumers want to do is get the lowest price, all workers want to do
is get the fattest paycheck, and anyone who tries to suggest that maybe we
should have different goals is treated like a naive dreamer. (Case in
point: the factory owner in Lowell, Mass, who refused to lay off workers
when his factory burned. He was hailed as a hero, but he was also written
off as an oddball -- nobody seriously suggested that he might be setting
an example that other business owners should actually follow.)

I'm not particularly sanguine about the future, but you never know. I
think it's a very hopeful sign that a lot of people seem to be waking up
to what's going on. . . .

Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>The New York Times article on IBM seems to be generating a lot of other
>>press articles on the flow of job overseas, such as the one below...
>>
>>http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/072703/d0127offshore.html


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx


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