Don't laugh it off... that's exactly what will happen!

The trend has been underway for a long time now, but it is only as the outsourced jobs include ours that we begin stirring!

Business, which includes the media, has convinced government leaders and still many of us that outsourcing is a good thing. Unions are collections of worthless, greedy, lazy people out to steal money from hard-working entrepreneurs and exporting the 'menial jobs' offshore is a "rising tide that raises all boats".

The media has also done a good job - the dot-com bubble burst hampered things a little - that "investing" in the stock market to take advantage of this wonderful trend is the way to go. Financing our own demise to third-world status doesn't make sense to me, but the media makes it sound really smart!

China, with its absolute CONTROL over all of its workers, is the model for the future. Your Hong Kongs and Shanghais let China look modern and progressive to the world. That these citys are simply the foyers to the huge prison lying beyond remains unmentioned by the media.
For a long time now people here have been conceding pay and benefits, and working longer hours with less pay, to "keep" their jobs. Yet ultimately the work gets outsourced anyway.

Want proof? Just look at WalMart. Why does it continue to grow?... because more and more people can only afford to buy there now. And how come WalMart is so cheap?... because most of its good come from China/India/Bangladesh and because WalMart pays sub-standard wages and has poor benefits for its workers while closing any store that manages to get a union in. I'm told that WalMart has a department that help its suppliers move their operations to China!

Sound like fun ahead?

>Nightmare scenario:
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>ALL the jobs are outsourced to developing countries, employment reaches 100% there, workers in the West, like the article says, take more and more pay cuts, until pay is equivalent to what the, now, affluent eastern workers USED TO earn (they've been getting pay rises as affluence rises), the now developed countries, having more work than they can cope with, start outsourcing to the West.
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>:-(
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>>Interesting story about outsourcing. A Morgan Stanely representative says he can see no reason ... "why we would ever hire a New York Programmer again."