[thelist] Re: Design/Development Goes Third World?

><<Part of the reason we are
>helpless to stop the increase of lower-paid foreign workers is that
>tech workers are not organized.  >>
>
>If you mean that agencies based in wealthy countries such as ours (I am
>British living in Australia) should have the right to get work ahead of
>those in countries with less inflated economies, I think the whole global
>nature of the industry may be passing you by.

The reason those email struck me as odd was in the light of the 
recent news stories here is the US about free trade; We've heard 
arguments from Labor worried that jobs will leave the US because of 
it, and I assume Labor is talking mainly about non-skilled labor. I 
don't have an opinion on that.

But over the last several decades, we (the US) have been depending on 
unskilled labor in less developed countries ... if more and more 
programming/design gets shipped elsewhere, we're burning the candle 
at both ends, yet the rich and powerful here would use cheap tech 
labor get richer.

Now we have a projected shortage of tech workers for five years. That 
means kids who are 16 today can have some of those those jobs if they 
want them bad enough to put in a bit of effort.

I am convinced that the majority of kids in my neighborhood will grow 
up to work for near minimum wage or live in jail. Maybe not as many 
will if some can be convinced now to set some goals. Go to a 
technical college for two years. Maybe do some internship. Enter the 
work force with a solid middle class income at 21. All around, seems 
like a better idea to me.

An extremely idealistic solution would to be to make it even easier 
for skilled foreign workers to become us citizens, put a heafty 
tariff on tech work done overseas and direct some of that money to 
assisting underdeveloped countries with more pressing problems like 
over population and poor working conditions for everybody, and some 
of it towards getting kids in this country off the streets and in 
front of a monitor.
-- 

___________________
- Erik Mattheis
http://gozz.com/

(612) 827 3963