[thelist] Financial Situation

[Ken Schaefer]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]
> On Behalf Of UIT DEV
> Subject: Re: [thelist] Financial Situation
> 
> Also, no one wants to admit that this outsourcing is one of the nasty horns
> on this beast of a recession we've got brewing.  Its not just the housing
> bubble, the mere fact that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been given
> away (in many fields, not just coding) and no one wants to discuss it.   The
> politicians wonder where the tax base went.  The economists wonder where the
> jobs went.  No one wants to admit that we've destroyed our economy by giving
> jobs away and placing highly skilled people onto the unemployment lines.

I'm going to have to agree with Martin here. The above is simply uninformed drivel. Economists don't wonder where the jobs went - they know exactly what's going on. Specialisation has been a feature of economies for hundreds of years. Jobs have been concentrated in places of comparative advantage for hundreds of years.

Jobs of all sorts of things have moved between towns, states and now countries. And yet, despite the vast amount of food, physical goods and services now performed in other countries, most developed countries don't have an unemployment rate much above 10%. Because new jobs, which require new skills and have higher barriers to entry, come along to replace them.

> I am one of them.  Not only is my salary ZERO now, my tax revenue
> contribution to my State and to my country is ZERO.   My spending power is
> ZERO.  My contribution to the local and regional economies - where I used to
> be part of that stimulation of those economies, is ZERO. 

It appears you have a product that people don't want to buy then. Perhaps you should be producing something else, or cutting your prices or something...

> So I am on my own and I am not going to charge $11/hr to develop software
> when I used to get paid $44/hr, plus benefits and such.

Again - you might want to produce something that people value at $44/hour. For the same reason that GM can't sell cars at prices people aren't prepared to pay, it seems you are selling services that people don't see the value in. You might want to sell something that's of higher value at $44/hour+benefits. That's the way the market works...

Cheers
Ken