Friedman and outsourcing

Here is a hilarious response to Tom Friedmans article praising the benefits of globalization and outsourcing in the NYT's.


Outsourcing Thomas Friedman By Tamish Phreedman

Ever since taking over this column from my predecessor, Thomas Friedman, I've been spending a lot of time talking with regular white-collar Americans from all across the country. What I've learned from their stories is something that the Democratic candidates for president, by which I mean the future Kerry-Edwards ticket, better listen to.

You see, all of their reckless, populist rhetoric about how America is shipping its white collar jobs overseas is nothing more than what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might call "dead-ender" talk. And believe me, I'm a lot more moderate than Donald Rumsfeld. So when I quote the Defense Secretary, I'm bringing in the big guns.

The fact is that we live in a global village. Like it or not, globalization is here to stay. And that's a good thing not only for Wall Street, but for Main Street too.

You see, every time a white collar job gets shipped overseas to places like India or, say, India, that benefits high-wage, high-prestige Americans. Here's how it works. Let's say IBM ships 10,000 software engineer and management jobs from California to Bangalore. Old software engineer salary: $90,000, plus benefits. New salary in Bangalore: $9,000, sans benefits.

Do you see how that works? Everyone wins.

Now, when IBM gets an extra $81,000 in profits, it returns some of that back to Main Street in the form of higher share prices for the shareholders, who in turn need to buy goods from ma and pa stores owned and run by, you guessed it, white collar Americans who lost their jobs to Indians. Moreover, IBM can now sell its wares for a lot cheaper to all those laid-off California software engineers. And believe me, they'll thank their Bangalore low-wage laborers for making those goods cheap, now that they can't find work in California!

So that's how it works.

I know, it's tough, it's not pretty or gentle or comfortable. In fact, it's a lot like what my predecessor at this column liked to call "the Golden Straitjacket...it's here and it's the only model on the rack this historical season."

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