the wisdom of helping those who would compete with us using our own knowledge, given there are no jobs to be had in our industry in North America...I am not in the USA <
Ah, so you would be Canadian then? I made a false assumption.
>> I do not believe I made the assertion that foreigners are nasty, or ill-educated. Nor did I assert possession of anything of superiority <
No, I made that assertion, in reversing your argument geographically and using more emotive terminology. Sorry if my post was a bit reactionary. I really should avoid contributing while hungover :-)
>> I do not believe I made the assertion that foreigners are nasty, or ill-educated. Nor did I assert possession of anything of superiority.<
Your implication was that the knowledge exposed through this forum tends to be produced by North Americans and consumed by those "offshore". That's a bit of a generalisation.
Your suggestion was that this may contribute to jobs moving offshore, presumably by "skilling up" the non-North Americans who would otherwise not know one end of a product from another.
Anyway, to address your post....
Globalization makes entry to markets easier by reducing trade barriers. For services (such as IT support and software development) whose production costs are largely dependent on worker salaries, it is clearly more efficient to employ cheaper workers (i.e. those with lower living costs), all things being equal.
Clearly, there are winners are losers from this process. I think I read that the European union has recently done a trade deal with India whereby we open up our labour markets in exchange for India opening up markets for European products (food?). So, London gets flooded with even more foreign IT workers, salaries/rates get depressed, I lose money. At the same time, some Indian worker is presumably having problems marketing his crop (or whatever) locally since Europe is dumping subsidized crops (and industrial waste, and...) onto the Indian market. The difference? If I lose my job, I have a social welfare system which will cushion the blow. The Indian farmer is presumably in a far worse position.
At the end of the day, the West can't have it both ways. If we demand that foreign markets are open for products like software and food, it's indefensible to close our IT services markets.
I recently read an excellent book by Joseph Stiglitz (Globalization and Its Discontents) where he asserts that for globalization to work effectively, markets must be openend up gradually, to allow for inefficient local producers to adjust to use more efficient practices. If the process is pushed too hard, the economy collapses.
The trick is finding the right pace.
John
