In today’s (Sunday December 4th), Amy Waldman describes the impressive new superhighways that are being built to link India’s major cities.She says that India which has already surpassed China in its growth rate in the past two years plans to leapfrog many technologies and become a first world nation in the next two decades.
If those of us who were worried about our job losses in the IT industry want to see where this thing is going, we will see fast erosion of all our manufacturing jobs, our educational infrastructure, our medical jobs and you name it.After reading Waldman’s article, and there are three more installments coming, I am certain India will prove to be a more formidable threat to our jobs than China.It has excellent universities where students are taught in English,their grasp of abstract concepts is excellent and their eagerness to do work over and above that required is legendary.
As most of the service work is already being moved to India, the bigger threats that we will see in the near future are the fine modern medical centers in India performing procedures at a fraction of the cost over here.We are also likely to see many teaching jobs at University level being moved to India posing a threat to jobs in academia.Manufacturing, which has been the mainstay of China’s economy will also be seeing movement to India, as GM, Delphi and others are already doing.
The lessons from all this is that while we have been throwing away our wealth in expensive military toys and wars, China and India have invested their wealth in productive enterprises and are poised to give us a run for our money.I can anticipate a day when GM will simply start importing its cars from India, China, Korea and other countries and sell the cars at Wal Mart.
Reap what you sow. The United States is obviously surfing on an unsustainable bubble. Let it blow.
I wonder if this is how the textile workers felt?
Its as if Americans have an unwavering sense of an eternally bright future for us, as if just being born on American soil and working hard is enough to succeed.
Its a winner take all system. No matter how bad it gets, those with money and power will always need others to do their work, and those opportunities will continue to exist.
But for the corporations, Klatoo you are absolutely right. Their only obligation is to make as much money as they can, and they’ll use any labor source to do it.
It will be interesting to see who will end up with our jobs — China or india. China graduates ten times as many engineers as the US does every year. India has the advantage of a headstart and a near-English speaking population. Both countries have trained multiple generations of their people in US universities and corporations.
Its interesting to read that India is so well positioned, above. I’ve also read that India is complaining of losing jobs to lower wage China.
Sure, it would be nice to think we have a lead on them both. But just look at how far they’ve come in the last 20 years. They’ve got momentum on their side.
I’ve watched several New England textile and paper mill towns shut down when the mills closed and jobs moved South and then offshore. Most of us blamed the company, but the side effect was that lots of former union workers stopped voting, because they felt it did no good to vote if the government couldn’t keep local skilled labor employed and, of course, unions don’t try to get out the former union vote.
Once there were lots of well paid textile jobs in New England that anybody could hold down with no more education than they acquired on the shop floor. Now all that is left are McJobs and high tech, and the education required for high tech is unaffordable (and lately, futile). It’s sad to see former mill towns competing desperately for prisons (and prison jobs).
Yes, well, that’s the consequences of free trade. The worker loses, the customer loses, the investor loses. The only one that gains is the capitalist – the one that actually owns the means of production.