Feb. 24, 2004 - 21:24 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Another Day

"Offshoring phenomenon needs better response" A column in our paper today by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Has a few things of value to say and leads with its chin in some respects.

Mr. Friedman brings up examples that make me laugh. For instance Mr. Friedman says, "Two things strike me about this outsourcing issue. One, economists are surely right: The biggest factor eliminating old jobs and churning new ones is technological change -- the phone mail system that eliminated your secretary."

Unfortunate choice I think Mr Friedman. Speaking of voice mail, how many jobs other than secretaries have been lost by the "menu" system as it now exists ? Companies have been able to wall themselves in and the public out by the button punching menus that face us today. You dial a number, listen to a menu, punch a button, listen to another menu, punch another button, and on and on, circle around until you are back where you started and still are not able to reach a live body that will be helpful at all. I have seen no menu that is helpful to the average person, nobody to answer our questions that or a menu exists to give us information. Companies have shifted the cost of doing business onto the public's shoulders forcing us to listen to ridiculous menus and punch buttons in the attempt to reach a live body so as to get a question answered or to do actual business. So we get to the point that a person can choose an economist and go by what that one says, or pick an economist who thinks one hundred eighty off, with economists at any point in the circle who think differently. Mr. Friedman's words give me an idea of the current thinking.

Then, Mr. Friedman says, "As for the zippie's (Foreign cheapie workers -- my definition) who soak up certain U.S. or European jobs, they will become consumers, the global pie will grow, and ultimately we will all be better off. As long as America maintains its ablilty to do cutting-edge innovation, the long run should be fine. Saving money by outsourcing basic jobs to zippies, so we can INVEST IN MORE HIGH-END INNOVATION MAKES SENSE.

In my eyes our business, financial and ownership people have fallen down from a long time back. The money hungry have failed to do much innovation in our country that would entail changes to the infrastructure which could put us in a more competitive position world-wise. For instance they have let the factories become outdated and wither away while the jobs go overseas. While they cook the books and float down in golden parachutes what the hell have any of them innovated other than ill-gotten gains in their pockets.

Then Mr. Friedman has this to say, "As we enter a world where the price of digitizing information -- converting into little packets of ones and zeros and then transmitting it over high-speed data networks -- falls to near zero, it means the vaunted "death of distance" is really here. And that means that many jobs you can now do from your house -- whether data processing, reading an X-ray, or basic accounting or lawyering -- can now be done from a zippie's house in India or China. And as education levels in these overseas homes rise to U.S. levels, the barriers to shipping white-collar jobs abroad fall and the incentives rise.

And it goes on, "The fundamental question question we have to ask as a society is, what do we do about it ?" notes Robert Reich, the former labor secretary and now Brandeis University professor." "For starters, we're going to have to get serious about some of the things we just gab about -- job training, life-long learning, wage insurance. And perhaps we need to welcome more unionization in the personal services area -- retail, hotel, restaurant and hospital jobs which cannot be moved overseas -- in order to stabilize their wages and and health-care benefits. Maybe, as a transitional measure," adds Reich, "companies shouldn't be allowed to deduct the full cost of outsourcing, creating a small tax that could be used to help people adjust."

Sounds good to me, but I wonder just how much opposition will come from the money men who run out government ?

The last paragraph, "Either way, managing this phenomenon will require a public policy response -- something more than the Bush mantra of, "Let the market sort it out," or the demagoguery of the Democrats, who seem to want to make outsourcing equal to treason and punishable by hanging. Time to get real."

Mr. Friedman at least has some idea of what to do, but gives no concrete framework to accomplish a correction, it appears to me. I don't want to hear about buggy-whip makers or carriage makers. A lot of those people began to work in the automobile industry as it grew.

As Adam Smith pretty well proved by statistics that restrictive tarriffs kept countries from growing, yet that does not include our outsourcing of jobs and manufactories to my way of thinking and as far as unionization is concerned, I think that the white collar workers missed the boat long ago. Another catchword in his column, "Global Pie," looks to me that our share of the global pie will be shrunken considerably by what is going on nowadays.

Heather and her brother went down the east coast of Florida to the Keys and are returning via the Tamiami Trail and were near Sarasota today. They are doing okay and happy.

As for myself, I avoided a broken hip or other broken bones by the gyrations I was able to do to stay somewhat upright -- only threw out my back in the process. I am improving, but slowly and hope to be up to snuff when Heather returns on Friday. This is the longest I have been able to be on the keyboard yet.

Thanks for all your kind words and best wishes, they mean a lot.

Today ? In the world, just Another Day . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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