Apr. 12, 2004 - 12:35 PST

THE WONDERING JEW

Well ?

A very thought provoking letter to the editor in the Register Guard this morning. From a lady named Sandra L. Huffstutter of Sutherlin, Oregon.

"Offshore children and the poor"

"So Oregon's welfare recipients are now having their questions answered by a call center in India ? According to an April 2 article in the Register Guard, the use of an Indian call center is saving Oregon $50,000 per month in labor costs."

"I can appreciate that the department of Human Services wants to be a good steward of taxpayer's money, but the department's managers aren't thinking outside the box. If they really wanted to save money, they should keep the call center jobs here and offshore the poor. Clearly, the cost of living in India must be only a fraction of what it is in Oregon; otherwise, Indian labor wouldn't be so cheap. If we shipped all our welfare recipients to India, we could slash their benefits and they could still live like kings."

"In fact, why stop there ? The lion's share of the state budget goes to education. Think how much money we could save if we offshored our kids, as well. Surely India must have lots of good teachers too."

"Why hasn't anyone thought of this before ? Could this have been the secret Republican plan to balance Oregon's budget without raising taxes ?"

"On a national level, we could apply this same principle to prescription drugs for the elderly. Why import affordable drugs from Canada, when we could export our elderly instead ?"

True, after we offshore our kids and our grandparents, we might miss them a tad. But we can always hire an Indian call center to theck in on them now and again.

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In that section is also a letter from Ted Oliver, District Manager - Wal-Mart Stores, Springfield, Oregon. I won't quote what he wrote, most of us can pretty well fill in the blanks perhaps.

In letters to the editor a B/S filter is invaluable. Letters to the editor in most any paper have input of kooks as well as input of people who raise questions that should be answered. Some of which are totally hilarious.

M. Hoffstetter's letter is sublime also. Maybe we should ship the unemployed and homeless over there too ? Just shipping the people defined as poor doesn't cover enough ground maybe ?

Well ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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