I find the whining to be hugely hypocritical. An old but brilliant article in Wired articulates my view perfectly: "where is it written that IT jobs somehow belong to Americans - and that any non-American who does such work is stealing the job from its rightful owner?"
The whiners start with the premise that "American companies should hire American workers" but they're off from the very first adjective. What is an "American company" in the age of globalization? Almost all major American companies - our brilliant blue chips, the large-cap domestic giants that on their own signal the rise or fall of entire sectors of the US economy - source products from abroad, source labor from abroad, and reap an increasing percent of their revenues from abroad.
Manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods have already made the leap to India - Proctor and Gamble earns nearly 30% of its annual revenues in developing markets, and expects to keep growing in India. P&G reported a loss this quarter in the United States. Of the biggest US companies, Exxon expects to sell nearly one-sixth of its petroleum products in the Asia Pacific region in 2009. This doesn't mean much, except that Asia Pacific is the only region where Exxon expects an increase in sales over its 2008 figures. Wal-Mart just opened its first Indian retail store in May in Amritsar, but as long as two years ago the director of their Asian operations said, "China and India really represent the future of Wal-Mart." Both Google and Microsoft and IT parks in India and have serious market penetration here (Although Google battles Yahoo for top search engine, Google's social network "Orkut" beats the competition by a handy 6-7 percent)
One could argue that lower annual sales in the United States, at least this year, are a temporary thing, brought about by the recession. This may be true, but the growing demand in developing markets is not a temporary thing. (And incidentally, anyone who refers to India as a developing market should re-examine his data, since the markets are much more developed than one might expect)
What I am saying is that the Indian worker is growing hand-in-hand with the Indian consumer (in fact, the two are one and the same), and this dynamic synergy is what is driving big corporations into Bombay and Bangalore. (Or Mumbai and Bengaluru, depending) The growth is real.
I am not saying that INDIA IS THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD - to be honest, I find that self-important attitude just as annoying as the negativity of laid-off American engineers. (Which, incidentally, is not to say that I don't empathize with the engineers' plight. Wired's account of Scott Kirwin, who "worked alongside three Indian programmers, all on temporary visas, teaching them his job but expecting to stick around as a manager when the work moved to India" is awful, especially since his expecatation was not met, and he was fired. But from a larger perspective, big corporations have often sacrificed the common man in their search for growth. For the first time, that common man is an American)
So if India is not the future the world economy, and the United States is not the future of the world economy, then who is? Who really owns Scott Kirwin's job? All of us, or none of us, depending on your perspective. And that plurality is a new reality that we will all have to learn to live with.
The point is every nation is concerned with protecting interests of its own corporations & its own workforce. So for today's developed countries, gloabalisation is OK so long as it helps in enabling their companies achieve cost competitiveness and capture hitherto untapped/ pent up demands in rapidly growing developing economies. This has been historically the case. e.g. the British adopted laissez faire in early 19th century once they were sure that the industrial revolution has made their products competitive enough and their colonial rule has ensured captive markets for them. Protectionism is bound to be on the rise in times of recession. After all, as Sartre puts it, "we are thrown in the face of each other."
ReplyDeleteThe essential point is that US-based multinationals want more free trade, more global (and faster growing) markets to hawk their stuff in, but want to keep all the jobs that fuel that same growth at home in the US. Well, in a global economy, that is simply untenable, unfair, and contrary to the free-market principles which distinguished the US from its colonial predecessors. While it is the job of each government to protect the citizens who put it into place, it is unfair trade imbalance to do so at the cost of another nation who provides its growth and revenue. Whatever happened to 'give me your tired masses....' etc. etc.? did these masses HAVE to be white to qualify?
ReplyDeleteand finally, lets say no jobs were shipped overseas anywhere by any US company. would that make the current US recession vainsh? This one we actually created and perpetuate by our own brilliance (?), I think. If we examine the US budget, what portion constitutes defense (not shipped overseas), and what is the burn rate in Iraq (that spend is hardly benefiting the poor Indian IT guy or anyone else besides the defense contractors). And the demographics (such as age of populace) that will continue the slow growth in US is nobody fault. Bangalore is just an easy punching bag, and I agree with and applaud Anika for taking this on.
I am reminded of a simple saying by a favorite author (I paraphrase), "your morals have to be tightest around you in times of stress, to be true morals. They can't be sort-of loose stuff that hangs around you only when life is going well". If free trade is an American moral value, then it is, or it isn't.