Letters to the Editor
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Greed
I totally agree with Lou Dobbs conclusions on outsourceing. The article's author seems to have overlooked the real problem. The MBA's who manage the mega-conglomorates who have sold out their ethical souls to increase the bottom line, insuring their gigantic salaries and bonuses, thus lowering their workers income to the lowest possible denominator.
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Market economy - not!
The faith of USA'ers in their "capitalist economy" reminds me of the blind faith of party cadres in Soviet-style "communism." Obviously these people haven't read Adam Smith. A market economy is one where all buyers and sellers have equal and free access to the market. This hardly describes the U.S. economy which is more about large organizations owning most of the means of production and having nearly absolute control over what gets to market. The manager class of these organizations control our lives and well-being far more than our elected government officials, and yet we have no say over what they do. Our government, which is suppossed to regulate these organizations and protect us from their excesses, is in the pocket of corporate managers. Just a couple days ago, the Democratically-controlled Senate effectively blocked the import of cheaper drugs to the U.S. to protect the interests of their friends in big-pharma. This is a market driven economy?
And speaking of health care, if the U.S. went to a single-payer health care system, it would allow for all companies in the U.S., large and small, to be more competitive in a "global economy" (not to mention dramatically reducing the cost of health-care and providing more choice to patients). But big pharma and big insurance are so huge and powerful, they intimidate even their brethren corporations. No one dare speak of real health care reform, lest he be branded a "communist." (Jeez, I thought the fifties went out in the sixties).
David Silverman is dead wrong - the U.S. corporate economy is not a force of nature, but a result of bad choices made by the people of this country. It is still not too late to make alternative choices. But the first step is to wake up from the la-la land of the corporate economy and take real responsibility for our actions.
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Is it just me?
or is there something creepy about this guy Silverman? He invested in an industry that was already under pressure to offshore. He planned to use his superior management skills to drive out smaller competitors. He planned to use offshore workers in at least some limited capacity from the outset (so he could afford the levels of service he wanted to deliver and the levels of pay he wanted to give his American workers). He had an office in Manila where he paid a generous wage by local standards, but a fraction of what he was paying his Iowans. He blames Iowa stubbornness for his inability to convince them to improve their lives with technology.
They had a few good years, at least one year with a million in profits. Then they rode that business all the way down to the ground.
Not to say it's not tragic, not to say that there's not an issue of the decline of American jobs. I've got 3 kids and worry about where their economic future lies. I see jobs in my department moving to India on a daily basis. Remember when your mom used to tell you to clean your plate because of the starving children of India? They've come to collect.
But this story doesn't make the case. It sounds like plain bad management to me. This is a guy who jumped on a fast moving train (with an alcoholic partner) and couldn't hold on. He bet on staying ahead of the offshore curve and lost, and he still doesn't understand why.
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Outsource This
"If typesetting is so much cheaper now, why do I still have to pay $400-$500 a semester on my textbooks?"
Because cheaper costs don't necessarily mean cheaper goods. Just more profit.
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An insider view
I've never owned a typesetting company, but I HAVE been a typesetter....guess that would make me one of Mr. Silverman's "50 year old grandmothers". (ummm....thanks David. Guess you'll never be 50 yourself.)
As such, I could have told you in the early 80s that typesetting was a clearly dying field. Up until the late 70s, typesetting was skilled, respectable work largely done BY MEN, unionized workers in publishing plants or newspapers, who made very good wages, plus overtime and health insurance and PENSIONS. They were driven out by computerized typesetting systems that were almost entirely run by non-unionized, mostly female workers, who made roughly half as much money, few benefits and no pensions. By the Macintosh era (very late 80s, early 90s), it had already devolved into a scenario where around half of all typesetting was done by freelancers, with OK wages but zero benefits. And so it went.
Mr. Silverman basically exploited this situation, exactly as his Indian successors did -- he outsourced to the hinterlands, paid mediocre wages, no pensions and hired his "50 year old grandmothers" (who could presumably be paid less, since they had husbands, or some such retro thinking).
What really crushes me in this story is how Mr. Silverman allowed his greed for GPS guided bicycles and personal trainers and steaks and Ben&Jerry's ice cream to permit him to raid his poor old dad's lifetime of savings, destroy his dad's retirement and then he apparently sat back and watched his dad drink himself to death. Furthermore, Mr. Silverman is sort of OK with all this, as he is OK with other companies having outsourced his own to death. He's a pretty laid back guy -- I have no doubt he will succeed nicely in the new, dog-eat-dog sort of economy.
What I get out of this tale is that if Mr. Silverman had had a gram of common sense, he would have seen what was obvious when he was in grade school (that typesetting was a sad, dying profession suitable only to be done by pennies-an-hour, third-world wage-slaves) and he would have sold Clarinda YEARS before the all-too-obvious collapse. Then he would have made at least some money back, and his dad might have lived to see a decent retirement and some grandchildren. Maybe his partner Dan would have sobered up as well.
I don't have an answer to outsourcing or the way huge conglomerates continue to drive out both diversity in the marketplace and mom-and-pop businesses. What I do know is you can't have a prosperous middle class society founded on NO jobs, NO health insurance and NO pensions. The check hasn't come due for most Americans just yet, but it will and plenty soon. The problem is that our media is dominated by upper class types who don't feel any pain yet -- they are in protected fields, or ones unlikely to be outsourced. As long as we all keep shopping and spending and watching American Idol, everything will be OK! Why plan for the future? Look at Mr. Silverman: ruin a company, ruin hundreds of people's lives, drive your own father into bankruptcy, your best friend into suicide -- but the guy is happy as a mudlark, writing books, getting articles into Salon. He'll be just fine.
It's only the rest of us who are screwed.