Free Trade in Tech Labor

The protectionist pressures will likely subside. I am betting that we are entering an economic boom era where most people will easily have a number of jobs to choose from. A few white collar technically trained folks, however, may never again earn the money they made in the mid to late 1990s. This is solely because those earlier salaries were often insane and unsustainable. Still, these valuable people should find a good paying job.

“The cheapest form of Transportation will always remain raw Resources”

Can you explain that, lgl?

I am an American programmer. I fear India and other places with $2/hr programmers more than I fear anything else on the planet.

I was a free-trade libertarian (idiot) until 2001. Now I am a Pat Buchannan/Ross Perot Conservative. We have got to look out for ourselves, folks.

Steve, just out of curiousity, what do you drive?

Sorry!!! I didn’t mean to implicate YOU were an idiot, I was saying that I look back at my formerly libertarian days (while studying to become a computer scientist AKA: victim of Globalization) as “Steve: you were an idiot”.

Once I realized that being a Libertarian was for folks who had no fear of globalization (such as professors, politicians, and doctors), I opened my eyes up to the real world.

I drive a ’95 chevrolet. Sorry to disappoint.

How much will utilities cost when we have $2/hr engineeers? How easy will it be to solve problems if I can just buy a few programmer hours for $2 instead of having to buy a $5000 script?

Boonton (and others) –

The phrases you are groping for are ‘massive deflation’ and ‘tragedy of the commons’. Programming is the *second* high tech field I have punted, and time/energy grows short to retrain for a third (or fourth).

Ultimately, it probably benefits the US, but that is the long-term steady-state outcome. The time-varying portion of the outcome could induce significant pain (a generation’s worth) that most democracies cannot abide by. This was Schumpeter’s point, after all.

Yes, Bob,,,, I know what CFA stands for. Computer Scientists need to know more than just how to compute present value using a bond calculator and what our various TLAs stand for. That’s not to say that’s everything you do, but really, let’s be honest, everything in business/finacial analysis boils down to PV and FV in the end, am I wrong?

No matter how good of a software designer/engineer/coder whatever I am, I cannot compete with $2/hour, nor do I want to. I’m sure you guys think that I’m just yet another of the dolts out there who jumped on the bandwagon during the boom writing in VB or something, but I’m not. I’m more like the surviving code monkey that the company wants to keep after shipping 99.99% of the jobs off to India…even with my skills and confidence, my fear of unemployment is so much greater than my love for what I do. Free-traders can’t fathom this because they are protected themselves! Have you ever heard of a layoff of college professors? Lawyers? SENATORS?

Is this what Globalization is supposed to be like? Sure, I make a lot today, but I am so scared I can’t even sleep? I thought that Globalization meant coming together in harmony. All it does is make the educated folks hate the third worlders for taking our jobs.

No, before you ask, I have yet to be unemployed. That doesn’t make the fear any less real.

>Have you ever heard of a layoff of college professors?
No, not tenured professors, but I expect I will. Also, I *have* heard of badly treated (and essentially laid off) graduate students, post-docs, lecturers and adjuct-professors

>Lawyers?
Oh, yeah. Ton’s of students don’t pass the bar, or become a lawyer for a little while and can’t hack it. Generally it is more often called “left to pursue other interests” than “laid off,” but really its the same thing.

CPA is a license, Bob, not a certification.

>>do any of you make less than $70k a year? If not, you have no room to talk.

I don’t make anywhere NEAR 70k. And I live in Chicago. And my wife stays at home with the kids. The irony of globalization is that, while some jobs are lost, it lowers prices for everyone. It makes it MUCH easier for those of us trying to make it on a diminished income to afford to live like we do. Despite my circumstances, my family is not deprived in any way, thanks to, among other things, Wal-Mart.

My company didn’t give out raises this year, and it doesn’t look too good for next year either. Things are tough all over. IT’S CALLED A RECESSION!

Computer programmers talk like it is the appocolypse, but I am SURE that it is no worse for them today than before the bubble, say in 1994.

And, yes Steve, 1999 was a bubble. Anyone who expects a return to those unsustainable times is setting themselves up for disappointment.

Yes, I know. It was a recession. I’m not complaining about wages. I’m complaining about job security. In 1994, there was no talk of a wholsale IT exodus to India, nor were politicians selling us out for cheap wal-mart crap. The idea behind globalization is that everyone will have a better standard of living. We were sold on EVERYONE counting “us”, too, not just the Indians and the CEO fatcats. Now, although I make fabulous money, I know that I am only one “wild CIO hair” way from the soup kitchen. This is not what the globalizers promised us.

The difference this time (as upposed to the blue collar migration) is that the blue collar folks could re-train and become white collar types. Now that all the white collar jobs are heading to Asia, what are we supposed to do? There aren’t any jobs left that have to be done in America (except, of course, the proverbial hair stylist or traffic chopper pilot).

Bob–Just wait, man. You’ll be in the same boat as me as soon as your boss realizes that Indians can do PV as well as you can for 1/10th the price! Yes, everything in IT comes down to 1s and 0s, but we can agree that 1s and 0s are a lot further abstracted for the CS person than PV is from the CFA.

Do you guys think there will be any new high-wage jobs created in this country over the next decade (outside of positions like CEO that require being in that position at a prior company to be qualified?) Higher wage growth IS what the globalizers promised.

Talking about being okay with wage deflation is great, untilyou have a mortgage company that refuses to accept payment deflation. Now you’re going to tell me that I should own a home?

>>All that matters to corporations in the short run is salary and benefits.

Well, that’s all that matters to SOME corporations. But the better run ones aren’t going to be fooled by the mirage of cost cutting that is Indian IT.

The cost of producing something derives from more than just the salary of the people producing it. Management costs are significant in any endevor, moreso in managing a project being executed in India. Companies that underestimate their costs for managing projects in India are ones that are going to lose BIG MONEY.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2003/tc20031027_9655_tc119.htm

I keep forgetting. Did our governement allow 200,000 new WELDERS into the country at substandard wages over the last 10 years and then refuse to ship them out when the downturn happened?

H1B and L1 are allowing the migration of IT work to India SO much easlier. You can bring them over here to train (at $10/hour), then ship them back with all the knowldege they need to take over.

Remember: the GLOBALIZERS said that welder jobs are expendable. I did not. I think isolationism and US self-reliance is the only way to fix our economic woes. CEOs won’t like that, nor will any other globalizer, but that’s the right answer.

As for the Luddite rantings currently on display here:

Senators, college professors and lawyers are not, as a group, known for their free market tendencies, particularly the professors. This is important to point out as whomever made this statement (Steve I believe) is thinking from a very subjective and thus narrow view point.

Everyone is a free trader, consciously or otherwise, they only take on the mantra of protectionism whenever their own wallet is affected.

Competition is great unless your own piece of pie is at risk; the first artisans’ guilds came about as protectionist measures to isolate and presumably protect the artisans of that certain town or village. Thus it was prohibitively expensive to trade with the neighboring towns which of course retarded overall commerce and retarded the standard of living.

The immediate affect of protecting the local artisan seemed to be worth it but in retrospect, we know that allowing a free market will bring us better products for less money and less work per dollar spent. This is an increase in the standard of living.

If anyone here feels that “globalization” is threatening their livelihood, then perhaps they need to begin to adapt their skills to a world that is changing. Sanchez makes the all too true point that if American companies do not utilize the foreign talent, then foreign companies will. The world is constantly changing and we all have to change to keep up.

The alternative is for the rest of us otherwise productive citizens to subsidize Steve and a gaggle of union welders to the detriment of our overall economy.

And who said that anyone making less than X amount per year had no room to talk? Are we not all part of the economy, from the lowest tier of employment to the highest?

A really good story along these lines is the story of Standard Oil and Rockefeller.

What Rockefeller did to the petroleum industry so greatly improved the standard of living for everyone, lowest to the highest, that is difficult to imagine that he was once the embodiment of corporate evil.

The Luddites and socialists saw him as a predatory competitor, ruthlessly driving smaller companies out of business, slashing the bottom line regardless of how many petrol jobs it affected in other locales.

In reality, his innovations in technology and productivity directly raised the standard of living for everyone as everyone, even in the late 19th century, used petrol products. When even the poorest of slum dwellers could afford to heat their home throughout the night and still have money left over, that is a marked improvement in the standard of living. To reverse Rockefeller’s innovations in order to be fair to other wealthy or affluent petroleum company owners and workers would be to reverse the standard of living for even the poorest of citizens.

Clicking on your web browser’s back button will take anyone who is genuinely interested in this subject to a very good essay by Bryan Caplan on Bastiat and von Mises. He directly addresses protectionism and the mystery of its entrenchment in the psyche of the public.

Personal attacks aside, what will be left to DO once all the white collar AND blue collar jobs are done offshore? What can I re-train in that will provide a good life for me and my wife? Does anyone really care that this country is heading to 3rd world status with 1% of the people owning 99% of the wealth?

Why is it that someone who disarees with your elitist opinions needs to be villified by your holier-than-thou attitude and labeled a Luddite?

When I say “professors”, replace it with “economics professors”.

To call someone with such economic views a Luddite is not a personal attack and I am sorry if it comes across as such. Nonetheless, the view that innovation across the economic spectrum should come to a halt in order to protect your individual income is a Luddite view.

The fear that you have of America becoming a third world country is understandable but far from reality.

Staying on the Luddite theme, they were convinced that machinery would drive us all out of jobs and into an eventual, society wide penury (your 1% vs. the 99%).

But if 99% of the populace is living in third world conditions, who in the world is buying the products that enrich that 1%? Without a lengthy explanation of why that is not going to happen, suffice it to say that our history is replete with the cries of every new industry or shift in technology destroying our way of life.

Ironically enough, it is this dynamic component of the American economy that makes us the greatest nation the world has ever seen and as long as we maintain a relatively free market, we have nothing to worry about.

Think of like this; the current IT scare could not be taking place without America first creating the market for the foreign labor (white or blue collar). We’re in the lead, everyone else is playing catch up and we’ll stay in the lead as long as we’re allowed to adapt and change with an ever changing world.

To resist the change will not stop the change, it will only freeze those resisting into an economic anachronism.

Do the words “Giant sucking sound” mean anything to anyone here? We’ve faced foreign competition before. The US economy has faced competition from SE Asia in textiles, Japan and Korea in electronics, Mexico in small manufacturing, Egypt in cotton, Europe in aircraft. We adapt by letting them sell us that stuff cheap, and developing new industries making something else.

Computer engineers are not unique. Other professionals have face immigrant competition before. Did you look at the faces of the students around you in college? Did you look at the graduate students? Did you look at the professors? There are a LOT of PhD’s out there, not in the job they want, partly because of foreign competition. We, as a country, won the nuclear race, the moon race, became the richest country in the world, on the backs of the accomplishments of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. We long-term natives have ultimately benefitted from the inventions of these newcomers. Or should most Californians still be living in the midwest, working in the same jobs their parents did at RCA or AMC, US Steel or Zenith? We will benefit from low cost suppliers for programming, as well.

>>Adapt, overcome, oohrah.

Actually, it’s more like “Duff Gardens…Hoorah!”

I told you guys that everything I know I learned on the Simpsons. Or maybe it was South Park.

rvman brings up Mexico. Mexico PROVES that it takes more than cheap labor to compete with the US.

Mexico is a piece of crap country that has done NOTHING to increase its competitiveness since NAFTA was signed. No privatizations, no restructuring of its antiquated educational system (my engineering professors used to warn us that Mexican engineers made some small fraction of what US engineers made then. Funny, but I don’t hear too much now about the “threat” posed by Mexican engineers), no strenghening of their legal system, no investment in infrastructure, nothing.

If you think Americans have to worry about Chinese labor, you should talk to the Mexicans. The Chinese are eating their lunch.

The only difference now with China and India is, as Steve said, there are a billion people apiece in each of those countries. They have a huge supply of labor there, and it will be a long time before it is saturated with work. But that doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Steve, with regards to the populations of China and India, that’s also 2 billion CUSTOMERS.

China especially. They are a huge market with a relatively homogenous culture and only 2 dialects. The economies of scale offered by the country to marketers are huge. Really, they rival the US in scale.

For example, you don’t think of economies of scale when it comes to advertising. But in a country like China, there ARE economies of scale in advertising. Coke can have one advertising campaign for 1 billion people. Their profits are potentially huge.

Once you get past just thinking about the costs of free trade, and get into the opportunities it provides, you’ll get why it is a good idea.

Ultimately, the price of a good – whether it is labor, a service, or a car – is driven by how costly it is to produce. In the case of labor, the “cost” consists of the level of training and skill required, hours worked, and the onerousness and riskiness of the working conditions and the training mentioned above. Computer programming requires a BA level of training, some, but not excessive, intelligence, a fair number of hours worked (but nothing like what entrepreneurs put in) and has almost no risk or discomfort – it is the ultimate desk job. In other words, when looking for the long run equilibrium wage, compare them to BS engineers at the top of the food chain, BA business, economics, or accounting in the middle. Anything more than 30-50k is going to be competed away, if not by foreign competition, than by undergrads rushing to the profession. Thus far, a Master’s level programming professional track hasn’t developed in the way it has in Accounting, say. I expect that to come along presently. MCSE-type certifications are rivals to, say, DeVry, in difficulty of acquisition – expect “technical” salaries in the 20-30 k range, ultimately. The BA is worth more.

Programmer wages were ever more than this because of a shortage driven by demand for programmers outstripping the rate we could supply them from the colleges. That time is over. Now the supply is greater than demand, and the price of programming labor needs to come down. Unfortunately, wages are sticky – people HATE paycuts – and so firms are substituting similar, but inferior, inputs such as overseas labor. (Inferior because it is expensive and difficult to set up and manage workers in a third world country, and they won’t be anywhere near as productive per hour as already trained Americans, not because of any inherent inferiority of foreigners.) I suspect that foreign wages will rise over the next few years, American wages in those fields will fall, and the outcome will look much like what I outline above – Americans making 20k with AA, 35-40 with BA/BS, 45 and up with an MA/MS, with those numbers adjusted for inflation and overall increases in productivity. Foreign workers will make half or less as much, and be half or less as productive.

Go to the home page and find “encyclopedia” at the left margin. Then peruse the articles that can be found by some of the greatest minds (many unknown names) in economic thought.

Or start here;
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeTrade.html

Ray–

The fact that “great minds” in economics espouse free trade will get you nowhere with me. AGAIN, they are completely protected from any sort of foreign competition!

Can you imagine if Smith had lost his job to some 1 shilling/year economist?
Can you imagine if Keynes lost his job to some $1/month economist?
Can you imagine if Freidman lost his job to some $1/hour economist?

Steve asks “Why are we the only ones who have an open market?”

What should follow that question is who has the strongest economy with the highest standard of living. The United States does of course.

There are one or two reports that float out once a year or so touting some of the more socialist nations as having higher standards of living but they are only measured on a few categories such as government supplied care of varying sorts.

For a better index of overall economic freedom, try freetheworld.com.

Chosing for myself has failed bigtime already. Why should I expect it to be different if I try again?

>>Why are we the only ones who have an open market?

Good question. Americans seem to have a higher risk tolerance than the Europeans and, especially, the Japanese.

BTW, who said protectionism “works” for the Europeans and the Japanese. Both would KILL for an unemployment rate of only 6.1%.

The Europeans in particular are getting dangerously used to seeing unemployment rates over 10%.

“Still, nobody has given a solution for what field to re-train in that can maintain a living wage (ie: one that doesn’t involve forclosure on my house). Why? BECAUSE THERE ISN’T A SOLUION except protectionism.”

Steve, are all you neighbors computer programmers? Does everyone you know at your income level make their living as computer programmers? If not then there is obviously some other field that allows you a comparable lifestyle…unless you are being seriously overpaid at your current job.

There is no solution for what you should do in the same way there is no solution for whom you should marry, what hobbies you should have and so on. These are all decisions that are best made by yourself because only you know you.

>>*cough* Japan *cough* 5.5% unemployement…

Actually, it is slightly less than that in Q2 2003.

The point is that, by historic standards, that is VERY high for Japan. 6.1% unemployment is actually pretty good by US historical standards. The European unemployment rates are disastorously large by their historical standards.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/13/2752342.pdf

I’m not just “playing the line” here. I really do believe what I said.

Are you guys just going to whistle past the graveyard as you see your country go down the tubes?

I read the article differently.

Their reinvestment results in lower interest rates. Those low rates are what fuel US business investment.

It also fuels things like home construction. Now is probably the best time ever to work in a trade, there is so much construction going on residentially and for the government.

Economists might argue that the US is shifting towards a service based economy. While we are shifting, those low interest rates (courtesy of trade dollar recycling nations like Japan and China) make the transition much, much easier.

The answer to your career dillema is to become a service sector entrepreneur, and use those low interest rates to start a business.

Steve, see the homepage link for a profitable job that won’t be outsourced.

BTW, I know for a fact that a thirty-year-old Mercedes dealer tech can make over $100k, if he’s very good at his job and willing to work a 50-hour week.

What do you think of a career as an auto tech? I’d imagine with your coding skills that you can probably troubleshoot an electrical system with a few weeks of training.

Thank you, Bob, finally a good idea in response. That is actually a fantastic idea. I do love cars and I’m not afraid of a 50+ hour workweek.

I assume that I’d have to travel to Germany to get the kind of training needed to work on such a fine automobile, though… Might be worth it…. I’ll have to read the article from home tonight.

I guess CEOs have to drive SOMETHING, so MB will be fixing cars forever.

>>I assume that I’d have to travel to Germany to get the kind of training needed to work on such a fine automobile, though…

And you would be wrong. They provide training all over the place. MB has a training center right here in the Chicago area. They were actually recruiting for it during the Chicago Auto Show, right from their display.

Boonton – I was not meaning my words as criticism! The tragedy of the commons (TOC)I refer to is our intellectual and legal infrastructure. It is going to be tough to persuade people to study engineering, computer science, etc. if the prevailing wage is so low – yet defense, technology advancement, and infrastructure maintenance demand such people. Can *all* of that be outsourced?

More generally, I haven’t seen anyone answer my other point, which is that humans have a limited capacity to tolerate change. If it were just IT jobs, then I would not raise a fuss….but _all_ knowledge-based jobs are another matter. Can we expect people to undergo intensive and costly retraining every 3 years (say) and the attendant disruption? Sure, the steady-state outcome is better for us in the aggregate, but the time-varying component could be quite severe. Again I say this was Joseph Schumpeter’s point.

Steve writes: “So the big “free market” guy got his education paid for by the government via the Marine Corps!

Not that I’m ungrateful for your sacrafice, but you’re hypocritical to be so “open market” yet you take a government handout to pay for a college education!”

I would not define that as a handout, as you are required to provide a service (you work) for that “handout”. The ROTC guys that graduated with me (I was not ROTC) in 1990 headed straight to the gulf war and in harms way. Remember David Robinson, he had to serve before the NBA. Hardly a handout. Giving a poor person money (or other goods) simply becuase they have a baby they cannot afford and provide zero in return; that is a handout.

The “New GI Bill” (the educational benefits Steve referred to) should be considered deferred compensation.

It’s a good deal for the government. It entices you to join, but not every ex-soldier takes advantage of their deferred compensation.

When your dad is a mailman and your mom is a hippie, you get an education any way you can, Steve.

Knowing what I know now, I probably would have become an auto-tech too!

People are so hung up by hypocrisy. I also went to public school for 12 years and went to college at a state school. Does that also make me a hypocrite?

You can be against something while still benefiting from it. There is no shame in taking advantage of the system as it exists.

>>I’m really not going to argue this point with you because it makes me look ungrateful

Don’t worry about it. It’s a volunteer army. No one is forced to be there. The “sacrifice” is compensated (except for the ultimate sacrifice, of course. Those guys are the ones who should be honored, and those, like my father, who were drafted and actually went to war).

Even a volunteer army at war is a situation in need of more respect than a volunteer army at peace. I respect the Gulf War vets more than the guys who only served between the 2 wars.

And the guys fighting today, they’re unbelievable.

Boonton–

That’s what I’d rather see. If I my job gets globalized, the gov should pay my mortgage while I re-train (I’d cover that myself). Then the globalizers will see the TRUE cost of what they did to this country. Shifting jobs nowadays invloves forclusures on houses while trying to survive on $250/week! in unemployment “benefits”. It didn’t used to. See how many jobs are going offshore? See the rising rate of forclosure? SEE THE CONNECTION? I know it’s not that simple, but put 2 and 2 together!

Eric–Of course you’re a hypocrite! You say you’re a LIBERTARIAN, but you are okay with going to public education and college on the dole? HOLY COW (as a former Chicago resident used to say) that’s a WHOPPING hypocracy!

I payed for (and am still paying for) everything out of pocket, myself, without help from my family.

Yes, programming causes clerical layoffs, but it’s possible to go from being a clerk to being a programmer! there is NOTHING more technical (or next to nothing at least) than pounding out code, and the government claims we need more “technical” people. No, Georgie, we need more “technical” JOBS, the people will follow the money.

All this talk about entreprenurship is crap! Do you think that during a recession when people are cutting WAY back is a good time to start a business? ESPECIALLY when your business will compete against foreign businesses that will undercut you with subsidized, currency-manipulated, cheap labor?!?!?!?

Eric–

Well, gosh, if YALE ( the prez’s alma madre ) says that there is job growth (even though the guy on the street says there ISN’T) then there MUST be job growth! Break out your 1999 party hats, folks! Stable, meaningful employment for everyone!

Boon–

That’s a great article about automotive tech jobs. I’m certainly interested in the possibilities. Having to take 2-4 years off work to train is worrisome, but I’ll just wait until my job gets offshored where I’m at. Nothing but free time after that day, eh?

>>HOLY COW (as a former Chicago resident used to say) that’s a WHOPPING hypocracy!

It’s called taking advantage of the system as it exists. It is not hypocrisy.

And, quite frankly, if you can’t be a libertarian if you ever took advantage of government schools then there are going to be VERY FEW libertarians.

Also, there are a lot of REALLY conservative guys in the Military. A lot of libertarians, too. Not too many liberals. Maybe after being exposed to the government organization that invented the phrase SNAFU (and you DO know what that stands for, right?) you become a little skeptical of government bureacracy?

Hypocrisy is being for free trade until it impacts your job, and then changing your tune, Mr. I was a Libertarian until 2001.

>>the prez’s alma madre

That actually sounds like something Dubya might say.

If you go to a Mexican college, is it your alma madre?

Isn’t madre the word for “manure” in French?

Ce la vie. Or something.

Everything I know about the French I learned from dating French chicks. Which, I can assure you, is VERY educational, although I still prefer Italian girls (married to one, need that disclaimer).

“That’s what I’d rather see. If I my job gets globalized, the gov should pay my mortgage while I re-train (I’d cover that myself). Then the globalizers will see the TRUE cost of what they did to this country. Shifting jobs nowadays invloves forclusures on houses while trying to survive on $250/week! in unemployment “benefits”. It didn’t used to. See how many jobs are going offshore? See the rising rate of forclosure? SEE THE CONNECTION? I know it’s not that simple, but put 2 and 2 together!”

The point you ignored is the TRUE cost of protectionism. Saving some steel jobs sounds like a great thing until you consider that American’s are paying an implicit tax of $100K per steel job per year. While in theory we could pay off the laid off steel workers house with that money I don’t think that would be the fairest use of the money. I would have unemployment with retraining opportunities, we already have a lot of that now. You can very easily get a Federally insured loan for college.

Reality check here, I don’t know what your local market is for programmers but I do not buy that the US economy no longer has any opportunities available for programmers. I also do not buy that the skills necessary to be a good programmer cannot be translated into other careers that still offer good money.

“Yes, programming causes clerical layoffs, but it’s possible to go from being a clerk to being a programmer! there is NOTHING more technical (or next to nothing at least) than pounding out code, and the government claims we need more “technical” people. No, Georgie, we need more “technical” JOBS, the people will follow the money.”

What world are you living in? You make it sound like all the goods and services produced in the economy are made by robots & you were the last human worker whose last task was to run the 100% automation program. Even in the Matrix people still have jobs my friend.

“20 Months into “recovery” and 10+ years into NAFTA:

WHERE ARE THE HIGH PAYING JOBS WE WERE PROMISED? ”

Speaking of NAFTA, one of the things Clinton agreed with in order to get it passed through Congress was retraining grants for the thousands of workers who were supposedly going to lose their jobs. LAst I heard only a handful of people bothered applying for it.

RETRAINING?!!?!? RETRAIN FOR WHAT??!?! I went through 4 years of college, I don’t need RETRAINING grants! Give me a friggin break!

There are no jobs being created for programmers. Sure, sysadmins can find jobs, but when you have Java/C++ on your resume, they don’t consider you for those jobs. when they get 1000 resumes for each job opening on the first day, you only have a few minutes of window to get your resume in, anyway.

I’m still paying off a large loan from the first time through college! A second trip would cost 2x as much, PLUS I’ve got a sizable mortgage. I still have no chance at a job because ALL knowledge based jobs are flooding out of the country, not just programmers.

>>I’m still paying off a large loan from the first time through college!

How about the Army? I hear that they’re hiring, and they’ll take care of those loans for you 😉

Just don’t forget your sunscreen. I hear that that Iraqi sun is a little strong.

Steve writes: “There are no jobs being created for programmers. Sure, sysadmins can find jobs, but when you have Java/C++ on your resume, they don’t consider you for those jobs. when they get 1000 resumes for each job opening on the first day, you only have a few minutes of window to get your resume in, anyway…

…ALL knowledge based jobs are flooding out of the country, not just programmers.”

Steve, please back up your claims with some sort of evidence.

Like I said in a post about 40+ posts ago, I’m trying my best to get out of IT and into financial analysis. I sure hope I don’t have to labotomize myself over trade issues in order to become a CFA (I have yet to meet a CFA who doesn’t believe in free trade). Again, I say that once the Indians learn how to use a bond calculator and start moving in on CFA turf, American CFAs will be just as protectionist as I am!

I don’t REALLY believe that being an FA invloves doing NPV all day. I am smarter than that, I meant no disrespect.

No, I haven’t signed up for the Level 1 yet. The only reason why is that I’ve seen some job postings that say they are only interested in you if you passed the level 1 on the FIRST try. Given my obvious risk aversion, I don’t want to play cards unless I’ve got 4 of a kind. Guess sometimes you’ve just got to go for it, huh?

Something else I’m concerned about is that in order to take the exam, you must FIRST be working as a financial analyst (I don’t remember the exact requirement, but it is some nearly chicken-and-egg type thing). I may have to “stretch” what a programmer does to include some sort of FA.

Ross–

Trade between the states doesn’t cause weakness in the dollar, nor does it destroy the tax base. That “trade between the states” argument is so laughably different than what is going on now, I can’t believe economists still bring that up.

>>Trade between the states doesn’t cause weakness in the dollar, nor does it destory the tax base.

Once again, the good people of Buffalo would take issue with that statement. Many big aerospace companies had big operations there, but they were cherrypicked by California and Texas over the years.

States don’t have the power to raise tarriffs, but they DO have the ability to give tax breaks and stuff like that to attract companies. That’s how Boeing’s headquarters came to Chicago. They didn’t come here for the climate, that’s for sure.

Stevie,

Are you saying that if India and China used dollars, then they wouldn’t be able to “steal” our jobs? As for the constitutional issue, so what? The fact that the states are prevented from doing so, doesn’t mean such prevention is good economics (although I think so).

The situation isn’t that different at all, you just won’t admit that you’re wrong, no matter what.

Ross–I might be wrong about free trade, but I am not wrong about saying that “free trade” between the states is totally different than free trade with other countries for the reasons I stated above.

If it is exactly the same in your eyes, why did Europe feel the need to become one state with one currency?

If it’s only about transaction costs (which IS, admittedly what they claimed it was about), why is the stability pact enforced? Clearly there are other benefits to merging lots of small countries into a large country (I know, you say they are not “one”, but they really are because of the currency issue) other than just transaction costs of going between the states.

Steve,

I got here very late, but if you do see this, I’ve written a long proglobalization essay that addresses your concerns:
http://arbyte.us/blog_archive/2003/10/Globalization.html

Feel free to e-mail me.

Steve, this one is for you…

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_46/b3858064.htm