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U.S. Outsourcing Millions of Jobs
Even the former Wal-Mart CEO frets about a nation of hamburger slingers. Second in a series.
In Canada, the effect of global trade on Canadian jobs has been an issue for decades. We are a trading nation, and our economic success depends greatly on our ability to trade internationally. We depend in particular on the U.S., which buys 85 percent of our exports.
So we've negotiated trade deals: for more than 30 years, the Auto Pact ensured that we shared in the production of the cars we drive. Free trade agreements involving the U.S., and then Mexico, have sought to protect our access to the U.S., for good and ill.
Now protectionist sentiment is welling up in the U.S., as the country's power erodes. America is vulnerable at home, ineffectual in Iraq, and worried about booming economies in China and India.
Some U.S. industries - from call centres to film production - have come to Canada. However, in a speech to a business forum organized by the Vancouver Airport Authority, Federal Industry Minister David Emerson said U.S. protectionism makes his blood run cold. "If investments are systematically and continuously biased toward the United States because of border risk, we've got some big, big problems in Canada."
Yet much U.S. apprehension is a result of U.S. companies shipping U.S. jobs outside the country. Emerson's speech didn't touch on the fact that in an increasingly global economy, where corporations are able to subvert the rules we make to protect stable livelihoods for ordinary people, U.S. protectionism is just one element in the equation.
Trend is 'profoundly destabilizing'
SFU associate professor Andy Hira, co-author with his brother Ron of the book Outsourcing America, sees global outsourcing as the most troubling issue for the North American economy. Business leaders, too, see huge implications. Bernstein Investment Research, a highly respected U.S. firm, says the trend is as significant as the industrial revolution, and calls it "profoundly destabilizing."
The Hira brothers' book cites a University of California Study that estimates 14 million U.S. white collar jobs - one in nine - are at risk. A 2004 report by Forrester Research suggests that a total of 3.4 million U.S. white collar jobs will move overseas by 2015, with 830,000 jobs leaving by the end of 2005. A Progressive Policy Institute report claims 12 million jobs are vulnerable, with most paying more than the U.S. median wage. Yet another report stated that 2.3 million banking and securities jobs are at risk. And another that 700,000 customer service and corporate back-office jobs will move overseas by 2008.
What's more, these figures don't take into account jobs that might otherwise be created in the U.S. And then there is the ripple effect. Last year in the Wall Street Journal, one analyst predicted that 17 percent of U.S. office space will be vacated within 12 years as a result of offshoring.
The jobs leaving the U.S. are not just IT and call centre work. The Reuters news agency is hiring 1,500 staff in Bangalore - 10 percent of its workforce - at the expense of American jobs. The U.S. health care industry is sending X-rays and MRIs to be read by Indian radiologists. One analyst expects that in 2005, 400,000 U.S. tax returns will be produced in India.
Still, it's information technology, particularly software development, that is most at risk right now, as global corporations tap into a young, well-trained, usually English-speaking workforce that earns about 20 or 30 percent of the wages garnered by a comparable U.S. worker. The Hiras argue the lack of opportunity in the IT sector is reflected in a 20 percent decrease in U.S. computer science enrolment in 2003-04.
Software engineers have particular reason to be apprehensive. "Almost the entire IT services industry in India … is set up for export," the Hiras argue. During the decade ending in 2008, revenue from software exports is projected to rise to $50 billion from $2.7 billion.
U.S. wages undermined
The costs of global outsourcing are complicated and extensive: unemployment benefits, retraining costs, the disincentive for corporations to train an increasingly mobile workforce, downward pressure on wages, and lost personal income-tax revenue.
"In the three years ending in 2003, more than 5.3 million U.S. workers who had held their jobs for at least three years were displaced," Outsourcing America states. "In January 2004, only 65 percent of them had found full or part-time work, and a third of the employed suffered a pay cut of at least 20 percent."
Then there's the emotional toll, and not just to those who have lost their jobs. A July 2004 survey in the San Francisco Bay area found 27 percent of those polled are worried about losing their jobs. "Economists could attempt to estimate the lost wages and benefits from unemployment and reemployment at lower salaries, but there is no way that they can calculate the costs extracted from individuals, their families and their social networks."
Outsourcing America argues the trend's ancillary benefits to the economy are hardly moving in the U.S. labour force's direction. "From the end of the recession in 2001 to the first quarter of 2004, corporate profits grew 62.2 percent while labor compensation grew only 2.8 percent," the book notes, citing a study by the Economic Policy Institute. In other post-WWII economic recoveries, corporations averaged 13.9 percent to workers' 9.9 percent.
Yet while the Hiras predict a dire future, they acknowledge that, "the public debate has been drenched with innuendo presented by both sides as unassailable natural laws". Their book stands mainly as a warning.
'Pain' and 'opportunity'
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his 1999 book on globalization, defines the outsourcing issue mainly as a challenge. In The World Is Flat, he sees it driving U.S. competitiveness to a new level. "It's time to think about the opportunity as well as the pain." He defines this opportunity as cheaper goods, global development, international security enhanced by linked economies and capital that is freed to do more sophisticated work.
Friedman cites a Morgan Stanley study that declares cheap imports from China have saved U.S. consumers $600 billion since the mid-1990s. He also offers a sympathetic portrait of Jack Perkowski, head of China automotive outsourcing specialist ASIMCO, who says limited health services help keep his Chinese benefits costs down. "Anything which can be done to reduce a U.S. company's liability for medical coverage would be a plus in keeping jobs in the U.S.," Perkowski adds.
For North American industries, Perkowski declares, the imperatives are unavoidable. "Either you get flat," he says, adopting Friedman's vernacular, "or you'll be flattened by China."
Although it comes almost as an afterthought, Friedman does acknowledge some risk. "Even as a free trader, I am worried about the challenge this will pose to wages and benefits of certain workers in the United States, at least in the short run."
Friedman puts a big onus on individuals, and he quotes a layoff-related memo from Reuters America's David Schlesinger on the subject. "Every person, just as every corporation, must tend to his or her own economic destiny, just as our parents and our grandparents in the mills, shoe shops and factories did."
Friedman lauds "flexible" U.S. labour laws: "The easier it is to fire someone in a dying industry, the easier it is to hire someone in a rising industry." And always remember, he declares, with all the blunt tools of emphasis a writer can employ: "The Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top -- and that is a good thing!"
Hamburger helpers
Some of the counterpoint in Friedman's book comes from an unlikely source: former Wal-Mart CEO David Glass: "One of my concerns is that, with the manufacturing out of this country, one day we'll all be selling hamburgers to each other."
BC Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair, who sees outsourcing as a key issue in the economic future of our province, asks the same question. "Twenty years ago, the biggest employer in North America was GM," he says. "Today the biggest employer is Wal-Mart. Their employees buy at Wal-Mart because they're making $8 an hour, no benefits, no pension. They can't afford to buy anything anywhere else. What are we going to do with a million employees who make $8 an hour? This is a big problem for us."
He disputes Friedman's notion that individual initiative offers a realistic buffer to displacement. "Not everybody is going to be an entrepreneur in this society; there's only so much room."
Sinclair says he accepts that technology will change work at a rapid pace. "Work is going to be restructured. It's been happening since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The question is only, what is going to happen to us when that happens?"
Friedman barely mentions the labour movement in his book, except to note that globalization has turned unionists and protectionist Republicans into unlikely allies. He does say flattened global supply chains "take a certain element of humanity out of life".
He does ask: "How much friction would you like to see government remove, through deregulation, to make it easier for companies to compete on Planet Flat?" But he never effectively answers the question. Instead, he says: "Sort that out."
Outsourcing a 'cancer'
Yeah, it's complicated. However, for Sinclair, one thing seems very clear. "Contracting out and outsourcing is a cancer in the workplace. It is the thing that employers are using to destroy the labour movement. That's how we feel."
That's why the Telus dispute has been such a bitter one. "We accept that as the technology changes, the work is going to change," Sinclair says. "The issue is, can the company give the work to someone who's going to do it for a whole lot less? The only thing that has stopped them is the contract."
In B.C., where the union movement is much stronger than it is in the U.S., that depth of feeling has polarized the discussion of how our governments should help business compete in an extraordinary global economy and protect the interests of ordinary workers.
For the BC Liberal government, the flat-world strategy is a key component of its economic policy. For the labour movement, that strategy is a road to oblivion.
Read Part 1 of the Tyee's Outsourcing BC series here.
In Part 3, we'll look at the benefits and risks of provincial and national strategies to strengthen our economy and protect us against outsourcing.
Charles Campbell is a contributing editor to The Tyee. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Who Mowed Down the Premier?
- Canada's Economy, Deconstructed (by a 12 year-old)
- Death in Remand: a Tyee Inquiry
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- Death In Remand: 'A Gut Feeling'
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- Alberta Fills Pipes with Corrosive Denial
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- How Our Immune Systems Exaggerate Fear
- BC biotech company seeks approval for GM apple
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Should You Run from that Medical Test?
- 'The Dictator'
- Death in Remand: Stacked Deck
- 'Moonrise Kingdom'
- From Financial Advisor to Occupier
- Seven Goals to Build the Conservative 'Dream'
71
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Bob Rogers
6 years ago
Comments on "U.S. Outsourcing Millions of Jobs"
So you want free trade? This is the reality of free trade. This is also the reality of the "bottom line" For shareholders the bottom line is "Maximum returns on Investment". Look at Walmart vs Cosco and their philosophy of doing business. Walmart sucks a community dry by paying low wages and no benefits. Cosco contributes to the community by providing good paying jobs and company benefits. Cosoco also enjoys a better profitability per store.
The bottom line is not the bottom line
scylla
6 years ago
In the late Seventies - early Eighties, the financial pages of our papers held a one-sided debate on whether Capital owed anything to the country in which the Capital was made.
The predictable answer was Capital's only responsibility is to its shareholders, such as the Mythical "Little old lady in tennis shoes". Well, she has indeed prospered in the last twenty years or so - or at least the big fund managers have - but now the chickens are coming home to roost. There is no free lunch here either. (to mangle some metaphors :-)
The fundamental premise of Capitalism is that growth and prosperity is predicated upon the flow of money within the system, providing the profits and the societal benefits from that flow as it does so.
Today's massive outflow of Capital truncates that routine, and the only remedy will be trade isolationism, and with that will come a severe drop in our standard of living, perhaps preferable to a return to the Great Depression of the Thirties.
dorothy
6 years ago
So, this is a new kind of political warfare, or even just warfare. No longer a ballot, no longer a broadsword or a Winchester or Henry, but your consumer dollar. That's right. That is your new version of the never-leave-home-witout it handy self-defense. Are you a unionized worker? Did you ever set foot in Walmart and buy a pack of safety pins or a chocolate bar? Bully for you. What rattles in your pocket, be it much or little, represents the most far-reaching power you have. If you can, spend it in the following order: shelter that you own, then education: put everything you can in that head of yours, and then, only then, look at all the other stuff. All that garbage 'they' try to make you believe you need, when in fact most of us could do without most of it... Yesterday, we fought and debated and voted and fought some more to have the community we wanted. Today, we buy - or not, our way to the community we want.
Mel from Calgary
6 years ago
How come non-existant labour and environmental standards are never considered "un-fair subsidies"?
dorothy
6 years ago
Mel, you're onto something here. If only we could 1)agree on what the minmum standards should be. Oooops - we have that agreement through the UN's ILO. Now we only need 2) teeth in the mouth of the UN. But you're on the right path, no doubt. Keep chipping away at it.
On quite another note, I forgot the most important point in my fight-back program as outlined in my previous comment. Don't have 6 children. Is makes 'their' life too darn easy to make labor such a cheap commodity.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
The long and short of it is that neoclassical economics are a fraud, based on the fraudulent concepts and accounting systems of the GDP, Growth and Productivity figures. There are no such things. All three are imaginary idiocies designed to destroy and defraud.
Economic competition increases and trasfers costs on a wider base. Outsourcing is the transfer of costs, in short, a legalized theft.
What the hell does it mean that "Canada is a trading nation" ? What does "trading" mean? What is the definition of it ? This has come down from Mulroney when he was selling the FTA and kept on repeating this nonsense.
As long as Canadians and the world believes such fraudulent theories, the whole world's economy will be going downhill in an accelerated pace until the final crash that may bring on permanent war and armed gangs robbing and pillaging everywhere. In a way this is going on now through the colonizing and enslaving power of created, imaginary capital, the invention of neoclassical economists.
The basic problem is the present fraudulent definition of economic efficiency which not only encourages, but demands legalized robbery as the epitome of efficiency. Until this is fixed, there's no way out.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
skeptikool
6 years ago
Mel from Calgary,
To paraphrase a commentator, this morning, on The Current, following Canada's dismal performance in environmental matters, putting it just ahead of Belgium, "What the heck is Belgium up to?"
Ron Erwin
6 years ago
There is no sense in any of us trying to hide from the facts. The world is flat, as I having been telling you for years. How can we ignore reality. How can we see change things. We can't change things. We have to adapt.
Our standard of living will go down.
Grumpy
6 years ago
Ed, I go further, it's my contention that the Federal and Provincial Liberals are lying about the ecconomy. I believe that StatsCan's numbers are fraudulant, period. It is no joke that BC'secconomy is sustained by illegal drug operations (hence the light sentances for drug offenders), where the money is laundered by the burgeoning casino industry.
How it's done wasy two ways:
1) Black jack
2) slots
Remeber when one is laundering money money one must accept a certain percentage of loss. You hire proffesional blackjack players and on average you will get $6 clean dollars for every $10 dollars spent (including the % paid to the proffesional black jack player).
Slots are easy. You put in $200 play a few games and then you press a button for a chit which is cashed out automatically, turning dirty money into clean! Same is true with private cash machines!
That the Provincial and Federal governments are not even coming close to coming to grips with the problem as they lust after the gambling (tax) revenue!
Soon the drug dealers will run for office or are they already been elected? You see why there is little concern for lost jobs due to outsourcing, the powers that be don't give a damn about honest work and strive to reduce wages of honest people. That is how our ecconomy is working today!
Martin
6 years ago
It's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, and it's impossible to regulate the tide.
Doing business internationally is how we prosper. BC's own economy would be nothing if we didn't trade outside our borders. Sometimes that means that our own companies employ people elsewhere. Those jobs matter to the people there.
The only economy in the world that doesn't "outsource" is North Korea's.
GWNorth
6 years ago
Is their anyone out that knows what happened to MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment)? It seems to have dropped off the scope and that concerns me. It usually means that it has gone into the backrooms, out of public view, only to come to light after it has been signed, sealed and delivered. Why my concern? It was not to long ago that our Federal Keepers were actually looking at this agreement as something that they might concider. If this document is ever put into effect it will make the FTA and Outsourcing look like a nursury rhyme with a happy ending.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
The MAI by the OECD was killed by public pressure in 1997, when the French government backed out, fearing a revolution. Now, however, the wording is included in every free trade agreement and in the GATS being negotiated at the WTO, withe Canada's Sergio Marchi at the leading edge. We should also remembet that the MAI talks were started when, now again Liberal contender and "deep integrationist", John Manley was trade minister.
There are no straight lines in the universe, therefore the Earth is not flat, only the top of the heads of this idiocy promoters are, conspiring for corporate world dictatorship, with some fools and suckers believing in it.
Grumpy. You're right that the federal and provincial Liberals are lying about the economy, but their lies are based on the theory of neoclassical economics, the sure road to ruin.
We're not on the road to prosperity through globalization, but to total collapse, because the resource base of the globe can not sustain the pressures put on it by artificial capital licencing total exploitation and destruction. The huge inflation of the money supply for capital, created by the banks, under government legalization, is not convertible into resources indefinitely.
The economy runs on physical an not ideological laws. Every society that tried to ignore this simple fact has self destructed and if we don't look out, we can destroy humanity and the whole world with the powers now avalable to our "leaders".
lynn
6 years ago
Well said. The dark forces don't ever give up. They just distract and divert; all the while creating underground tunnels to meet their targets.
hat024
6 years ago
I was actually just in Bangalore, India working with software developers there. It would be a big mistake to think that they are being mistreated and work in some kind of high-tech sweatshop. Actually they have a high standard of living and work in beautiful new office complexes with manicured gardens, fitness centers, health clinics, etc. The fact is they deserve these good jobs just as much as we do. Clinging to those jobs with protectionist attitudes is useless - the jobs will go there anyway. But, we also don't have to sink to a level where the Canadian worker is underpayed and mistreated in order to compete. A third option became very clear to me when I was in India - we need to continue to be innovative, creative and keep inventing new technology/ideas - that, in turn, will invent new, rewarding jobs for Canadians.
Ron Erwin
6 years ago
Grumpy' I agree with you that there is a ton of money laundering happenimg. This money is never taxed. We apparantley need taxes to drive our social programs.
George Bush has been floating the " Fair Tax " idea. ( just Google it )
It's a consumption tax that replaces income tax. Let's say it's 23% as now floated.
This would be charged on absolutley everything we spend money on.
This means drug dealers and criminals would pay taxes on everything. It means a hard working Canadian could have means to pay for education and th elikes.
I would be interested in hearing views on this great idea.
The Revenue Canada employees might not like this as this entire dept. would be obsolete.
Frank
6 years ago
If we're a "trading nation" and the more foreign trade and ownership the better, then why are we in NAFTA? Why is there an EU? If there are no downsides shouldn't the whole world be in one big NAFTA? Why are there negotiations at all if its win-win?
The fact is, its not win-win. Its closer to a zero-sum game. Wages lost here are partially "compensated" for by a rise in India. The other 80% goes to corporate profits which is used to give multi-million dollar handshakes to cronies and ex-politicians who did what the company wanted.
North America and Europe make up a small portion of the world's population. Think about just how much our wages will have to go down for every percentage increase in the wages of the other 5/6 th of the world and the corporate profit share of that.
Ron Erwin may be happy to throw the lives of his grandchildren in the wastepaper basket in order to make the lives of someone in Asia better but very few would be. Its unnatural to not want your children to have a better life than subsistence in a polluted industrial ghetto.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
The only way to economic and environmental survival is the the development and encouragement of self sufficiency from the individual to the global levels. This means everywherer on Earth and not by so called "outsourcing".
I'm enclosing the picture of what the present economic hsteria is bringing to the world. Not to me, because I'll be long gone by then, but to our children and grandchildren. There's no win-win" , it is a physical impossiblity, only "win-pay". This rule applies also to self sufficiency, but there the "pay" effect can be reduced by lower resource/energy inputs.
I hope the website comes through OK, but if not, it is worth typing in.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
October 19, 2005
The China Crisis
Spectacular growth now biggest threat to environment
There is another side to China's exploding, double-digit-growth miracle economy - it is turning into one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever faced.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article320565.ece
dorothy
6 years ago
Now i'm going to do this thing that I always swore I wouldn't, namely talk about my old country. They are going to hell in handbasket equally with us, but for completely different reasons. However, once there was a sound notion being bandied about there, which I will quote:
We have come far with respect to wealth, when few have too much, and even fewer too little.
Quote unquote. Of course, the tricky thing is to ascertain the true size of these parameters. When we talk about other parts of the world, there are a few puzzlers, which keep cropping up, such as for instance: If I can send a kid to school, give him housing/clean water/clothes/medical and dental care, and religion to boot, for the price of a cup of coffee a day, where the deuce does the difference go, when I buy these things for my children??
In other words how much is enough here, there, and everywhere? Why the diff, who decides, and how? Again that consumer-dollar! Think twice, no, five times, before you let go of every penny. With it still in your hand, you can make terms and ask questions. Having handed it over, you may just have another stupid pacifier/white elephant to contend with...and your own sense of still being a nobody.
Grumpy
6 years ago
But the drug dealers are paying taxes, the % of take of the casino! Oh so clean, oh so quiet. This drug dealing/casino revenue gathering by the provincial govenment is an absolute disgrace.
I have heard that up to 60% of the ecconomy in the BC 'hurt'lands is casino/drug dealing. God help us!
How much of this money is reaching political parties?
sthrendyle
6 years ago
re: software guy who came back from bangalore. fifteen years ago, i was in mexico and saw (from the outside) the maquiladora plants operated by, yes, major American and Japanese companies to take advantage of cheap labour. the contrast between these gleaming plants and the squalor of the border shantytowns was shocking.
one thing not mentioned is the decimation of the agriculture (ie, family farms, etc) in third world countries which force people into cities to find these low-wage jobs in the first place. actually, the same thing happend in the USA - remember Farm Aid? then again, outside of monsanto, no one's ever made money out of farming. landholding, yes. agricultural production - pretty thin.
there are definite issues in 'choosing where you shop' that could likely do a lot to solve the situation, but - stressed to the max as we all seem to be - taking the 'easy way out' and going to Big Box MegaRetailer for everything is the most convenient and cost effective way to do it.
Bob Rogers
6 years ago
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." - John Maynard Keynes
The best we can do, as individuals, is to counter what we do not like by setting a good example. We must do what we can even if it is only on a local level. This is why I will be working on the upcomming federal election. Engaging the youth is one of our plans because they are the voters of the future.
hat024
6 years ago
sthrendyle, I am not disputing the abuses in the manufacturing sector. I am just giving a snapshot of the so-called white-collar outsourcing as I saw it. It is not being handled in the same way and our discussions of outsourcing should not be mixing them up. Software outsourcing is creating a stable middle class in India, not taking advantage of another group of near-slaves.
- software girl.
sthrendyle
6 years ago
always happy to be enlightened, software girl! from my understanding, sware companies are hiring in india because they can't find COMPETENT EMPLOYEES (ie, those with good math and computer science skills) in north america - wages are part of it, having reliable, creative, and hard-working employees is WAY more important. look, i went to the university of waterloo in the 70s and VERY FEW kids from WASP families went into pure math or computer science. engineering, yes, computer science - which, to be fair, was in its infancy - no. there was a huge number of chinese and south asian students - some canadian, some foreign - who gravitated to those faculties in the same way that i did to the humanities. i'm sure they're all doing very, very well - as they deserve to! like barbie said, 'math class is tough!'
actually, i believe there is a huge opportunity for canadian tourism operators to market canadian vacations to this burgeoning new south Asian middle class.
more to the point, my feeling while visiting mexicali was that 'if i were mexican, i'd rather be soldering circuit boards in that motorola factory than selling fly-covered raw chicken out on the street - at least the drinking water in the manufacturing plant is likely germ-free!'
Mel from Calgary
6 years ago
The worst thing about NAFTA and Free Trade is Canada traded away our energy advantage.
By not having a domestic price for oil, gas and electricity we cannot lure manufacturing jobs to Canada with discounted energy. Instead we have the worst of both worlds. We are de-industrialising and becoming more reliant on energy sales to fund overseas purchases for basic goods.
We need to see a break-down of how much of our "exports" are finished goods or raw materials. We also need to compare the number of units before NAFTA/FTA and after too know if it is successful.
I would say if people are advocating we would be better off being waiters and tour guides than producing finished goods then NAFTA/FTA is a failure.
Frank
6 years ago
"from my understanding, sware companies are hiring in india because they can't find COMPETENT EMPLOYEES (ie, those with good math and computer science skills) in north america"
That's what they say but there's lot of unemployed programmers around. What companies mean to say is they can't find competent programmers for under 25k a year.
hat024
6 years ago
Well, I'd agree that wages are the main reason, but definately the availability of talented employees is also a factor. They're not just getting competent programmers for under 25k, they're getting very good programmers for under 25k.
Supposedly, the software industry in Ottawa is rebounding because some of the people that got laid off from the tech companies started their own companies that are now taking off. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050921.gtcatec21/BNStory/einsider/ Maybe the labour unions should help employees start new businesses rather than fight the losing battle of job security.
Frank
6 years ago
Oh sure, there's lots of good companies in Ottawa, I'm using Xandros Linux myself, they do excellent work. But when you ask a programmer to reduce his salary to be competitive with someone in Bangalore it doesn't take him long to figure out the answer is no. A good programmer asked to reduce his salary to that level would still be putting in long hours but his pay would only be marginally better than someone working a 40 hour week at Wal-Mart.
So I can see why companies want to move. Software is easily moved across the net and you can get a 60 hour a week programmer for the price of a Wal-Mart greeter.
The answer however is not forcing Cdn programmers to take less, the answer is forcing Indian programemrs to sell to the Indian market, not the Canadian one.
sthrendyle
6 years ago
which brings up another point - (and i'm surely proving my ignorance here, to some degree) - in the way that we all used to have to know some code to even operate our old DOS computers, is being a programmer an 'easier' job than it was, back in the day? i talked to a guy (and this was in 1985) who told me that, as a programmer, his job was to 'put himself out of work in five years' (he was working on accounting sware.
i've got to wonder - how much more software do we really need?? a lot of sware is like the brain - you use about one-fifth of its capacity, and use that fifth ALL the time, but there are a lot of 'mystery functions' that most of us don't have the time to understand...
Frank
6 years ago
As for availability, the jobs have to be there first. If you're expected to go to university and get a comp sci degree you expect a good job at the end of it. Companies are no longer providing those jobs because they're moving the work to India yet at the same time they're bemoaning the falling numbers of kids taking comp sci.
You don't need to go to university for 4 years to be a Wal-Mart greeter. It would take a number of years as a $20,000 a year programmer before your comp sci degree starts paying off and yet you'd be working more hours than the greeter.
Seems very obvious to me why schools are seeing less applicants.
JIm
6 years ago
This is a much more complex issue than big bad corporations exploiting workers as many of you seem to believe.
The real problem is consumers. As long as consumers are buying products or services on price alone there will be outsourcing. Outsourcing in needed in order to deliver those products or services at a lower price. Remember business responds to customer demands.
If you are really serious about curving outsourcing you better be willing to pay at least 50% more for comparable products or services.
The only way to solve this from the business point of view is to make the tariffs so restrictive it makes the price of the goods equal. Then the consumer is faced with less selection at greater prices.
Remember we are also a exporting country and if other countries do this to us, like the US now, there will be rallying cries from everyone in Canada. If we leveled these huge tariffs against other countries they would no doubt retaliate thereby strangling our economy.
No matter what, if you say your committed to stopping outsourcing you better be committed to less selection at higher prices.
Unions are also a problem due to the fact that their actions and demands have driven up costs, specifically in manufacturing, to a level that makes it impossible to compete in the real world. If the unions weren’t so demanding there wouldn’t be a need to find cheaper alternatives abroad.
This is a complex issue with consumers, labour and business all contributing to the problem. Blaming it solely on business shows a lack of understanding of the entire issue.
Frank
6 years ago
Wrong JIm, as the article points out, corporate profits have risen far more than wages. Therefore companies could easily reign in their own profit expectations if they wanted to keep their prices low and keep work here in Canada. Since more people would be making a decent living there would also be a larger consumer base to buy those products. I wonder how many companies would move work out of Canada if it meant they also lost the Cdn market?
If engineering firms move their work out of the country, as some are starting to do, we will also see a drop in the number of kids going into engineering.
Fact is, business expects kids who would normally be attracted to math and science not to be able to do the math when it comes to plotting their own education and work choices.
sthrendyle
6 years ago
before the lefties on this board start jumping all over Jim (not that he's afraid of that) you might want to consider a fact in today's globe and mail's 'report on small business' which shows that only one in five new businesses survive after ten years. (many software companies are, in fact, small to midsize businesses, as are oil and gas, mining, and manufacturing companies). would YOU take your nest egg and piss it away on an enterprise with that kind of failure rate? yet these are the people who are creating jobs, wealth, knowledge, and progress in our society.
one interesting thing i got to thinking about awhile back is something as simple as the reliability of vehicles. i drive a detroit minivan, MUCH maligned by Phil Edmunston and the whole lemon-aid crew, yet it is WAY more reliable and drives far better than any car i drove through university. hence, local auto repair shops are out of business, i suppose, but is that a bad thing, necessarily? and you don't need a mechanic to change your oil, either.
downsizing and outsourcing are NOTHING NEW. i rode a chair at Whistler twenty years ago with aerospace engineer from the USA who had just been downsized in the first wave of defense contractor cuts. i asked him if he was bitter, and he said, no, but that he would NEVER TRUST an employer again. he said he'd work for one, and do his best, but that you cannot think that any job is 'for life' out there.
which gets to the real point. people in north america ALL live beyond their means. this is a fact that everyone on both left and right can mutually agree upon. what you do to correct that situation is another thing. i know a guy who was downsized after TWENTY years at a very well known vancouver company with a stellar labour record. i asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'hell, i'm going climbing for a year.' sounded to me like he was kinda waiting for the day to come.
Frank
6 years ago
sthrendyle. are you saying the answer to outsourcing is for all those people to go climbing?
"would YOU take your nest egg and piss it away on an enterprise with that kind of failure rate?"
I have and will continue to do so.
hat024
6 years ago
sthrendyle, I don't think programming software is any easier now, but it is easier to train yourself to do it with the wealth of information on the Internet. Also, the demand for software is only increasing - don't just think about your computer - think about your cell phone, your blackberry, your DVD player, a credit card swiper, a medical scanner, etc. These days even some refrigerators have computer chips.
lynn
6 years ago
The people working at those jobs are also creating wealth, knowledge, and progress in our society... and even yes, if the enterprise is successful, more jobs.
dorothy
6 years ago
re sthrendyle' latest comment:
this was my point in the two previous comments: 'We' live beyond our means (whatever that may mean). 'We' must look at downsizing as the new/old, but at any rate acceptable reality. Why don't 'we' just downsize the human race, which has outgrown its habitat. Where will we draw the line? Has anyone thought, that all that competition comes from there being too many people everywhere? our children will have to go through a bottleneck of 6 to 10 billion people on Earth, and then there is some hope, according to Scientific American, that a population decline will happen. Why do we not sit down, look at it rationally, and govern this process rather than just 'letting it happen'. This kind of M.O. is supposed to be the hallmark of intelligent beings, eh?
Charles Campbell
6 years ago
Regarding Reuters outsourcing efforts, journalists held a protest today outside its New York office to draw attention to jobs being shipped to Bangalore. The story is available at http://www.globaljournalist.org/magazine/2005-1/outsourcing.html
jamez
6 years ago
I'd like to see Canada make it illegal for companies to import goods from nations who's labour codes don't meet our own.
God knows what the economic consequence of that would be though.
sthrendyle
6 years ago
the key point in the Reuters story is: "Value added involves work pertaining to intellectual content."
THOSE are the jobs that are being kept in north america. the 'joe jobs' are being sourced out.
so how does one add value - well, education is a big one. 'work experience' through building contacts and networks is another. so, too, is flexibility. these are things that are anathema to unions, as is 'productivity.' but we won't go there.
another thing is that, due to the internet, there is an unbelievable amount on 'noise' in terms of content out there. it takes a smart person to wade through and find out what truly is of value, and what is hype.
no one said it was going to be easy, and who knows, maybe reuters will be hiring these jobs back in NYC in a few years time if they run into problems.
not that SOME journalists don't feel any particular 'entitlement' when it comes to their jobs, though. you don't know anyone like that i bet, do you charles?? - great story, btw. VERY well reported. hope you are compensated commensurate to your skills...
skeptikool
6 years ago
jamez,
As with Uncle Sam, there may be occasions when our sanctimony is quite misplaced.
A recent CBC radio program on Asian trade made reference to sweatshops. Whether the shoes referred to were made in such an establishment I do not recall, but there was mention of a pair of womans high heeled shoes manufactured in China for between $15/20 and sold in the Lower Mainland for $200.
Certainly, labour conditions deserve our active concerns, but do not unconscionable mark-ups, also - and should laws, perhaps, also govern those, Jamez?
I'm not holding my breath since, if one looks at gas prices for instance, governments are major beneficiaries of the gouging. In fact I've given up on expecting consumer advocacy from anti-social governments.
sdgreen
6 years ago
Could it be that consumers are just complacent?
Why is it that the very same product cost, no matter where it is produced, sort of aligns with the economy of a given country.
Case in point, round trip air fare between Malaysia and North America, if bought by M'sian's, is about $1000 cdn dollars cheaper, than what a Canadian would pay. Electronic goods are at least 50% cheaper etc.
Is it a case where the market charges for whatever the consumer is willing to pay.
The issue of consummerism and profit margins are linked in a given economy. In our worldwide economy, essentially the exact same products are available. From prescription drugs to cars. But they aligne themselves for selling price relative to that economies ability to purchase (taxes not withstanding).
Teh challenge for Canada (north America) is to find a way to produce a given product at a competitive price. What Canadian( north American) industry is good at is innovation and quality. These factors for the most part are not substantive in SE Asia or other countries apart from the EU.
The name of the game is how to re-establish industry in the manufacture of high volume consumer products here in Canada. Certainly the West is not known for this type of industry but we should.
How do we do that? Do we temproarily reduce wage/benefit in order to establish such and industry. Do we apply protectionist policies? Do we provide temporary tax advantages to investing companies?
We have the resources, we have a very good intellegent workforce and management (for the most part), and we can do this.
This is not a 'Left or Right' issue, it is a objective of all of us.
Why in hell can't we economically process 'raw logs' here in British Columbia, as opposed to sending them off shore or to the US?
redrivergirl
6 years ago
Martin, of course it's possible to 'put the genie back in the bottle' and it's already happening.
Have you been looking over the border lately? Neo-conservatism is self-destructing. The rats are abandoning ship. Not to mention the rise in protectionism that is dramatic to say the least. Two very tiny but significant items. One is that Delphi backs off on the huge exec payouts and the other is the congress and house did not accept their regular raise. Two tiny little events, but watch and see what they signify.
allan
6 years ago
Ed Deak, you make the most sense on this string with your argument these jobs are economic theft.
In fact they are far worse, from that perspective, than raw log exports, which at least reward us with a minimal stumpage fee, or have the Liberals rescinded that "red tape" as well?
Just as business has often been handsomely rewarded for creating jobs in Canada, we might consider imposing a few departure fees just this side of the exit door.
Before anyone replies that business is now
foot-loose and unencumberred with outdated social responsibilities beyond shareholder profits, I say it's not quite that clear.
Most of these new transient firms can be punished by any nation that simply bans their business entry to its citizens.
If you can't "do Canada" and maybe a few other lucrative areas a lot of potential clients have a reason to contract with your competitor.
The most important factor, in my mind, is that government look at this as the loss of resources and weighs the damage carefully.
Rather than simply seeing it as an industry thing, Ottawa might even begin to spend the "peoples'" surplus EI premiums trying to protect against further job erosion.
It does highlight, once again, that this so-called free-trade boom is really about corporate opportunities rather than personal empowerment.
Redrivergirl, good observations and dot connecting.
redrivergirl
6 years ago
Thanks Allan,
They're not going to be able to buy the silence and loyalty of upper management anymore as this trend proceeds. The chairman went from the familiar neo-con refrain, 'we deserve it cause we're so great', to 'I would have difficulty looking my employees in the eye' in about a week. It seems the justice dept may save their country and by proxy the rest of us. I have faith in our RCMP on that level as well.
I think what's happening is the real conservatives have revolted and are taking back their party and vision for the country. The public has awakened to the con and must be strong enough to face what was done to them after 911. It's pretty hard to miss the parallel of Katrina and 911 and the exploitation. The hiring of foreign workers to rebuild the gulf coast, the removal of employee protection and fair wage practices while awarding a huge contract to Haliburton with so many Americans unemployed has the real patriots up in arms. Plus the possibility of treason right in the White House. It's a bit much.
I think it's really symbolic that DeLay will have to be finger printed etc, in spite of the attack they're launching on the Earle. Earle is saying you aren't above the law. DeLay and the rest of them of course thought they were. And, while he's talking like he still is, he looks very shaken.
redrivergirl
6 years ago
This was supposed to be the last two sentences. It's misplaced for some reason.
dorothy
6 years ago
redrivergirl, you are confusing me totally! RCMP was a Canadian outfit last time I looked, but it seems the neo-cons and real cons you are talking about are on the other side of that border I hope is still there. In Canada, I have fretted the last 30 years over not being able to buy a can-opener that doesn't say 'made in China' on it. Yes, I would pay more. The fact that I keep having to buy these imported crappy ones makes me think it might be worth it to produce one that could last a life-time. Now I know that would bring me in conflict with the notions aired in the second chapter of Brave new World - that stuff about ending being better than mending, about 'loving nice new clothes', and about how we want people to like going into the country, not to enjoy nature, since it is for free and so will not keep a factory running and a profit turning, but only so they can play sports that require equipment, the cost of which goes through the roof, wherefore we electro-shock them into not liking flowers, while they are in nursey school. But I don't care. The truth will out. Or it's already 'out there'. Whatever. I will repeat: We need a cultural shift, not to the left or right, or up or down, but in the direction of truth and enlightenment, and the guts to act on these commodities once we are assimilated into the collective of the enlightened. To that end, check out the WORLD VALUES SURVEY. Use these words as search parameter on any major search engine, and the scales will fall from your eyes. Enjoy. Or not. But see the light and act on it.
redrivergirl
6 years ago
I so agree. Will check out the survery.
redrivergirl
6 years ago
I just have to say though, the 'left' with it's concern about social justice and the environment is well on its' way and has been for years. Off to check out the site.
scylla
6 years ago
I'm impressed with this thread, and will go over it again later.
But I didn't see any answer to my implied question: "Does Capital owe nothing to its country of Origin?". If it reinvested even a significant portion of the profits it makes here, that would in turn employ more of our own people.
Why should we be expected to go to War in defense of our country if the Capitalists feel no such loyalty? Is the purpose of nationhood simply to provide a home base for the Industrialist?
People "blame" unions for our "high" wages, but what about this?:
It seems to me we're forgetting that our system is - nominally at least - supposed to be set up for the good of all.
nestingtree
6 years ago
This whole topic and discussion threat reminds me once again how very useful it would be if every person with a vote were able to take a few courses in economics or at least read some fundamental theories (on either side of the political spectrum). There are some great ideas on here, but equally as many nonsensical statements and arguments. Sadly, its just not the case that world economics (and solutions to problems emanating from them) can be understood by merely reading the news, listening to rhetoric, and making up the rest in one's head.
Peacock
6 years ago
A few observations:
1) Global poverty has long been lamented,
2) and we live on a finite planet;
3) hence, toÂ*alleviate poverty worldwide, no one country can consume resources far beyond any other country.
4) Free trade and open competition necessarily mean that many citizens of rich countries will lose their wealth and citizens of some formerly poor countries will exponentially take that wealth, with the result of more balanced of wealth worldwide;
5) nevertheless, there is not enough planet to feed the current consumerism for very long, the planet is in poor health and every study on just about every critical life-sustaining feature of the earth is a dark tale indeed,
6) and, indeed, the future already looks catastrophic for a large majority of earthlings.
We're witnessing the days that, if we're honest with ourselves, we've always known would come.
It's hypocritical of politically progressive 'compassionate' North Americans--and I include myself here--to lament the lowering of our standard of living. Because under that coin are many formerly poor Indians and Chinese who have a somewhat brighter future. Am I wrong here?
When I hear bitching about the flatening of our City On A Hill by the industrious poor of the world, I don't feel much. But I do get ill every time the Globe and Mail has an ad for a $70,000 Cartier watch or includes one of those Driven or Q magazines in my morning paper. We've had it good for quite a while, people. We're living on borrowed time and money now.
I think the best we can do at this point is to acknowledge the fact of our collective survival or demise and fight like hell to:
1) Implement cooperative strategies to protect human rights and the environment
2) Make sure that wealth is not simply shifted to another minority
If I'm am going to lose my $70 an hour job and my free time to surf and myÂ*mini-van that takes me to Costco for 5lb bags of exotic coffee that seem really inexpensive, then I at least want to see some improvement in theÂ*story-line of humanity and our planet. At this late hour, that is what we should be asking for.
Frank
6 years ago
Canada is a big country of only 30 million people. It is not up to us to feel bad about our standard of living. I would love to see other countries rise to the same level, but not at our expense.
Resources should not go to the country with the highest birth rate. Instead, a birth rate should be checked by the resources available.
If Canada had a billion people we would feel justified in feeding off the resources of less populated countries?
All in all, I agree with the sentiment but it is unsustainable. There is no bigger planet to go to as our population increases. It would be wonderful if our planet could support 50 billion people but the fact is its already straining under the current population level.
Canada already has its population under control. If it wasn't for immigration our population would be in decline.
I suggest other countries should get a handle on theirs before they attempt to shame us for not reducing our expectations so that our resources can feed their birth rate.
No one will ever find a billion well paid jobs for India or China. If their resources will only supply 200 million well paid jobs then maybe they should be spending some time studying that issue before they worry about targeting all the IT jobs in north america.
bilgladstone
6 years ago
This is the interim age. The time when the corporate paradigm that never takes extrinsic costs into account rules.
At some point in the not-too-distant future (it mustn't be too long, because there will be no future otherwise) all genuine costs will be moved into the ledgers and the outsourcing trend will evapourate.
Frank
6 years ago
The view that north americans are somehow gifted and able to think more creatively than asians or africans is based on wishful thinking and nationalism.
I would suggest the only basis for that view held by some economists and talking heads is that out society's wealth has freed more people to spend their time thinking instead of working from dawn to dusk to feed themselves at a subsistence level. As the leisure time of other nations increase and our's declines I expect that creativity gap to be closed pretty quickly.
It is my belief that if other factors are equal, Africans and Asians are just as able as we are.
scylla
6 years ago
One of the things so far overlooked on this thread has been that in most if not all of the poor countries, a great economic disparity between the rich and the poor has always been the norm, and accepted as "normal".
How much then, of this new-found wealth do we think will "trickle down" to the poor? How much will be funnelled into improved health care, education and so on? How long before the now-scarce IT workers will be reduced to the wage-slavery of today's Asian clerk?
As we've seen, official curruption has long been rife in these countries and our businessmen and politicians - always at the ready to trumpet Democracy and Free Enterprise - have always instead accepted the payola route rather than to insist that loans and aid also result in higher living standards. So forget about any quick rise in living standards driving them and us toward an acceptable "parity".
If we lose our unions, we're hooped.
dorothy
6 years ago
Scylla wrote:
But I didn't see any answer to my implied question: "Does Capital owe nothing to its country of Origin?". If it reinvested even a significant portion of the profits it makes here, that would in turn employ more of our own people.
I will try:
Whether capital owes anything or not is immaterial. When we gave 'the corporation' legal status as a 'party' in its own right, we accepted that psychopaths have the right to speak and to influence the course of history. A corporation is, by definition, a psychopath. It is created in order to take care of itself. It is configured to do this and nothing else. It has no compassion, no allegiance to any other party, no social conscience, and accepts no obligation other than to its shareholders and their goal of the biggest possible return on their investment. Unless and until the last 'registered lobbyist' becomes history, we have no democracy, no equality, and no community, but a loose association of warlord-led entities known as corporations or, for those that don't quite fit that header, 'interest groups'. Get your own mob, put a warlord at its head, 'lobby' for all you're worth, and you're doing something. Paul Martin could pick up the guts to tell religious leaders that Canada is a secular society. Now he only has to learn to tell corporate warlords that Canada is a human society.
Mel from Calgary
6 years ago
The poor are god's gift to the rich.
lynn
6 years ago
Canada is a big country of only 30 million people. It is not up to us to feel bad about our standard of living. I would love to see other countries rise to the same level, but not at our expense. wrote Frank.
So true. It's really quite curious that these same neo-con guys and gals that fawn over the USA view their home country of Canada with such disdain...almost embarassed by it...unable to see the good standard of living and health care that Canada has built up over the years....that Canada is envied for.
Yet, they are still quite willing to sell all those fine qualities down the road...and for a song.
Sometimes I think they need a good shrink. And fast.
lynn
6 years ago
Sorry, Frank, I meant to put that that top paragraph in quotes.
Frank
6 years ago
lynn, I think its simple greed masquerading as "economics".
Corporations aren't looking at hiring managers overseas for peanuts, nope, its just labour that is supposed to share the bounty.
Corporate executive salaries are somehow immune from their utterances that its a global world and we Canadians have to learn to make do with less and rein in our expectations. Again, just working-class Canadians, not executive-class Canadians.
Its all just syrup to sugar-coat the policy of a drive to the bottom.
Christian
6 years ago
Have a look at this scenario:
By outsourcing medical and law personnel-our Universities will not have to train them any longer--India does that at a much better price; we can then lay of University faculties, and that saves money.
We are already outsourcing call centers, factory jobs etc...
Now lets outsource, wait for it... politicians and CEO's!
Now I believe these should come from Africa, as the going rate will be even cheaper than India and China. With Skype and other tech solutions they could live there and steer everything here-- at a fraction of the cost.
Imagine a Premier of British Columbia at the rate of $1,200/ year or the CEO of TELUS at a fraction of what he makes. The money saved could go to pay for more cable channels... everyone will have more time to watch reality TV. Isn't that great??
redrivergirl
6 years ago
Christian, of course they plan on betraying those who they are paying off now. If they accomplish what they want, they will no longer have any use at all for these 'enforcers' and will dump them into our new world order as well. In the US under eminent domain, water front property owners are having their homes appropriated for development. Can't happen here? Kits point would be covered in highend condos and home owners be darned. There's no end to where it would stop.
Thank goodness it's over. And, soon we'll be able to begin the clean up. It is like a massive freight train still causing damage as it is in the process of screeching to a halt. The train will damage everything it runs into while it is stopping and that is what we're seeing now.
It's one thing to keep an already downtrodden, massive population down, it's another to create a new oppression on a massive population.
redrivergirl
6 years ago
They've only gotten away with what they have so far because of stealth. For the most part that's over now.
jamez
6 years ago
"Certainly, labour conditions deserve our active concerns, but do not unconscionable mark-ups, also - and should laws, perhaps, also govern those, Jamez?"
Tough question.
I'm of the belief that if people are dumb enough to pay for shoes at such a markup they deserve to. However, you point about fuel makes an interesting argument. What do we deem as something that should be subject to price controls? Who knows? That's tricky... we should start a committee ;-)
dorothy
6 years ago
redrivergirl wrote:
"It's one thing to keep an already downtrodden, massive population down, it's another to create a new oppression on a massive population."
It has nevertheless been done, and very successfully. Ask any grand inquisitor, or any king in a feudal society. Don't have them anmymore? Look again. The top guns and their lackeys, and THEIR errand boys, and THEIR faithful broomswingers, and so on, all the way down to the trussed-up, ready-to-suck-dry underdog, who makes weekly, biweekly or monthly amounts of money and not only hands over every penny in return for stones-not- bread, but also gets indebted and mortgaged and creditcarded to the hilt, so he will never be able to buy his freedom in his lifetime. Not feudal? you bet! I said it before, we don't vote or fight or organize our way to the society we end up with, we buy our way there. You want to change things? DON'T BUY IT ANY MORE...
redrivergirl
6 years ago
I'm not denying they are doing their damnedest. I'm saying the pendulum has swung once more.
scylla
6 years ago
God, I wish you were right, redrivergirl, but what about the 95% of the people who are totally unaware of the issues we are discussing on this thread, and what's worse don't WANT to know about them?
What about the stock-room boy who buys Nike brand clothing and footwear out of him slim paycheque just to feel he hasn't been left out? Or the waitress with her name-brand glad-rags? Or the people locked onto reality TV? Or the Hummers on our streets and the 4x4 with four-foot high tires?
We're in a zoo, with ourselves as the exhibits. How hungry will we have to get before we recognise that consumerist carrot dangling before our noses for the Soma it is???
redrivergirl
6 years ago
I agree scylla. More suffering will have to occur. I believe we are at the stage where the pendulum has just started (about six months ago) it's movement in the opposite direction. Like the second longest day of the year, it is still cold and still dark, but the day is inperceptively moving toward longer sun. I know more suffering and more acts of economic violence will occur before it is obvious.
scylla
6 years ago
Interesting that today, redrivergirl, I was talking to a "snowbird" who regularly winters in a retirement village in Arizona. We've never agreed on politics, so as a rule don't discuss it. Thus, I was surprised to have her venture the following:
The village is comprised of very conservative retired farmers and so on, who have in her experience always been ready to discuss health plans etc with a "communistic" Canadian, just out of curiousity.
Last winter that began to dramatically change, and she thinks there was now almost a fear of any discussion which could hinge upon politics in any way. We were interrupted before I could ask her what she thought was the cause of this.
But it is easy to guess, all you have to do is to understand how dramatically intrusive upon personal freedoms - especially free speech - is the US Patriot Act. Couple that to the fear that even your next-door neighbour might belong to a terrorist "sleeper cell", plus the extreme patriotism of Americans, and the paranoia becomes understandable.
Those who lived through the Fifties will recognise the syndrome, so reminiscent of the McCarthy Years when even the accusation of being a "Communist sympathiser" was enough to cause one to lose his/her job and/or be ostracised. We felt some of that oppression here, too, in the police persecution of any union leader who could be construed as a "ComSymp".
Understand then, that some of our resident trolls represent pretty nasty people, and the epithet "braunshirts" fits them well.
Since we didn't really recognise we were experiencing McCarthyism when we were in it, perhaps we are too close to today's Fascist excrescences to recognise them for what they truly are. Thus maybe as you say, rr-girl, we are nearly thru the worst of it.
If history does repeat itself, perhaps we'll see an analogue to the Sixties, which, (though I was too old for the sex 'n drugs :-), was the most culturally exciting time of the last Century.
dorothy
6 years ago
An interesting thing here: Many of the viewpoints people think they have to worry about standing up for as individuals and run the risk of being labelled all sorts of things are actually not just viewpoints with no rubber stamp or established legitimacy. Many of these 'points' are already solidly entrenched in Canadian law, if we only knew it. My number one remedy to sleepless ngihts therefore: read your law books, you will be surprised and reassured on many things. Oh, now you will say I am naive, for one thing is to put it on paper, another to see it practised. The trick is, that we need to state the stuff to the point of sounding like a broken record. The next generation will then have heard it a million times, and they will believe things never were any different. It is all about taking ownership of what already belongs to us.
The sixties slogan I remember best is: 'be active for peace today, or radioactive tomorrow'. Culturally exciting - yes, but also depressing, as the nuclear arsenals went through the roof. Besides, the one about being active for peace escaped my grasp, until I became knowledgeable of these beautiful words:
Peace is not simply an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
(Baruch Spinoza)
scylla
6 years ago
Great advice and great quote, Dorothy. It's been said a thousand times in as many ways by all the great religious teachers.
Ghandi stands as a beacon for us all by practicing what he preached, utilising those qualities Spinoza extolls in mobilising the "powerless" through his example.
Thus was derived another Sixties slogan - Power to the People.
The power elites need us far more than we need them.