Games and Gadgets

By Jerry Pournelle

April 7, 2003

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Column 272 (Continued from the Previous Week)

Going Offshore

I have often expressed the concern that free trade is ending many to most of the manufacturing jobs in America. This not being Lake Woebegone, half of our workers are going to be below average, which doesn't mean they are not good workers and good citizens; but does mean they aren't going to be competing for highly intellectual jobs. A country that has no meaningful work for a large part of the citizenry is in trouble, and it's unlikely that democracy can survive that. Blue collar manufacturing jobs were the mainstay of America for a long time. Now they are increasingly being exported, not only to Mexico, but from Mexico to Asia. There was a giant sucking sound after all.

But it's worse: EarthLink is closing its Pasadena tech support operations, and moving those information worker jobs, not to Atlanta, but to India. That may be optimum strategy for corporate America, but I am not so sure it's optimum for the nation.

And I am reliably informed that without exceptions to the immigration quotas, some of our high tech companies would have to export really top level design jobs: They're just not finding people with the proper education and training here. My guess is that's partly true and partly unwillingness to pay higher wages; but it's still a disturbing trend.

You can in part blame the schools: Kids brought up to have undeserved high self esteem aren't likely to be too useful to employers. Of course the remedy is to turn out kids with deserved high self esteem, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

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