Do I need to learn the Indian National Anthem?

As previously mentioned, I had written a post about a segment on a news show regarding the outsourcing of American jobs to India. I was filled with a most righteous anger, which has been toned down a tad since last night, but I still find this phenomenon to be quite infuriating. The show was on from 7-8pm CST on NBC. I'm not sure if it was 60 Minutes or what. But they noted that approximately 400,000 jobs have been outsourced to India in recent years. I can understand why it is a feasible financial solution for an American company to outsource their positions because of the 30-50% savings that occur from only paying out an average of $2-3,000 per year to Indian employees. Following are a few companies which utilize this business plan:

• JP Morgan
• Amazon.com
• AOL (yet another reason to hate them)
• Dell
• Massachusetts General Hospital - MRI's are sent to India.

These companies and others like them claim that by outsourcing jobs to areas of cheaper labor "savings are passed onto customers; so they get better savings". OK, my concern with this is...who will be able to afford your product and/or services when the unemployment levels are so high in this country? Americans need American jobs from American companies. I don't want to call up because my Dell computer isn't working and hear a customer rep named "Tommy" in Somalia screaming cause his leg is being gnawed off by a tiger in his hut. * Ok, I have to interject something about unemployment levels people do not seem to understand or consider. Just because the unemployment levels drop doesn't mean there is some major hiring going on and that people have re-entered the workforce. A person can only be on unemployment for so long before they are dropped, these people are discounted. Remember how long ago the layoffs and downsizings began? Well, it's been well over a year, who KNOWS how many people are STILL unemployed, just not being accounted for by the government because their unemployment benefits ran out and they are basically forgotten. Hopefully, this makes you realize that there could potentially be a much larger pool of the unemployed out there than is currently considered, and that these 400,000 jobs might be better off in the US. Because, if these people are earning their money and injecting it into the economy, it stimulates growth and eases us out of a recession. Why do you think the government has been lowering interest rates to rock-bottom levels? If you have no idea how that works, the government lowers tax rates so the lower to middle-class tax brackets will spend more of their newly acquired disposable income. (The higher you go up in the food chain the less money is spent on "frivolities" and the more goes into savings.) One of the Indian gentleman stated that "Geography is history. Boundaries don't matter." I call bullshit. I don't much think that if I decided to purchase a ticket to some western european country they'd be altogether happy my unemployed non-native-language speaking ass popped in to freeload off of them? There are such things as boundaries and regulations to keep an influx of the downtrodden masses from over-running a country. As we all know, the platform of the presidential candidates has been focused on getting more jobs available to Americans. Want me to tell you a little secret? Government agencies themselves are outsourcing welfare and benefits calls to other countries. This insiduous plot isn't just lack of jobs it has to do with deceitful practices. If you call up your credit card company and get a woman named "Janet" with a sort of weird accent, she might be Indian. But, her pseudo name does not reflect her ethnicity, it is actually, most pointedly to DEFLECT from her ethnicity and make her more American. They even take classes to learn vernacular and slang. One part of the news segment showed a man standing at a board asking what "quit yanking my chain" means. Well, I want to wrap this up and have one more point to make. This is the thing that disturbed me the most. A company in Bombay by the name of Sureprep sends tax returns to their office in Bombay. Last year about 1000 tax returns were sent. They think approximately 25,00 were sent in 2004. In 2005 it is estimated that around 200,000 tax returns will be sent overseas. I find this to be disturbing because of 2 things:

1. I don't want my personal tax information being viewed by some stranger in a faraway land. I find that to be rather disconcerting. ESPECIALLY, when I'm pretty damned sure they don't say, "Hey, you DO realize that we're sending this information to be processed by workers in Bombay, right?"
2. When asked if they had any concerns about safety, the gentleman said no, because it was a paperfree environment.

Ok, call me paranoid but I'm remembering the fact that these workers are making about $2-3,000 a year. If they run across Mr. Jone's name, address, and social security number, who is to say that they won't MEMORIZE the information when they note that Mr. Jones seems to make $80,000 a year? In this day and age of identity theft, I, for one, don't feel particularly comfortable having my personal information being shipped halfway across the world. This might not be a huge deal or concern to anyone else. But, I am in the IT field, and a majority of these jobs being sent to China, Russia, and India are IT positions because, hell...they'll do the work for the fraction of what it would cost an American. And if you are paying a damned bit of attention to the availability of IT jobs in the US you will note it's pretty darned abysmal. I went to college in this country, I figured I would work in this country. But, unless you want to sell your soul to the devil, or have an in, you are not getting into a company in the present climate. So, I have a couple of choices....Figure out a different field, in which the $50k I spent for my education was pretty much a complete waste of time; or move to a third world country and make a couple thousand a year? *India is considering the point where they will have to outsource to other countries like China...Perhaps, eventually things will swing back around after America becomes a third world country after spending billions helping everyone but ourselves and sending all of the jobs overseas.