I saw an article recently that claimed Indian companies are outsourcing programming jobs to Vietnam and Singapore, because labor's cheaper there.

I think the IT industry is just like the automobile or timber industries. The US has lost tons of jobs before and it'll happen again. This time around though it's not the blue collars. Imagine all the poor automobile workers that have gone to ITT (a local "become an IT professional in 6 mos" "school") and now they'll have to retool again. Where will they go? Where will *I* go?

Neil - I totally agree with you. In fact, on my way home from work today, I was thinking about the exact same thing: This time, it's a large group of white-collar workers who are losing their jobs. This is really a pretty big deal. When a blue-collar worker loses a job, then there's only so much difference in life - Maybe a move to a new apartment, switch to a different bus line. When a white-collar worker loses a job, it's bye-bye house, and bye-bye car. If you want to see the real-estate bubble burst, then just keep your eyes peeled.

Saw your post regarding outsourcing to India. Met with a potential client last week that doesn’t need my web design services, because he can have everything built in India, through a guy in Seattle. Took a look at the potential client’s last “Built in India” site and must say that it’s not quality that I would be losing to. Some solace in that. I feel rather conflicted about the whole issue, because I do like to see the Indians as a wall of democracy blocking the spread of conservative Islam and Chinese hegemony (Of course, I would feel even better about them if they would lose their lousy caste system. Rather disgusting, but then again so is all of the slavery in the gulf states and other parts of the Arab world. Then again, we have prison labor taking jobs in the states. Oh, to hell with it. Our whole damn species is still swimming in the mud we rose from. Rome is burning. Pass the marshmallows— as long as they aren’t poncy little friends of yours).

Dudes...capitalism at it's best, not that there is anything wrong with it. I see why one would complain about all that outsourcing, had my own 6 month forced vacation during the .com burst, but then, did you really expect that things just stay the same. The way I see it, it just tightens the screws a bit more and forces the have's to think a bit smarter and the have not's to get out of where they shoudn't have been anyway. If it would have been up to Al Gore we would have outsourced not only IT but our food supply, natural resources etc. and turned our country into one big national park (not that that doesn't sound attractive). I havn't heard what he planned with all the 350 Million Americans, maybe send them as street workers to India.