Recently Greenspan defended outsourcing, or at least warned against protectionism. Some thoughts:
That sets up why Greenspan is supporting outsourcing. He is basically clueless about what is actually driving the technical economy and he is using his understanding of historical trends and the influences of the management set to drive his decision making.
Unfortunately, it's all wrong. Once again the people at the top fail to understand that the roots of the technical economy is the engineers creating the innovation that these companies then productize. Even a lot of my friends within the industry fail to realize this.
What I don't understand is the message that Greenspan thinks he is sending to America's youth. I'd love to ask him which career path he would pick for his own kids. What would he call a secure bet for the future? The only two that I can think of are law or politics.
We have created an educational system in the United States that teaches two different paths, if you do well then you will get a nice white collar job, if you do badly, then you get a hard work blue collar job. The CEO jobs are reserved for those from private schools and old money. This social guarantee has worked since the 40s but now, with outsourcing, those jobs are going away. So now what do we tell our kids?
Posted by jherr at February 23, 2004 07:55 AMYes, I saw Greenspan's comments and it bothered me too, mostly because he is regarded as some kind of sage when it comes to economic policies. Who is this guy anyways? Did he ever manage a large business successfully? He's probably just some bozo with a PhD from Harvard. Isn't Greenspan a Bush implant? What especually bothered me was saying that the problem was education. Then how does he explain that why so many people with college educations and advanced degrees are being laid off?
What everyone seems to not get is that there's a difference between outsourcing blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. When a blue-collar person gets laid off due to outsourcing, there seems that there's at least a possibility to be educated into a better paying white-collar job. However, when the white-collar jobs disappear, as is occuring now, no one has been able to specifically state WHAT one should be educated into. The only specific thing I've heard came from some MIT professor who stated that retail jobs should be made better. It's like their trying to convert white collar workers back into blue collar workers.
With all the heat the Bush administration has been getting over outsourcing, it's not surprising that they want to re-classify fast food jobs as "manufacturing jobs", LOL, like making a burger is manufacturing something.
Posted by: Bush Monkey at February 23, 2004 11:52 AMGreenspan was a Clinton appointee I believe. I don't know his background but his is considered brilliant. He did what was right at the beginning of the tech bubble. You put money into the tech sector and you will get lots of companies doing a lot of cool stuff.
What he doesn't understand is that the underlying structure of the tech sector is different from the manufacturing sector. In manufacturing the top really does drive innovation. In tech innovation is driven from the outside and companies are reactive.
Posted by: Jack Herrington at February 23, 2004 08:37 PMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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