Ok I try to stay very technical and informative but sometimes I have to blog about something I'm passionate about.  This time, it's my predictions for outsourcing to India, how Walmart will bring the US economy to collapse (and I'm pro Walmart, go figure!) and everything else related.

First let me get the Walmart thing off my back.  The whole inspiration for this post is the recent news of the Anti Walmart Movie now showing across the US.  Yes, I agree, Walmart needs to create policies to prevent some of the shady things going on but please realize these are problems the employees & supervisors create, they are absolutely not company endorsed ideas.  Also anybody who thinks Walmart ruins other company's jobs obviously doesn't know that Walmart evaluates the retail jobs existing in an area (before construction begins) and pays higher than the average wage for the same jobs.  If that isn't an improvement to a local economy then what is?  Anybody who brings up their lack of health insurance obviously doesn't realize NO lower tier part time jobs offer health insurance in the retail world (managers excluded) because the turn over is so high, it's easy to find anybody to be a stock boy or sales clerk.  But it is arguable in some situations like in Florida where the majority of Walmart employees have to use Medicare health insurance which the state picks up the bill while at the same time Walmart gets tax cuts from the government because of the number of jobs they create.  Of course the truth here is every other retail company is already doing this, the only difference is it's spread across dozens of companies where as it's easy to finger Wall-mart when they are the biggest in the industry.  Is this a problem?  Yes, but I dont know if demanding that Walmart offers health insurance to part time employees is the answer (because it will either be too expensive because the employee has to pay full price, which is often $200-$300) or more per month.  It's arguable and out of the scope of this post.

Ok now that I've spent too much time on that subject....

India outsourcing is wildly popular, in essence China & Mexico did the same thing to the manufacturing business in the 80s and 90s, so honestly there's nothing new here.  Fortunately outsourcing is seen only for non-creative and non-inventive contracts.  R&D is still done in the US and so is most creative design work.  This is temporary because since so many people in these countries are programming, you will begin to see these coders come up with good ideas and market them on their own.  While most software today seems to come from the US, expect fierce competition from overseas.  If they're really smart, then these oversea start ups will use an American address to help perpetuate the "made in America" concept.  Oops, I already gave them a good idea.

Is this a bad thing for America's economy, I believe it is.  Should to US government do something about it?  I'm not so quick to say yes and government involvement in business is often a bad thing.  Rules & regulations muck up the gears and adds red tape.  My only quick fix answer is that perhaps the taxes on foreign goods, both physical & informational (software, data, services) needs increasing and that these taxes would ONLY be used to help foster more business in America.  There's no stopping the power of cheap, Walmart has proven that.  Cheap is the best marketing tool ever created, and for the most part cheap wins over quality and principles.  You may insist on quality, but what about every other person in America?  Your 1 sale doesn't compare to 50 million others PER DAY.

And finally back to Walmart, one concept this movie pushes is the "living wage".  This is the biggest load of socialism to ever hit America.  Jobs in America (and most countries) are paid fairly in relation to how rare your skill is and how hard the job is (sometimes).  Truth is, there are more people in America than jobs.  When you do a job that anybody can do, it's paid at or near minimum wage and rightfully so.  Anybody who thinks they deserve to be paid more for a non skill job just wants a free ride.  Anybody who wants a free ride, loves socialist ideals.  Trust me, if every retail cashier received $40k a year as a "living wage" America's economy would crash faster than black friday.

On a tangent I want to squash a myth about foreighn cars.  Because the tax on importing foreign cars is so high, that nowadays all foreign cars are assembled in America as it's cheaper to assemble the cars here, only the parts are made overseas.  In fact I've read many studies that prove foreign car companies employee more Americans than American car companies do.  Leave it to say when anybody claims I'm not pro American because I drive a Nissan I explain this tidbit to them.  Ironic eh?

PPS: not all companies are out to cut corners at the sake of the US economy, Dell builds new plants in the US and I've heard Cost Co pays much more to their employees than their competition ($16 an hour on average, wow!)