So, according to the shrub, the problem with jobs is not outsourcing...

[tjwash]

...it's that we are stupid, and uneducated, and have been passed through the school system without learning anything.

But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.

I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.

So he is basically telling someone who is 53 years old, and has been working for the last 30 years, and just lost their job and pension, to someone in Calcutta, that they need to go back to school and learn a new trade. And that's assuming that the SOB does not do away with the JC system, or public schools completely if he is allowed to disgrace the oval office for another 4 years.

And people are STILL undecided about this guy?

[On the Road]

1. Yes, and All Those Steelworkers

who retrained to be programmers are now training their replacements from India. Now they have to compete against guest workers who make $5/hour.

[tjwash]

4. I know, all the IT people at my job...

...are saying their replacements in India are being trained also.

Good point also, about the people retraining and now that they are retrained their new jobs are being outsourced.

[skypilot]

2. The low point of the debate for me...

...was Bush promising to give people money for COMMUNITY COLLEGE!!! Is he so out of touch that he doesn't realize that alot of the people who are losing their hi-tech jobs to outsourcing went to college and got bachelors and even masters degrees already?

[tanyev]

9. Oh, yeah

My husband is a software designer with a master's degree and although he thankfully still has his job, he has seen many of the jobs at his company (Nortel) go to India. In fact, he ends up training a lot of the employees in India, because the job market there is very fluid and the people they contract with have high turnover. So if he did lose his job, what in the sam hill kind of skill could he learn at a community college that he would find as fulfilling and would pay as well?
:grr:

[tjwash]

11. That's a rough one too.

I'm sorry about that. I know quite a few programmers that I am interviewing right now for some open positions at my company, that are in the same boat.

If it's any consolation though, the outsourcing of call centers is going horribly for a lot of companies. Hell even Walmart is considering dropping IBM as their IT provider, because the outsourced help desk is so incompetent. There are several companies that have been losing customers because of incompetent call centers, and are considering moving the tier one and two support back to domestic, because it has been hitting them in the pocketbook.

[lanparty]

14. The current lie is ...

The current bogus lie is he's supposed to go back to school for 2-3 years to become a biomedical engineers. Software is NO LONGER a job of the future. That's SOOOO 20th century!!!

Biomedical, that's the way of the future!!!!


Remember, they told us during the 90s that we were all supposed to go learn computer skills to be protected from the ravages of globalization. Guess what ... there ARE NO "JOBS OF THE FUTURE"!!!!!

[tjwash]

16. They have already outsourced radiology.

Can Bio-med be far behind?

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. He's got balls talking about............

being educated and shuffled through the system without learning.

[tjwash]

5. That's the first thing I thought when I heard it.

nt

[Wickerman]

7. Hell, even my 13 year old was screaming at him when he talked about

unjust promotion.

[cthrumatrix]

6. bingo.....

[Gman]

8. What you say was exactly the thought I had

when this idiot said that.

[lanparty]

10. He didn't solve SHIT !!!!!

No Child Left Behind causes more problems than it solves. And it doesn't solve ANY problems so that says a LOT!!!! Even if Bush FULLY FUNDED it, it's a nuisance for teachers trying to educate at best.

No Child Left Behind is just a corporate payoff to the educational testing programs. All those kids are ALREADY tested by their individual state's testing systems. If they wanted to normalize the results of those 50 states, all they need to do is take a handful of sample groups from each states to take BOTH exams.

All the extra testing is a WASTE OF TIME!!!! And more than one state has come out and said as much. If you poll teachers from virtually ANY school they'll all say it's a waste of their time. It takes away from teaching time. It's not fully funded.

They could take the ENTIRE sum offered for no child left behind and subsidize the hiring of more teachers. More teachers, smaller class sizes, more personal attention to every pupil!!!!!

BTW, the people in Calcutta are JUST as smart as we are. And they can learn a new trade in JUST as much time. We software guys thought we were SO SMART buy pursuing the "jobs of tommorow". Now our asses are laid off at TWICE the national average. Programming is now the jobs of YESTERDAY. Economists seem to want us to go be auto mechanics now!!!

Go study Bio-Medical if you like. It's no guarantee that your jobs WON'T be outsourced!!!! In fact, the biomedical outsourcing process is ALREADY ocurring!!!!


The plain simple fact is that we are NOT competing. Competition is when one or more teams use it's assets to outperform the other in some type of test. Well our teams (corporations) sold out. They're hiring out resources from overseas. We ARE NOT COMPETING. We are being undersold by crappy overseas captive labor sources.

The ONLY way to fix the problem is:
a) Withdrawing from WTO and NAFTA. Erecting protective barriers for our labor pools against captive and abused labor sources. Trading with slave drivers only serves to enslave yourself!!!!

b) Being just as poor and crappy as the people taking $1 a day to work!!! Guess what ... their wages ARE NOT going up like the economic super-brains predicted. They have no power for collective bargaining. They're trash in the eyes of those sweat-shop drivers. There are giant lines of people waiting to work in their subjugated societies of povety!!! Kill a serf??? get another!!!! They'd be more valuable if they were proper slaves!!!

At SOME point our politicians will FINALLY get this. At some point we'll find out that "globalization" is NOT inevitable. At some point, we'll realize we can protect software markets by taxing the hell out of IP connections to India and China!!!!!

The steelworkers were RIGHT to not "retrain". They saw RIGHT THROUGH all this bullshit!!!! There is NOTHING they can retrain for that will not be outsourced or insourced by foreigners!!!!

Kerry hasn't quite got this yet. The bitch is that India, China, Mexico and all these OTHER countries DO understand this. They CONTINUE to protect and shield their markets from competition. China goes so far as to manipulate it's currency to ALWAYS retain an incredibly favorable export conversion!!!!!

AT LEAST Kerry wants to hold people to the existing trade agreemants. AT LEAST he wants to try adding labor and environmental standards to the agreemants. AT LEAST he wants to STOP corporations from de-patriotizing all their profits and paying ZERO taxes like Halliburton!!!!

[tjwash]

15. Agree we need to pull the plug on NAFTA, and the WTO.

But it will probably not happen. A lot of it also, has to do with the huge tax cuts the corporations got. This was good relocation money, that they did not have before the chimp.

Remember the eighties, and Reagan's trickle down bullshit, and tax cuts for corporations, under the guise of "stimulating the economy"? And the massive corporate raiding that resulted? It's the same type of thing. Buy these faltering companies for pennies on the dollar, and outsource their work.

It's treasonous.

[sadiesworld]

31. Treasonous...

a word woefully underutilized when discussing this issue.

[LibDemAlways]

17. You hit the nail on the

head with the "auto mechanics" comment. Seems to be a new talking point on talk radio. Heard some goon the other day saying that the jobs of the future are trades like auto repair that can't easily be outsourced. Went on and on about how high paying these types of jobs are. Except that here in California, repair shop owners hire immigrants willing to work for less to do the actual work.

Ridiculous to think that a 40 or 50 something computer guy whose job has been shipped to India is going to be anxious to return to junior college to learn how to fix transmissions. Much more likely to end up behind the counter at Radio Shack hoping for an eventual promotion to asst. manager.

[tjwash]

18. The truly sad thing is...

...a lot of people that this exact thing is happening to are voting for the shrub. These are intelligent, articulate people, that for some strange reason, just will not bring themselves to admit that this is happening.

[LibDemAlways]

12. That was the most idiotic non-answer of the night.

How is a person supposed to pay his bills while attending junior college? Jobs, job loss, and outsourcing are huge issues in the country. Chimp and his handlers are completely out of touch. He deserves to lose for that answer alone.

[cthrumatrix]

22. I totally agree

[polmaven]

13. And, since he has refused to extend

unemployment benefits, do you think he will pay my bills while I am back in school training for a job that pays $10,000 - $15,000 less than I was making?

[HughBeaumont]

19. Surprisingly, there are people on

Is Your Job Going Offshore that actually support the President even though his administration has said time and time again that they're pro-offshoring (despite what factcheck.org tells you . . . nothing "out of context" about Bush Admin's pro-offshore stance, nimnuls; they SAID IT. I got links.).

Some on there, believe it or not, still think there's no difference between John Kerry and George Bush on this issue. Astounding. Not even the ones who are HURT or whose professions are affected will take the Kool-Aid IV out!!

[Peter1x9]

23. Some of the people posting on there are from India. n/t

[HughBeaumont]

26. Pretty much why I stopped going there

A lot of these Indians that post there are spouting their EconomicTimes articles (that rag has about as much journalistic skill as an average local paper's conservative columnist), claiming the usual hypothetics of "rising tide lifts all boats", "believe in the power of the free markets" blah blah blah blah BLAH.

They all have this stupid belief that Americans are blaming them in this backlash despite us continually telling them it's the CEO's that are to blame, not them.

More or less, the Indian posters are mostly trolls and a few Americans there still support Lancelot Link despite his administration being anti-worker. They feel there's no difference between him and Kerry and repeat Faux talking points. Idiots.

[tjwash]

24. I have been getting as lot of calls from telemarketing centers....

...in India, that are pimping for George Bush. The SOB won't even let his fellow citizens work on his own campaign.

[LisaLynne]

20. Grrr! *'s answer ...

as you've been saying, but I must join in -- implies that companies are going overseas because they can't find competent skilled labor here in the US. BS. What they can't find is competent skilled labor that is willing to work for the wages that people in other countries will. It's about the money, not about not being able to find qualified people, jerk! And, no, the reason we Americans are not willing to work for that much less is not because we are greedy. Most of us COULDN'T survive on any less than what we're making. Food, housing, clothing, health care -- it's all expensive! And on top of it, we have to send our kids to college without getting any help at all. It's just so asinine. How dare * say something like that? How dare he when we are all working so hard, some of us two and three jobs, only to have the rug pulled out from under us? I personally don't want anything that fancy. I am perfectly content driving a small, older car and living in a modest home. I just want to be able to afford to go to the doctor when I need to and maybe -- just maybe -- take some vacations once in a while and maybe take a class or two because working is not all there should be to life.

Okay, this rant is getting out of hand, but it just makes me so angry!

[BamaGirl]

21. I started screaming at the tv when I heard this.

I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.


WTF does this idiot know!? Now instead of being taught how to THINK they're teaching my kids how to TAKE A FUCKING TEST! Anyone who thinks this is acceptable really must not value education. Homeschooling is looking better and better.

[MsAnthropy]

25. I never got to college, I was working

Do you think if I could get myself laid off, * would send me to college? What a wanker. Thank goodness I didn't hear half of what he said last night because I was mesmerized by the spit in the corner of his mouth. It was so gross I couldn't look away.

[Ezlivin]

27. Hey! We've still got prostitution and drug sales!

Those simply can't be outsourced and they pay in cash.

Imagine having a career in which:

• You meet new people every day;


• You make people happy every day;


• You can't be fired;


• You can't be laid off;


• Your job can't be outsourced;


• You don't have to pay ANY taxes;


• You have flexible hours;


• You can work from your own home;


• You don't have to take a drug test;


• And every day is Casual Friday!

Those are solid jobs for the 21^st century!

[tjwash]

29. I'm Velvet Jones, and look for my latest book...

..."I wanna be a ho."

[Ezlivin]

32. "You can regain your virginity!"

Didn't Velvet Jones also offer that course?

I miss the ol' Eddy Murphy days.

[librechik]

28. reagan handed out the same crap!

Then we wound up with a bunch of overqualified, overeducated unemployed folks.

[TrogL]

30. Don't forget the workers crossing the Southern border

Do you want fries with that?