Thomas Friedman (The New York Times): The Secret of Our Sauce

[Jack Rabbit]

From The New York Times
Dated Sunday March 7

The Secret of Our Sauce
By Thomas Friedman

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:
"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.
There is a reason the "next big thing" almost always comes out of America, said Mrs. Narayanan. When she and her husband came back to live in Bangalore and enrolled their son in a good private school, he found himself totally stifled because of the emphasis on rote learning — rather than the independent thinking he was exposed to in his U.S. school. They had to take him out and look for another, more avant-garde private school. "America allows you to explore your mind," she said. The whole concept of outsourcing was actually invented in America, added her husband, Sean, because no one else figured it out.

One can hope Friedman is right about American innovation, unlike he was about Iraq. However, I'm shaking my head over this, too. Does anybody really think that going from being a computer programmer at a high salary to making T-shirts in order to survive at subsistence levels is what America is about?

[LeftCoast]

1. The ol' "We're better, cuz we're better" argument...

Hope he's right...but it still doesn't excuse sticking our head in the sand and ignoring some serious probs...

[bemildred]

2. I think he should stick to explaining how to bring democracy

to Iraq.

[LoZoccolo]

3. The reason I'm still afraid is that people talk about this the same way...

...Republicans talk about poor people. The people who say positive things about it that aren't in a position of losing anything, that is.

[LoZoccolo]

4. A few sites.

http://www.yourjobisgoingtoindia.com
http://www.onshorealternatives.com
http://www.whosoutsourcing.com

This one has outsourcing failures on it:
http://nojobsforindia.com

5. Wow

I may add these links to my site!

[Cocoa]

6. another dubious anecdote from Friedman

this is classic Friedman, a source who gives a quote that supports Friedman's thesis a little too perfectly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/opinion/07FRIE.html

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Yes, that is Friedman

I couldn't get all the way through The Lexus and the Olive Tree just for that reason. On every page he was supporting his thesis with anecdotes. No doubt there are also stories that refute his point of view out there, but he won't tell them.

That's no journalism; that's propaganda. However, Friedman is good enough at propaganda to win a Pulitzer Prize.

[The Zanti Regent]

8. Typical from Tacky Tommy

A white collar professional is reduced to selling T-Shirts...

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Zanti Regent]

11. Tommy lives in his "Lasseiz-Fairyland"

He can't leave his fairyland where everything is perfect and follows Ayn Rand's rules...

[MikeG]

10. Thomas Friedman: Assclown.

[Th1onein]

12. This is such CRAP!

So, according to Friedman, we should be exporting our jobs so that we can be "innovative" and create some more? Following the lines of this logic, then, let's go ahead and create some really dreadful diseases to plague mankind, so that we can be innovative and create some cures. Give me a break.

[Dork]

13. Tom Tomorrow

www.thismodernworld.com debunks Friedman's floater.

[Miss Authoritiva]

19. Good catch, Dork!

Just 2 thoughts:

(1) Anecdotes should be banned (okay, avoided at all costs) in all political and policy discussions. They're bogus parables that lead to nowhere.

(2) If politicians, political writers, and policymakers are going to persist in offering up anecdotes to support their theses, then they better provide access to those with starring roles in their stories. Otherwise, inquiring minds will go a-googling, and the storytellers risk exposure as frauds.

[Jack Rabbit]

20. Welcome to DU, Miss Authortiva

If anecdotes were banned, Friedman would not be able to write.

[KG]

14. Thomas Friedman: american moron.

[Torgo Johnson]

15. Times should outsource Friedman

I'm sure they could find someone in India who is a dishonest neo-con Wall Street ass kisser for less than 10% of what they pay Friedman.

[IrateCitizen]

17. Naomi Klein's recent article was about just that!

Outsourcing the Friedman
by Naomi Klein

Thomas Friedman hasn't been this worked up about free trade since the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Back then, he told New York Times readers that the work environment in a Sri Lankan Victoria's Secret factory was so terrific "that, in terms of conditions, I would let my own daughters work" there.

He never did update readers on how the girls enjoyed their stint stitching undergarments, but Friedman has since moved on--now to the joys of call-center work in Bangalore. These jobs, he wrote on February 29, are giving young people "self-confidence, dignity and optimism"--and that's not just good for Indians, but for Americans as well. Why? Because happy workers paid to help US tourists locate the luggage they've lost on Delta flights are less inclined to strap on dynamite and blow up those same planes.

Confused? Friedman explains the connection: "Listening to these Indian young people, I had a déjà vu. Five months ago, I was in Ramallah, on the West Bank, talking to three young Palestinian men, also in their 20's.... They talked of having no hope, no jobs and no dignity, and they each nodded when one of them said they were all 'suicide bombers in waiting.'" From this he concludes that outsourcing fights terrorism: By moving "low-wage, low-prestige" jobs to "places like India or Pakistan...we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds."

Where to begin with such an argument? India has not been linked to a major international terrorist incident since the Air India bombing in 1985 (the suspected bombers were mostly Indian-born Canadian citizens). Neither is the 81 percent Hindu country an Al Qaeda hotbed; in fact, India has been named by the terrorist network as "an enemy of Islam." But never mind the details. In Friedmanworld, call centers are the front lines of World War III: The Fight for Modernity, bravely keeping brown-skinned young people out of the clutches of Hamas and Al Qaeda.

READ THE REST BY CLICKING THE LINK ABOVE for an examination of Friedman's rank confusion and hypocrisy.

[enki23]

16. horseshit

short version: "everything will be ok, because we're still smarter than all of those brown people."

friedman is most *amazingly* indoctrinated. but then, you don't get as far as he has without being so.

[donhakman]

18. horseshit squared

The next big thing is more likely to be a depression and not a new product development of flying saucers.

Why would some want the conditions for a depression?
Then the last bastion of American wealth can be had for pennies on the dollar - our real estate.