The new face of the silicon age

This article poses the question of who is to blame—Indian workers willing to work for less or the American businesses who choose to outsource jobs. Citing statistics about wages and jobs exported overseas in the first part of this decade, the author puts a human face on the phenomenon by interviewing a young female programmer.

Aparna Jairam, is a working mother and young professional at Hexaware Mumbai. Jairam. She makes $11,000 per year, one-sixth of what computer programmers make here in the US. Jairam does not she apologize for performing a job once done in the US. People in India are not stealing American jobs, she says. She is simply doing what she was trained to do.

The economics times are certainly changing since globalization began more than a decade ago. Americans have watched their jobs being outsourced to developing countries. Globalization seemed innocent enough back in the early 1990’s, but the results have proven otherwise to many US workers and especially to computer programmers.

We signed up for globalization and now we know it was not designed to protect our jobs, but to make big money for businesses. Personally, I avoid buying food from countries that have lax standards about production and little government oversight. And some of these countries are not second or third world countries. For example, I recently read that Australia has a toilet-to-tap system for recyling water which makes me nervous about drinking Australian wine.

The best way to keep jobs here in the US is to buy local whenever possible. As consumers we can still vote with our dollars.