You thought doctors were free of outsourcing worries?

[powayseller]

Daniel, our full employment rate is decreasing, and we have lost jobs during Busch’s tenure. The economy would meet my standards of doing well if we were as productive as our consumption. As it is today, our economy produced $330 billion per year LESS than we consume. So we have become a debtor nation.

ach year, more types of jobs are outsourced to countries with an educated lower-paid work force. I had read about radiology outsourcing some years ago, but thought that surgery was a safe profession. Not any more. Elective and scheduled expensive surgeries are now outsourced, as are CPAs (thousands of Ernst & Young CPAs are Indians). Lawyers?

Daniel, what are the millions of new jobs that you refer to?

Yes, living standards improved, but only because China is willing to give us IOUs; once they cannot continue doing so, our standard of living will come crashing down to the level where we can consume only what we produce. Any country that consumes more than it produces, or whose work force cannot afford the goods it produces, has a weak economy. Perhaps the US economy can turn around, but it is not looking good at all. It is downright scary.

Daniel says the economy does “pretty well”, and “overall we’re in pretty good shape”. That doesn’t sound very convincing. Do you mean we are average, chugging along, or do you see any hopes for improvement? Will we ever leave behind the debtor nation label and become a producer nation again?

What bright spots does anyone on this forum see for our economy?

[FormerOwner]

Credit counseling services looks like a booming industry. Oh, wait, that can probably be outsourced too! I’m wondering if whatever the govt and Federal Reserve do to try and bolster the economy after the housing market crashes will create yet another bubble. Or, is the next bubble already forming in commodities/gold? I have more questions than answers at this point.

Longer term, I think peak oil is going to cause some sort of boom in reshaping our society to be less car dependent and less energy consuming. Also, it may cause a return of local farms. These are thoughts for the future, but as for the next few years, I can’t think of any “hot” sectors of the economy at all.

[rankandfile]

The problem is that the government doesn’t do it’s real job: to make sure that the market is flowing properly and that nobody is getting f@cked over. Instead of doing this, it goes way overboard for fear of electoral and legal repercussions. I truly feel that frivolous lawsuits will be the death of our society. One of the biggest costs for the medical profession is malpractice insurance. What this essentially leaves us with is a battle of the doctors vs. the lawyers. The lawyers will always have the upper hand IMHO because they know the legal system and laws of the land better than anyone. Heck, they are the ones who write the laws! Most senators are former attorneys themselves. What do they do when they leave the public sector? They usually work as a lobbyist for some big law firm.

Getting back to outsourcing healthcare. It is outsourced because the market allows it to be outsourced. It is just too darn expensive. The real problem is that the current healthcare system that we have is the ONLY game in town. You have a problem, you must have go to a certain provider that accepts your insurance. When I say provider, I lump Kaiser, Sharp, Scripps, etc., together because they are basically the same. What I am trying to say is that more alternative forms of healthcare are not only not allowed to be used, they are illegal! Some laws against certain practitioners of medicine are there for obvious reasons. But the entire systems is rigged! It’s sort of like the realty industry, I guess. Hmmmmmm.

[sdrealtor]

Radiology is an exception as films can be read anywhere with technology. Last time I checked a computer couldnt reach out and say cough!

[rankandfile]

I think there is a prototype for that in development in Taiwan.

[Daniel]

Powayseller,

Being bearish on the US economy has been in fashion for as long as I can remember. “The Downsizing of America”, and all those other books. They sell well, don’t they?

As I said, in the past quarter century millions of jobs have evaporated, and millions more have taken their place. Microsoft, Qualcomm, Cisco, and so on weren’t even around years ago, and now they employ hundreds of thousands each.

Now, we do consume more than we produce, by the tune of $330 billion, as you correctly point out. That is 3% of the economy. Were that to go away, we would have what is usually known as a recession. We will probably have that, as we can’t over-consume forever. But try to keep things in perspective: US economy is 3.5% bigger this year than last year, which is bigger than the year before, and so on, going back a long, long time. We may take a 3% haircut, and it will hurt, I’m not saying it won’t, but it’s just a drop in the bucket in the long run. Economy is twice the size that it was when the other Bush was around.

Regarding the job market, it is tough for some, as it should be. Competition is healthy, even with China and India. Decades ago, we thought all jobs would go to Japan, then to Korea. There always will be a lower-cost locale.

Truth is, if you’re a qualified individual, it is very hard not to find work in the US. People decry the loss of software jobs to India. Yet hundreds of thousands of new college graduates find software jobs in the US every year. And US still imports a large number of highly skilled immigrants to fill vacancies. Five or six years ago, I remember that the US swept the science Nobels. Every single one of the US laureates was a foreign-born US scientist (except one with dual US-German citizenship).

If there is something weak in the US, it is public school education. We do have jobs, we just can’t produce enough qualified people to fill them. The strongest assets are our entrepreneurship culture and very deep capital markets (including venture capital). No other country in the world has managed to produce so many world-class companies (think EBay, Google, Genentech) so fast.

[VCJIM]

Daniel, it’s a nice counterpoint.

[bob007]

i do not think america has faced rivals like india and china. they are a lot poorer than us. but they have more people, culturally capable to us in a lot of respects.

[equalizer]

Daniel

Good points. Just want to clarify with personal experience that so called highly skilled immigrants are not always experts. Known people who have worked with these H1Bs and for the most part are hard working but have just basic knowledge, not enough to work on their own. How could they have that experience from India, etc?? If Software companies, intel really wanted hire people coulnt they sponsor a few classe here at UCSD and SDSU to get more EE,CE and CS majors ready? The labor dept reqts to advertise for local people before hiring H1B is a major sham.

In this weeks Barrons has a big story about China and a discussion of the complete disregard of environmetal rules there. Before we lust after their GDP growth we should be aware of the costs. Business people decry enviro rules in CA, but have they ever been to China, India and seen real pollution? A colleague just got back from Beijing, so I will see if I can get the lowdown and will post any interesting stories.

On a side note, be very wary of Asians, middle easterners who were not raised in US. Generally (NOT ALL) they dont have morals, ethics and will rip you off. Its not their fault, they grow up with that attitude and dont automatically change when they come here. Ok, lets hear it, I’m a bigot.
Oh Yeah, I keep forgettin yo mo be there, no that I was born in INDIA.

[VCJIM]

I know many, many Asians…Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. that have never been to the US; I find them to have quite high moral values.

[speedingpullet]

Equalizer said…
If Software companies, intel really wanted hire people coulnt they sponsor a few classe here at UCSD and SDSU to get more EE,CE and CS majors ready? The labor dept reqts to advertise for local people before hiring H1B is a major sham.

Sadly, not as easy as it seems. While the US has several of the top 10 best-rated universities in the World, when it comes to ‘normal’ education, the US is slipping behind.

I read an article recently that showed a worldwide educational league table, ie how many science/engineering/computing degrees per capita. Depsite the few very good (top 10) universities, the US as a whole was below the top 20 mark worldwide (in fact, I believe India actually came out higher).

Also, more students last year graduated with a degree in Sports Fitness
than did in Electrical Enginering!
Science and Math simply aren’t being taken up in the kind of numbers you need to have a totally homegrown workforce

As for H1B’s..I only have anecdotal experience of a small group of specialised companies.
My husband works as a games programmer for a large Japanese company here in Santa Monica. Of the 10 other programmers, 4 are from the UK, one Canadian and 3 Swedes. Only 3 of the 11 are Americans.
And its not as if there’s no opportunity to hire US Citizens – one post was left empty for 18 months while they tried to fill it with homegrown talent. Couldn’t do it.
This is also true for many other games companies here in LA: half or over half of the programmers are H1B’s.

As for the H1B ‘sham’…if @@NY is having problems recruiting sufficently qualified US citizens, what hope do smaller companies have?

[PerryChase]

We should think of a global economy. Capital doesn’t care where it’s invested so long as the returns match the risks. The way to prosper is to learn foreign languages and cultures. We don’t need to feel threatened by foreign competition. If we have the right products and services, they can become our best customers also.

If we can outsource medical services, then we’ll all benefit because we’ll then be able to spend our money somewhere else. As workers, we need to constantly retrain ourselves, to learn and grow. Let’s get away from thinking that things have to remain the same. The pace of change is only accelerating.

The US medical system is great for people who can afford it. If you don’t have insurance or money you’re in dire straits.

[bob007]

i agree with equalizer that a lot of h1b’s especially the ones without Amertican education are ordinary.

i agree some of the h1b’s are unscruplous. i think it is a stretch to equate being raised in america with morals. we have our share of rotten apples.

[Daniel]

Equalizer,

I think it’s fair to say that there are very skilled foreign workers, and there are average ones as well. Same for the domestic workforce. In my line of work (scientific research) the head count is about 50-50, and I don’t see substantial difference in quality between locals and imports. True, there are some cultural differences, but these tend to fade out the longer the people in question stick around here.

The fact that these people are here at all proves that there are more jobs than qualified local candidates. You can take this either as (i) an indictment of our education system, or (ii) a sign that American companies are doing very well and are atracting talent from abroad. I think both theories have some truth to them.

[Author]

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