[Info-vax] AXIS2/C, gSOAP

[JF Mezei]

George Cook wrote:

> The second quarter US GDP growth rate of 2.4% resulted in a 131,000
> job loss.  2.4% is far too little to reduce the underemployment rate
> of 16.5%. 


It depends on how GDP is measured and whether it includes "virtual"
industries that have outsourced manufacturing/support to china.

When Apple, a USA corporation with head office in USA,  reports the sale
of an iPhone in the USA, is that included in gross *domestic* product ?

When you pull up to the "drive through" at McDonalds, and it is an
outsourced person in India who takes your order, is that BigMac you just
bought cosidered in the gross domestic product ? If so, increase ion Big
Mac Sales shows increase in GDP, but not an increase in employment.



And even if you really exclude all outsourcing from GDP figures, if your
plant has the capacity to manufacture 10,000 widgets per day, but in the
last few years, you have only made 5,000, you can double your production
without hiring more employees. So GDP goes up without employment going up.

I think politicians all over the western world are underestimating the
importance of creating jobs locally and preventing export of jobs to
other countries.

And people in industrialised countries are also underestimating the
competitive nature of a workforce, and refusing to take wage cuts will
result in jobs being shipped overseas.

It used to be that an employer could choose to hire the employee whose
salary demands are less than the guy next to him. Now, they can do this
on a global basis. So a country's workforce need to compete against
other countries'. And this is not easy when you have a population that
has expectations of owning a home with white picket fence, 2.7 SUVs,
large HD TV set with fancy surround sound system, dishwasher, and 1.8
kids all within 5 years after having graduated from high school or college.

People with such expectations of a standard of living cannot compete
against indian or chinese people who have equal or better education and
require far smaller salaries. We may bitch about outsourcing to India,
but India is the winner in this. They setup good education system, and
taught english to its students, and now these people compete head to
head against western people but with salary demands that are so low that
western companies move operations to India. India is not to blame. It is
a worthy competitor which played its cards right. The west failed to
recognise India as a competitor that would hurt it, seeing it instead as
a 3rd world developping nation that should be helped.

Not too different from Digital and the PC industry. Digital refused to
consider PCs as competing against its own, more expensive gear. Look at
where Digital is today.

Alitalia was a good example of employees refusing to accept
salary/benefit cuts, expecting the governmebt to uphold their standard
of living. Alitalia ended up in bankrupcy with all contracts voided and
those employees having to choose betwee unemployment or being hired by
the new company that was to rebuild Alitalia, with lower salary and
fewer benefits etc.


The problem is that by the time Indian/Chinese wages will hacve risen
sufficiently to make USA workers competitive again, there won't be much
left in the USA to hire people. (same for other western countries).