And his choices were?

I had thought for a long time that the best way to protect yourself from outside competition was to be in a service job that required hands-on work. E.g., Someone in Bangalore isn't suddenly going to be repairing the transmission on your car. A retired Canadian fellow I was talking with a week or so ago nixed that simple idea.

He said that workers from Central America were being imported into Canadian cities (I think he specifically mentioned Toronto) to do construction work. The natural result was to drive down wages for Canadian construction workers. If I had thought about the problem a little more, I would have realized that there's no inherently low-wage-competition proof profession. Either the work can move to a low-wage country, or the low-wage workers can be imported. There will be a lot of short and medium-term pain for a lot of people as a result. :-(

Cheers,
Scott.

Post #180,240 by jbrabeck 10/21/04 8:54:33 AM Reply	And his choices were? 1. Stay home and die 2. Stay home, go bankrupt, and live 3. See the world and live. Without going into politics and health care reform and all other matters which he had no control over, I'd have done the same. A good friend will come and bail you out of jail ... but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn...that was fun!"
Post #180,265 by bluke 10/21/04 12:14:29 PM Reply	I wasn't making a value judgement The point was to show how even things that you would not think would be outsourced are being outsourced.
Post #180,269 by Another Scott 10/21/04 12:25:12 PM Reply	Along those lines... I had thought for a long time that the best way to protect yourself from outside competition was to be in a service job that required hands-on work. E.g., Someone in Bangalore isn't suddenly going to be repairing the transmission on your car. A retired Canadian fellow I was talking with a week or so ago nixed that simple idea. He said that workers from Central America were being imported into Canadian cities (I think he specifically mentioned Toronto) to do construction work. The natural result was to drive down wages for Canadian construction workers. If I had thought about the problem a little more, I would have realized that there's no inherently low-wage-competition proof profession. Either the work can move to a low-wage country, or the low-wage workers can be imported. There will be a lot of short and medium-term pain for a lot of people as a result. :-( Cheers, Scott.

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