From the WSJ's CareerJournal.com:

What could be a more modern dilemma? High-speed data links allow employers
to ship white-collar jobs from rich countries to India, China and other
nations where workers earn far less.

Yet losing skilled jobs to low-wage foreign competition is as old as the
Industrial Revolution. In the 1830s, the British textile industry became so
efficient that Indian cloth makers couldn't compete. The work was outsourced
to England, with disastrous consequences for Indian workers. "The misery
hardly finds parallel in the history of commerce," India's governor general,
William Bentinck, wrote to his superiors in London in 1834.

As Americans grapple with the fallout of shipping hundreds of thousands of
jobs overseas, history echoes with many similar episodes -- and lessons.
Trade and technology can boost living standards for many people, by creating
lower-priced goods. But those same forces can destroy skilled jobs that
workers thought never would be threatened.

Competition from foreign labor hurt huge classes of American workers in the
19th century but eventually helped ease wage disparities between nations.
And during these upheavals, history shows that politics can arrest what
seems like unstoppable technological progress.

Here are four lessons from history that help illuminate today's debate:

o Even high-skilled, good-paying jobs are vulnerable.
...
o Trade liberalization often works with technology to undermine powerful
interests.
...
o Domestic workers are always vulnerable to competition from foreigners
willing to work for less.
...
o Politics can slow down the transforming effects of new technology.
...

For all the details, see:
http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/killers/20040427-davis.html

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