From: "Larry Barnes" <[log in to unmask]>
>Can anyone explain the difference between a sweat shop that creates
>clothes and a sweat shop that creates code?


The workers that create code get paid 10+ times as much as those that create
clothes.  It is a great job for India.

=================

From: "Gates, Scott" <[log in to unmask]>
>  Sending code to be done in China where
> the rates are 1/5th of INDIAN rates and the buyer gets 20 people for the
> price of 1 U.S. worker.

The per capita GDP is higher in China than in India, so this can't last
long--if it's true at all.  What's your source for this?  Googling, I find a
2001 Wired article which says that Chinese software engineers cost 15% less
than Indians, but there are few as skilled as Indian software engineers
(http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41656,00.html).  The CIO magazine
"Buyer's Guide To Offshore Outsourcing" (Nov 2002)  says that average IT
salary in China is 50% higher than in India.
(http://www.cio.com/offshoremap/) The Chinese economy is growing rapidly so
there's going to be a lot of domestic demand for programmers.  It is true
that manufacturing wages in China are about 1/20th of that in the U.S., but
that doesn't mean that computer programmer wages are the same ratio.

> Unless you can type with your toes YOU CAN'T KEEP
> UP WITH THAT.

The actual productivity per total cost is a lot closer than most people
think.  There are a lot of hidden costs and inefficiencies for offshoring
programming work.  Think about how often we insist on face-to-face meetings
and on-site work where it could theoretically be handled via phone, email,
and tele-commuting.

This article (http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/money.html) says the hidden
costs can run from 15% to 57%.

> These laborers, while diligent, do not
> return ONE DIME to the U.S. Economy...They pay NO taxes here. They buy NO
> U.S. goods. They don't even pay bus fare to and from work here.  I don't
> want to belittle them, because I'm sure they're nice, hardworking geeks
just
> like ourselves, but they are little more than parasites on the U.S.
Economy.

This is nonsense.  Whoever employs them gets their services at the agreed
upon rate.  That's just trade, not parasitism.  Anyway, the money going out
has to come back because money is nothing but a way of allocating actual
resources.  All the money that goes out of the country in trade either comes
back as trade or as investment in debt and equities.  Even if we paid them
in cash and they just burned it, it would still benefit the rest of the
country.  If money is destroyed, it raises the value of the rest of the
money.  (No, I'm not kidding.  It actually works that way.)

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