Igniting a fire with gas while Washington fiddles
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Igniting a fire with gas while Washington fiddles
Some days you can turn on "Morning Joe" and just conclude there's no connection between our so-called grand political debate and the real slow drip-drip-drip that is killing the American economy -- and our kids' future in the process. Some days the slow drip is from gasoline:
Sunoco Inc., the Philadelphia-based oil company, says it's paying EquaTerra Inc., a Houston consulting firm, to recommend whether Sunoco should "outsource" information technology, accounting, personnel, and procurement jobs from its Center City headquarters, home to 750 of Sunoco's 10,000 employees.
"We have hired EquaTerra to advise us as we explore potentially outsourcing some functions," Sunoco spokesman Thomas Golembeski told me yesterday. Workers learned Friday of the possible job moves. EquaTerra didn't return calls for comment late yesterday.
Sunoco expects EquaTerra to report later this year on which jobs could be profitably outsourced to cheap labor markets in Asia or elsewhere. If Sunoco decides to outsource these jobs, it will seek proposals from contractors, Golembeski said.
First of all...uh, Sunoco, could you please explain to me what you've been doing with the wads of extra cash that I've been forced to dole out at your service stations these last few years? Surely you didn't lose that much on those discount cards from the Acme. And so now this is your gratitude for sevcral years of record profits -- inflicting a hurting on the Philadelphia economy, and not just the people who'll lose their office jobs in Center City but the guy who sold them coffee in the morning, and, yes, the service station owner who use to fuel up their morning commute to a job that's about to disappear forever.
Second of all, isn't this the real problem in America today, and one that no one in Washington -- or anywhere else -- has a clue on how to solve? Free-market solutions? Give me a break -- this is the free market in action. There's not a Republican tax break in the world that would stop Sunoco from shipping those jobs to India or China or wherever, given the huge disparity in wages. We could shut off the Internet -- we did pay for this microphone, after all -- and go back to a non-flat-world economy like we had in the prosperous 1950s, but that seems counterproductive and unpractical, doesn't it. I still think the best alternative would be to invest both more and more wisely in education as well as infrastructure -- what China is doing,
But the inevitable return of conservatives to power, at least until they screw things up for the fourth time in my lifetime, is probably going to lead to a new world order of ill-targeted austerity (money for tanks instead of classrooms) that will destroy my children's future in the name of saving it. God bless America.
"Minarchism" is a new term for me, but I'm going to guess that it stands in roughly the same relation to "anarchism" as "socialism" does to "communism." (And for a second there, I thought you'd said that you were a "monarchist." Oh what a difference a vowel makes!)— Billy Ray Winthorpe- Here's a primer. Not saying this all applies or that my views won't evolve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchist— RG
- I work in the IT industry, and have recently moved to the IT outsourcing business, because it is clearly the right space to be for an IT worker these days. Will -- you ask, how can we keep these jobs in the US? Answer: By paying these people 20% of what they make today. I can pay a Indian or Malaysian help desk worker $5-$10/hr which saves me $$$, makes my business more competitive, and makes the products my customer makes cheaper and more profitable. That's GOOD Business. We have allowed certain industries to have their salaries not align with the global marketplace, and the IT industry (and auto) is a prime example. Education isn't going to help here -- it's resetting the standards so that the American worker can be cost competitive and value-competitive in a global marketplace. As an IT worker, you must continue to be very flexible and see marketplace trends far in the future so you can adjust your career to the changing landscape. We no longer have key-punch operators, very few tape librarians, few mainframe operators... Programmers are now offshored, as are increasing #'s of infrastructure IT workers. What is STILL valued, however, are the people who can take business requirements, work with the providers (offshore or not) to deliver the application solutions the business needs. That can be all-American and well-paid.— IggleFan68
- "What is STILL valued, however, are the people who can take business requirements, work with the providers (offshore or not) to deliver the application solutions the business needs." That is basically how I've re-positioned myself over the last 8 years.— db_cooper
- "Actually, db, I liked the history stuff so much that I decided to become a historian. " Most of what I mentioned would apply to that or just about any human endeavor - writing/qa/query skills. How many human episodes have you studied that failed due to poor communication or poor quality management/failure to learn from past mistakes? I have a saying I use at work - mistakes are expensive, be sure to learn from them. Too many organizations instead try to cover the mistakes up and are doomed to repeat them as a result.— db_cooper
- NO amount of education is going to keep those jobs here either! Get used to it, the rest of the world is waking up! Menial white collar jobs will be outsourced regardless of which party is in power. Want your kids to have a good job? Nursing,pharmacy, plumber, electrician, nuclear power worker (if the libs let more be built) - jobs that necessitate the person doing it HERE.— WriteWinger
WRITEWINGER - you left out journalist.— bird11- Ahahahaha!! Good one, Bird... Writeie brings up a good point though. We need to be prepared, and prepare our children to have the ability to learn, and adjust their careers over time. What you do today may be obsolete in 5,10,20 years. Only those who can adapt will survive. There will ALWAYS be plenty of jobs in the US - what kind of jobs they are will change over time.— IggleFan68
- Personally, I'm telling my kids to be lobbyists. Big time growth industry.— RG
- Nice red herring discussing the "record profits" of Sunoco. Will, you failed to mention that the profit margin was roughly 3%, which is minuscule.— jfar86
- "What you do today may be obsolete in 5,10,20 years." Technical knowledge, hard sciences, and critical thinking skills. I also think we've seen a higher education/college bubble thats ready to pop.— RG
- Is this what you had in mind with your China comments... http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/— StoolsinNC
- as an aside -- I got a job offer from Sunoco in 2008, which I wisely turned down. Jfar's point on margin is more significant than you might think. Even if their 3% margin earned them $20 billion in profit, it means that if you slapped them with a 5% "penalty tax" and business downturned, they could just as easily LOSE $10-$20 billion in a year (see US automakers).— IggleFan68
- IggleFan, excellent 1:31 post. That stands as superb tutorial on how to go forward. All these other isolationist ideas (limiting foreign students, foreign worker visas) are DOA because they invite retaliation and actually harm our global competitiveness. I hope Will reads it.— pj katauskas
- Will, why is the return of conservatives to power "inevitable?" Could it be because while the free market is beyond imperfect, its still better than anything statism has given us in terms of quality of life? What puzzles me about unhinged liberals is thier blind faith in the state. I've seen it at work here in California, and in simple terms- the numbers just don't add up. Maybe we need to stop screaming about an unattainable utopia and start figuring out what the best available option is.— tjm333126
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