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Originally Posted by phrontist
I disagree, I think he was spot on about outsourcing. He backed it up with historical facts, so I really don't see what there is to complain about. Do you have a rebuttal?
Nationlism has a negative connotation. Nationalism is not a vice per se, Nationalism without justification is. The fact stands that America has lead the world technologically for the majority of its history. This may change soon.
While it may not be politically correct to say so, the American people do not have a magical right to anything. This goes for oil, jobs, etc. When people forget this, we get in long/wasteful wars.
If I lose my job because someone is willing to do it for less, how can I possibly blame this on the person who now has my job? I didn't produce at a price that was economically feasible. These are simply the harsh facts of free-market economies. I personally think the invisible hand does the job quite well, but if you think we should regulate it, by all means mail your congress-person.
I'd be happy to hear why Mr.Kamen was wrong, if you're willing to explain it to me.
Oh, and no hard feelings mate, it's only politics! Not something important like Operating Sytems or Text editors!
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I'm all about some healthy debate, definitely no hard feelings.
My reasoning is this: his ideas on outsourcing make sense coming from a corporate standpoint. However, when you're considering American families who were affected by the mass amount of outsourcing in recent years (much more so than ever before, despite how long it has existed) and the way it affects their lives, it's a completely different story. And I don't mean to say that American families more important than anything else, but I do think that financial security of said families should be a priority for this country. And yes, you're right about the international economy, however it's very different when looking at the US economy. As more people lose more jobs, less money is going to the government (and government entities like public schools) and more money is used by the government to support these unemployed citizens with unemployment checks. Part of my basis for this view is simply the town that I live in, where the three major employers are Colorado State University, HP, and Agilent Technologies (my father's former employer). In a city of 120,000, about 4000 engineers have been laid off in the past four years because of the outsourcing done at HP and Agilent. Although I have sympathy for the Malaysians who have these jobs now, because I believe they deserve to enter these fields just as much as any American, I care a lot more about the fact that my family is trying to send my brother to college and both my parents to grad school on my mother's salary, and my mom is a public school teacher. To me, it's offensive for Dean Kamen to send a message to me, and the other members of my team in similar situations, that our parents need to simply raise the bar (no pun intended) and find new technologies to get back on track. They don't care as much about having the jobs they love back as they do about finding a way to get health insurance for their families. Since he clearly isn't experiencing the same threat of financial security as many of the rest of us, he fails to see it from this personal level. It's not that I believe we need to try to stop outsourcing from happening; it's inevitable, but I wish he would show some sensitivity to those of us who have been affected it and try to understand that it's not as easy as he thinks to just get back in the game. As cliche as it may be to say, these aren't just numbers, they're lives.
I feel the same way about his comments on America leading the way in the technological world. True as his comments may have been, they were insensitive, which is the issue for me. His comments also ignored the feats of other countries that have been made. What about the military technology that came out of Europe during World War Two? What about medical technology that's come out of Canada? We've done great things, but we aren't the only ones. We're dependent on other countries for technology and they're dependent on us, and I felt like Dean's speech only displayed the latter.
I think that basically, his speech really showed how economically different he is from most of the FIRST kids, and I felt like he trivialized something that affects a lot of us and a lot of our mentors.