"Geography is History"

[CoffeeAnnan]

This is the statement the Chief Executive of a large Software Company in India said to Morley Safer during a Sixty Minutes segment sometime ago.What he was saying is that the Internet and Satellite Communications have shrunk the world so much national boundaries have ceased to have any relevance.That is bad news for high cost countries like ours as we have already been made aware by the migration of IT jobs to India just as the manufacturing jobs have migrated to China.
This is why Carly Fiorina, the CEO of HP can say that Americans are no more entitled to jobs than an Indian citizen or a Chinese citizen.
That statement, although callous in the extreme, is a reflection of the new realities of the global marketplace.In this Brave New World, one who has the least and is willing to offer the Global corporations value is going to be the winner.

Countries like India and China not only have a lot of people, but they are increasingly well educated in the sciences, technology and medicine.Their willingness to work at a fraction of our wages makes them irresistible to our financial institutions, research labs,legal firms and insurance comapnies.They are even taking away jobs in the medical professions.

This assault means that we are going to see depression of the wages of our professionals along with the flight of our professional jobs.
While Mr.Cheney may profess not to believe in the Theory of Evolution, he certainly believes in the Survival of the Fittest.People like him are not going to be the ones to go to if we , as American taxpayers, want to see some sort of curbs instituted against the mass emigration of our jobs. I am not sure what the policy of the Democratic party is on this matter, but I would be surprised if it is that different from the Republican version, because they both sing from the same corporate songbook.

[el_gato]

1. don't forget "insourcing" i.e. the raising of the H1B visa cap

which is designed to let more professional types move into the U.S. to work for lower wages primarily in jobs that can't be outsourced.

The funny thing about the market fundamentalist view of globalization is that they want the free flow of capital and goods but they are not that interested in letting people freely flow around the globe. Corps can reincorporate off-shore and still do business in the U.S. but people are not allowed to do the equivalent. Thus, in this twisted world, corporations and capital have more freedom than people.

[K-W]

2. Internationalization versus Globalization

You are right, we cannot ignore the fact that technology is shrinking the world.

The quesetion is do we internationalize or globalize. Do we work with the world, or let our economic elites conquer it.

[fedsron2us]

3. Funny that corporations are not so keen on global labor laws

or taxes. Nor do they like the idea of international trade unions. When it comes to protecting their profits they like to base themselves within the decidedly localised jurisdiction of tax havens such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. These people are the worlds greatest hypocrites. They are also fools if they think that the governments of China and India do not have national political and economic aims.

[Lisa]

4. and yet -- geography still comes back to bite us ...

If a factory in Taiwan burns down, or the airlines are grounded because of a terrorist threat, or a "server farm" is flooded when a water pipe bursts -- there are unexpected impacts. The price of certain computer chips may rise astronomically, or you can't pay your credit card bill online because the Internet has been disabled. Or (as happened in my town) an employer goes bankrupt because the tourist trade never recovered from the post 9-11 slump.

And companies that moved operations to places that were cheaper to operate in than, say, New York City, are now finding that they're having trouble attracting talent because the housing is crummy and there is no culture or night-life.

Place is still an important factor. Even with mass media and globalization, some places are more attractive and compelling than others. They aren't all interchangeable. As a geographer operating in this rapidly-changing world, I'm becoming aware of this.

Plus the fact that the energy we need to overcome all those barriers is limited, and it has to come from somewhere -- these days, likely a hole in the ground in the Middle East. Which in itself creates a whole new set of issues. How long before slinging goods back and forth across half the world becomes unprofitable?