A Labor Problem Made in the U.S.A.
If this reads a bit awkwardly, it's because of a little experiment I've been conducting.
Overseas outsourcing. I'm having my column written by foreign workers.
I farm out my job to low-paid writers around the world, I get to keep most of my munificent wages, and I spend only about a half-hour on final inspection, compared to the dozen hours or more it takes to manufacture a column start to finish.
My nouns and pronouns are now made in Indonesia, verbs and adverbs in Mexico and adjectives in China. I tried subcontracting prepositions to Thailand, but someone thought I meant " propositions" and forwarded my inquiry to the Ministry of Sex Trade.
But the ideas are mine, generated right here, and that's why this column can proudly bear the words "Made in the U.S.A."
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I spent an hour on the phone this weekend with "Larry" the computer troubleshooter. "Larry" is probably "Rajiv" in New Delhi. But he stuck to his "Larry" script, using my name in every sentence because Americans are supposed to like that. There were lots of sentences, because I had to ask him to repeat himself so I could understand him.
Larry is what intellectuals in India call a "techno-coolie." He answers the phone when you call some 800 numbers after your computer commits suicide or your credit card balks.
The Larrys of the world get coached in American slang, sports and pop culture; Larry could probably have told me what happened on the last episode of "Sex and the City." Some "techno-coolies" make up American bios for themselves, like Savitha in Bangalore, prepped to tell any inquisitive American that her name's Betty and she loves "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Shipping white-collar, info-tech jobs to foreign countries now has the White Housekeeping Seal of Approval. The Bush administration said last week, like Martha Stewart crooning over a pine-cone centerpiece, that this outsourcing is "a good thing." It may hurt in the short run, but we'll all love it eventually.
These jobs are not the lettuce-picking, burger-flipping jobs they say Americans won't take here at home -- and by the way, it isn't the jobs Americans won't take, it's the lousy paychecks.
No, these are the bright, prosperous Jobs of Tomorrow that Americans were promised if we all put down our socket wrenches and picked up tech textbooks. The information economy lay glittering at the end of the information superhighway -- which, as it turns out, looks more like a one-way road heading straight out of America.
