'Not to Worry, Mr Friedman." " Please - whatever you are selling I am not buying."
Tom Friedman's Op-Ed in today's NY Times is just ridiculous. He claims that outsourcing is over because a U.S. company no longer just outsources from its domestic headquarters to another country. Now, he is excited to announce, those places to which we outsource, are also now outsourcing! How this adds one job to the U.S. economy is not discussed. There may be an interesting conversation to be had about how middle-class America's loss is a gain for poverty stricken third world nations, but Friedman prefers to dance around it, rather than to engage in it.
Of special note is how thrilled Friedman is by a new program, one of 'outsourcing' the processing of employee records from large cities in India to villages. Gleefully he writes how "the outsourcee has become the outsourcer." His enthusiasm is boundless when he quotes the Indian entrepreneur who initiated the experimental program as saying how low the attrition rate is. The experiment began with "two villages a year ago."
Low employee attrition? Where themost senior employee has been on the job no more than a year?
Is Friedman simply a snake oil salesman?
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