Monday, January 05, 2004

More good job news

As we know, "outsourcing" jobs to lesser-paid workers in foreign countries hasn't, for some time, been limited to sneaker-stitching child-labor sweatshops in Southeast Asia. Tech jobs are fleeing to India, factory jobs to China and Korea, all because of low pay and low-cost transport and communication. Now, however, some new twists that take advantage of the lower cost as well as other factors available in foreign lands:

Medical research, pathology and even billing is being outsourced abroad to utilize the time-change differential, thereby allowing constant activity, round-the-clock results without paying overtime. Accountancy too, and similarly time-sensitive occupations may find practitioners in foreign lands flooded with demand from American businesses as we become more dependent on speed in our culture and the communication revolution is able to deliver on a world-wide basis that which one could only obtain from the local business in the old days.

The finest irony? Bush's massive tax cuts, meant to stimulate the economy and create American jobs, will be calculated by a category of newly-outsourced foreign employees. You guessed it: Tax-return preparers.

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