Next, we have Mr. Miller+óGé¼Gäós new-found concern for the American education system, which he describes as mired in the 19th century, but which he plans to use to train fired IT workers for +óGé¼+ônew+óGé¼-¥ jobs. This, too, turns out to be a bummer when examined by Eric Kuiler, who has a Masters in software administration and is currently working on his PhD dissertation in public policy. Mr. Kuiler asks +óGé¼+ôif the US education system... is so far behind the times, why is it the model for almost every other system in the world?+óGé¼-¥--- including that of China and India, the source of those imported IT workers and the outsourcing destination for all those jobs? +óGé¼+ôIf American education is so bad, why are there so many Chinese and Indian students... at US universities?+óGé¼-¥
Remember, the IT companies required their American employees to train the inexpensive foreign new hires before kicking their American workers out the door. It wasn+óGé¼Gäót lack of education, it wasn+óGé¼Gäót lack of people that caused outsourcing or importation of special visa-foreigners. It was bottom line profits based on lower wages. Mr. Miller says one way to modernize American education in order to train us for new jobs would be to extend the school year, but Mr. Kuiler remarks dryly that +óGé¼+ôlonger periods of instruction do not necessarily correlate with better results+óGé¼-¥ for many possible reasons, including poorly trained teachers, inadequate libraries or other facilities, gang activity, and so on. There is clearly more to solving problems than education, or re-education.
Third, Mr. Miller wants to extend broadband to under-served rural areas in downstate Virginia where the local economies are still in recession. Mr. Kuiler notes that +óGé¼+ôMr. Miller perpetrates a common fallacy of confusing a means+óGé¼-¥ that is, an instrument, like broadband +óGé¼+ôwith a possible solution to a problem he has not clearly stated.+óGé¼-¥ Broadband by itself cannot solve regional underemployment. Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads have many other assets in transportation, education, and governmental infrastructure, all of which usually precede telecommunication infrastructures. To make a leap from POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to FDDI (fiber) requires some careful infrastructure planning in advance to be successful.
Fourth, we come to Mr. Miller+óGé¼Gäós basic claim to fame, technology and jobs. He advocates telecommuting, linking extending broadband to Southwest Virginia, for example, with bringing +óGé¼+ôcall centers+óGé¼-¥ and other tech jobs to the region, instead of sending them to India (as he did so efficiently in the past). Again, Mr. Kuiler points out that +óGé¼+ôMr. Miller appears to confuse technology cycles with culture cycles.+óGé¼-¥ Culture cycles are +óGé¼+ôlong+óGé¼-¥ and tech cycles are +óGé¼+ôshort.+óGé¼-¥ Business organizations are actually culture centers, offices produce +óGé¼+ôteamwork,+óGé¼-¥ offices produce solutions and innovation through shared insights. We have all experienced mission creep, missed deadlines, misunderstandings, software that does not work+óGé¼GÇ¥ all this is more likely to happen in the absence of such personal networking that occurs in an office environment.
The smug comment that +óGé¼+ôthey sweat, we think,+óGé¼-¥ implying American innovation will keep America competitive simply falls apart when the +óGé¼+ôbrains+óGé¼-¥ are outsourced and not working together in the same environment. Destroying that very environment in America has actually been Mr. Miller+óGé¼Gäós trademark. Innovation stalls, and becomes the province of other countries where the +óGé¼+ôbrains+óGé¼-¥ are mingling. That is Mr. Miller+óGé¼Gäós contribution to our national security. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
First, Miller has told people that the availability of broadband was an attraction for companies to offshore work to places like India. Harris downplays the labor cost factor and attempts to make the case that it's this wonderful broadband which enables tremendous productivity gains.
As you've said, it's really about labor arbitrage -- replacing middle class American workers with low wage workers. "American corporations" were able to make use of the low wage white collar workforce in places like India with broadband in place. Broadband is just an enabling technology -- enabling corporation to more easily substitute low wage workers offshore for more costly middle class American workers.
I'm not shocked that Miller attempts to confuse people on this point; it's a continuation of the sort of lies he engaged in while heading up the ITAA "tech" lobby which promoted offshore outsourcing.
Second point re. education. Miller wants us all to believe that Americans are losing out on jobs because Americans lack the education and skills necessary to fill jobs. Miller has used this line of argument for years claiming phony labor shortages as the reason for importing foreign workers to fill IT jobs or the reason why jobs must now go offshore.
The offshore outsourcing and use of imported low wage workers in technical/scientific and skilled work areas has actually created a disincentive for Americans to study these areas. Miller and his allies have created the beginnings of an American retreat from information age areas of study.
American college students will not invest time, money and effort in areas of study which have no future for them. They see the news reports and are likely as not to be internet-savvy readers of reports about job outsourcing and NIV replacement worker programs.
So, when Miller talks about attracting people to study tech fields, he's being a rank hypocrite; he and his allies at the ITAA/CompeteAmerica/Chambers of Commerce/NAM/Business Roundtable pro-outsourcing lobby have discouraged Americans from studying the information age technical/scientific fields. Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at U.C., Davis writes about this situation rather frequently in his outsourcing/NIV topic newsletter.
And, all those "studies" which rank American education so poorly need to be questioned. Again, Matloff (a registered Democrat with excellent civil libertarian credentials) says that some countries such as India are not included in the rankings. Matloff has been highly critical of these "studies" often noting their inadequacies and taking issue with columnists such as the NYT's Kristoff who has made a rather regular point of bashing American education and supporting the claims that American educational failures are at the root of a "skilled labor shortage".
Even with Harris Miller's ambitions turned toward political office, we can see the continued assault on American white collar jobs. The cheap labor lobby persists in efforts to include H-1b type replacement worker provisions in "immigrations reform" bills. Like Miller, the replacement worker lobby is persistent and opportunistic.
I hope Webb's folks will start making calls to targetted Deocrats ASAP. Harris Miller positive is somehow much scarier than Harris Miller negative.