Back during the recession years, whenever we'd write about how offshoring technology jobs wasn't the big problem people made it out to be, we'd get tons of angry comments. However, the points many of us were making were pretty straightforward. First, offshoring wasn't as cheap as people were making it out to be. The monetary costs would continue to increase as demand increased (which is exactly what happened), but more importantly, the non-monetary costs were a lot higher than people expected. Managing a team halfway around the world isn't easy, and there are lots of problems with it for certain types of projects. In fact, that's exactly what many companies discovered. At the same time, there are clearly cases where offshoring makes sense. It's classic comparative advantage economics at work, where benefits tend to accrue to both sides of the equation. People forget this and think that it's a zero sum game and that a job that goes to India is somehow "lost" forever. However, the value from well done offshoring actually opens up new opportunities and so it should come as no surprise that unemployment for techies is the lowest its been in years. This fits with other recent stories about tech wages at new highs and H1-B visas being exhausted in a single day. The simple fact is that the economy is not a zero sum game. Allowing the economy to grow by letting jobs go where they're most efficient will increase the overall pie and open up plenty of new job opportunities in other places -- which appears to be exactly what's happened. As if to underscore this, now that tech jobs are scarce in the US, those who were complaining about "lost" jobs a few years ago must think that there's less demand in India for skilled tech workers -- but the opposite is true. Tech companies there are also having trouble hiring. In other words, the sector just keeps growing, and having jobs move around doesn't mean that any jobs are permanently "lost." At some point, we'll go through this cycle again, but hopefully next time around people will recognize it for what it is, rather than passing around the blame and pushing Congress to pass protectionist laws that actually shrink the economic opportunity.

Hurrah!

The FCC today called time on discussions to unban the use of cell phones onboard planes, prompting mass rejoicing from America's airline passengers.

Filed under: Transportation

While the majority of world speed records we cover involve things like transistors, data transmission, and even the occasional text messaging attempt, we're not ones to pass up a good old fashion land speed record, which France's Alstom Technologies thankfully provided today. After months of working up to it, the company finally sent its V150 passenger train screaming through the French countryside, ultimately topping out at a breakneck speed of 574.8 kilometers per hour, or about 357 mph, easily besting the previous rail speed record of 320 mph. While it'll no doubt only make you jealous of not being on board (or at least nearby), you can check out a video of the record-setting attempt at the link below.

[Thanks, Antoine G]

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