JOB_les

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   8-28-95. NYPaper, Page One lead:


   "Skilled Workers Watch Their Jobs Migrate Overseas. College
   Educated Foreigners Are Doing High-Technology Tasks for Far
   Less Pay."

      The new tools of the information age were supposed to
      help the United States regain an edge in international
      competition. And while that has happened in many
      advanced-technology industries, the combination of
      powerful personal computers and high-capacity undersea
      telephone cables is also subjecting millions of
      white-collar Americans to the same global wage pressures
      that their blue-collar counterparts have long faced. As
      with steel and garment workers, the white-collar
      workers' positions and salaries increasingly depend on
      whether they can justify their higher pay with higher
      productivity. Many fear that the growing tendency of
      corporations to farm out tasks to developing countries
      is widening the gap even further between the rich and
      everybody else in American society by eliminating some
      categories of high-skill, high-wage jobs that make up
      the heart of the middle class.


   "Dissecting the information revolution (in advance): With
   a look at one of Newt's Laws and at 'friction-free
   capitalism.' " [Expands on last week's Aspen article]

      The Aspen conference provided some people with their
      first exposure to Newtonion economics -- which appears
      to be the information-age equivalent of Ronald Reagan's
      trickle-down economics. It is called "friction-free
      capitalism." Nathan Myhrvold noted that one can now
      order custom-fit blue jeans directly from the
      manufacturer.


   Double trouble: JOB_les (17kb)