I’m no economist, but one of the issues I find myself really interested in these days is outsourcing – sending white collar jobs from programming to accounting to technical support – overseas. (Similar, but not identical to simply shutting down plants and moving operations overseas, issues that David Morrison and Fr. Jim have been discussing)

My first really personal encounter with this came a few months ago when I was trying to fix a plane reservation mess for one of my kids. The person on the other end kept mispronouncing the name of the city, a not-unknown American city, in the most bizarre way. And it finally occurred to me – this guy doesn’t live in the US! He must be trying to fix my reservation from the middle of India or something!

I find the whole issue fascinating from an ethical point of view, and in how it forces us to redefine ourselves and the American system. For a century and a half or so, the United States has been a, and then the major player in the world economy by affecting the lives of people from other countries – by bringing them here and giving them a chance to improve their lives. Well, now, with technology, they don’t have to travel. Is it really that much different?

The whole thing leaves me wondering, though, what in the world is left for people living in the United States to do? What is the work of Americans going to be in twenty years? Human services, entertainment and staffing stores that sell goods from other countries?

Here’s a good article from Wired on the subject.

In 1992, Jairam graduated from India’s University of Pune with a degree in engineering. She has since worked in a variety of jobs in the software industry and is now a project manager at Hexaware Technologies in Mumbai, the city formerly known as Bombay. Jairam specializes in embedded systems software for handheld devices. She leaves her two children with a babysitter each morning, commutes an hour to the office, and spends her days attending meetings, perfecting her team’s code, and emailing her main client, a utility company in the western US. Jairam’s annual salary is about $11,000 – more than 22 times the per capita annual income in India.

Aparna Jairam isn’t trying to steal your job. That’s what she tells me, and I believe her. But if Jairam does end up taking it – and, let’s face facts, she could do your $70,000-a-year job for the wages of a Taco Bell counter jockey – she won’t lose any sleep over your plight. When I ask what her advice is for a beleaguered American programmer afraid of being pulled under by the global tide that she represents, Jairam takes the high road, neither dismissing the concern nor offering soothing happy talk. Instead, she recites a portion of the 2,000-year-old epic poem and Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita: “Do what you’re supposed to do. And don’t worry about the fruits. They’ll come on their own.”

(And, lame me, I didn’t know they’d changed Bombay’s name!)