Hi Robert, If it was a truly free market, The U.S.would clean the world's clocks. However, we are in a system that claims to have a free market but is anything but. The People's Republic of China is holding down the price of the Yuan so that their imports are cheap. The copyright and patent laws that we have in the U.S. mean nothing in the rest of the world so the fostering of innovation is not done. The U.S. is providing a security blanket for the rest of the world through our defense spending which takes away from our ability to innovate internally. Japan and Taiwan have particularly benefitted from this arrangement. The U.S. gets no compensation for these benefits that it provides the rest of the world. There have been attempts to compare "PAX AMERICANA" with "PAX BRITANNIA" that occurred during the reign of Queen Victoria. There is in fact no comparison. TheBritish colonies were raped by the British government for goods and services and cheap labor with all of the profits going to the Crown. The Crown then distributed the booty to all of the Nobles (of which there were many) and these Nobles spent the money in the local communities to keep them in jobs. The English education system was populated by the Nobles and English commoners who were selected at an early age because of their brains. There were few foreign nationals in the British system at that time. Instead, they instituted the British system of education in their colonies. The whole scheme was to benefit the English. Pax Americana benefits practically everybody else and not the United States and causes a huge drain on our treasury and our education system. The sad thing about the American engineer is that most have taken reduced curriculums and really don't have a sense of history. They are then prey to any group of persons who tout imaginitive and right sounding ideas but are actually lining their pockets at the same time. Did anybody read that the ratio between exeutive compensation and the lowest paid worker in the U.S. was 40 in 1980 an it is now 282. That is the reason that the costs of engineering in the U.S. is being kept down. Greed at the top. NOT high-sounding objectives that follow from "The wealth of nations" by Adam Smith. Thanks JimFreeman Robert Sefton wrote: > I enthusiastically agree that this is a relevant and very interesting > topic. I wish more people would chime in because I don't have a good > feel yet for where the majority stands on it. There was a long thread on > this same topic on the [pcdlist] several weeks ago, and the PCB layout > community is downright scared about the offshore trend in that industry. > > My opinion: I have almost blind faith in the free market as the ultimate > equalizer. In the long term the market will decide the most efficient > model for each phase of product development, and it may be that the most > efficient model right now is cheap foreign engineers. Could be a painful > next couple of decades for engineers in the U.S., but I also have almost > blind faith that the U.S. has the closest thing on this planet to a true > free market and will always rise to the top eventually. I say let the > market rule. > > Robert > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Zabinski, Patrick J." <zabinski.patrick@xxxxxxxx> > To: <si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 5:22 AM > Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: [OT] Offshore engineering > > > > > Martin, > > > > Although not necessarily a technical topic, I do believe > > the topic is relevant to this forum (albeit we should > > constrain such discussions to a minimum). > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > To unsubscribe from si-list: > si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field > > or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: > //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list > > For help: > si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field > > List technical documents are available at: > http:/www.si-list.org > > List archives are viewable at: > //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list > or at our remote archives: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages > Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: > http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu > ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List technical documents are available at: http:/www.si-list.org List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu