E-Books →Offshoring IT The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Therein lies the question: will it make us better off over the long run, or send us careening into a terminal period of violent class warfare?
If you're a corporate executive, offshoring looks like a nifty way to decrease cost structure. If you're a not an executive, offshoring looks like a one-way ticket to the poor house. Each side feels that it can justify its position with credible arguments. Each side can go on and on for hours about Adam Smith's invisible hand or the questionable ethics oflaissez faire economics. My job, as a researcher, is to dig out the facts and connect the dots, so to speak. Or, to let you connect them for yourself if you're so inclined
There's an old story about how Greek philosophers sat around debating about how many teeth a horse has. \Vhen you want to know how many teeth a horse has, nothing beats looking a horse in the mouth. Don't take someone else's word for it. Thus, I spent much of my time hunkered down with govern- ment studies. Whenever possible, I've tried to cite my sources specifically so that you can easily verify data for yourself.
There is a darker side to ambiguity, beyond sheer laziness. Which is to say that some people are intentionally vague with the hope that you'll simply take their word for it. They wave their hands in they air with the guarded expecta- tion that you'll take everything they say at face value. I won't try to insult your intelligence in this manner.
Finally, the thing about questions is that they lead to other questions. When I started to research this book, I intended to answer a small handful of fairly straightforward questions: Who's going offshore? Who stands to benefit? What are the potential long-term effects? What I discovered was that the sub- ject of offshoring led me to pose deeper, more fundamental questions about our economic system and this country's class structure. The conclusions that I reached disturbed me. Simply put, the system has been rigged to benefit a tiny group of economically privileged citizens. They stand to gain from offshore outsourcing and the rest of us stand to lose.