This is a common question esp. among Pakistanis ("m23khan" is someone from Pakistan living in Canada, available from his HN comments). Please let me explain. (1) India is the biggest democracy in the world. US is the oldest democracy. We share common values like liberty, equality, secularism. (2) India has the potential to be largest growth market for American companies (think Android, Uber, American defense companies, etc.). (3) No Indian has been involved in terrorism attacks in US. (4) Indians integrate in US much faster than other immigrant communities, reasons could be familiarity with English, belief in freedom of speech, etc. (5) Significant contributions made by Indian-Americans - look at their work as Professors, as doctors, as CEOs, as journalists. (6) In spite of sharing many values with US, India is not afraid to distance itself from American policies when they do not agree, e.g. India said no for troops in Iraq, led the non-aligned movement during Cold War. My guess is that America respects a principled country more than a country which keeps asking for more $ while pointing a gun to its own head.
So it should not be difficult to understand why India is considered as an ally by US.
In other words, Chinese negotiate from the position of strength in all regards. And they do want to keep control of their economy and their internal market.
On the other hand, India is much more transparent and follows open market, Any foreign company can freely operate there without being feared of getting disadvantaged over local competition.
Btw, USA and other western power blatantly bullies India and other third world countries alike. When India started making cheap solar panels, USA dragged them to court. In the 90s, India started producing cheap fertilizers for their farmers.. oops, big daddy us doesn't likes it because it hurts the interest of Monsanto. So stop playing this US vs Them game.
Such nation of hypocrites. Takes proud in Democracy and free market capitalism but hates when it plays out on the world stage.
Trump and every other American politician do not talk about it because the trade deficit between India and USA is not as big as China. Also, 9 out of 15 top internet companies in India are from USA. So like China, India is not a protectionist country and this outsourcing is a part of free trade.
Btw,Welcome to Capitalism!
The day we hear Indian companies have outsourced jobs in India to outside of India, then your point will be valid.
This is not capitalism and is certainly not free trade - it is simply one-way trade and the problem lies with the Western World who have propped up the Indian economy by handing over jobs that should have remained in the West over to India.
It most certainly is, sadly.
> handing over jobs that should have remained in the West
Capitalism recognises no "should" other than the market.
> Indian companies have outsourced jobs in India to outside of India
Does it matter whether the jobs were in India in the first place? India is certainly an export market for the US: https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/south-central-asia/india
Three billion dollars of aircraft! That's got to be worth a job or two at Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. And then there's a little note at the bottom:
"Sales of services in India by majority U.S.-owned affiliates were $16.4 billion in 2011 (latest data available), while sales of services in the United States by majority India-owned firms were $9.3 billion."
And therein lies the rub for the USA: capitalism is not the be all and end all of our existence as a nation. Somewhere down the road we lost the notion that there was an implied social contract between a nation and its citizens. And that contract must take precedence over unfettered capitalism.
USA citizens thought the social contract included protection from competition with 2nd- and 3rd-world workers who are paid 2nd- and 3rd-world wages. But MBAs, economists, and "globalizers" believed that no such protection should be provided.
The USA's citizens lost the argument w/o knowing it was going on. The asymmetry in the situation puts only upside into the hands of the MBA/globalizer and downside into the hands of the USA worker:
MBA/globalizer - "I'll make mega-mega-megabucks if I can produce widgets abroad! I'll be a god* billionaire!"
Other would-be MBA/globalizer down the street - "If MBA/globalizer doesn't produce widgets abroad, then _I_ will do it! I'll be a god* billionaire and MBA/globalizer will be out of business!"
US citizen worker - "I'll lose my job and be penniless if anyone produces widgets abroad!"
Guess which ones put the most money into USA'S political campaigns over recent decades!
There is no question that China has a "China first!" policy. In contrast, the USA has forgotten that it once had a "USA first!" policy as part of its social contract. The USA should restore that policy and make it economically explicit. Otherwise, why have a nation-state at all? If we don't go "USA first!" then we will be little more than a protective nest for an extremely wealthy few.
[Edit: I was somewhat reluctant to add this, but several of the few extraordinary wealthy I have spoken to have literally whispered:]
But that might not last long. The USA populace would likely revolt, kill the extremely wealthy and start all over again.
Some, and possibly many, wealthy persons apparently fear the judgement of the crowds, pitchforks, torches and finally death at the hands of the mob! How wonderful must be extraordinary wealth that one begins to fear for one's very existence and that of one's children!
Or they could just move, leaving a poor country behind.
Only if the military and the police rebelled would the revolution have any chance. Even in the US.
(People may be temporarily suckered by hypocrites and liars by omission.)
When an India bodyshop comes in, and displaces 50 people making 100k a year.. and they have to go find a new job making 100k a year within a month, there is much less outrage. The general rust belt population in the US is not going to go to bat for lawyers getting paid less, or IT workers making 10 or 20k less. Their parents made 60k working at a Ford factory, and now they make 20k working for a carwash. They are the ones that are outraged.
That's not the only place the anger is!
I can no longer buy good hand tools like those made in the USA during the 60s. Since then, neither China nor India (nor any other rising nation except Taiwan) have produced hand tools comparable to those formerly available from the USA.
Remarkably, most of my USA-made hand tools from the 60s still work but nothing lasts forever and accidents do happen. At least I can still get high-quality German, French or Japanese tools.
Business schools taught international economics theory to MBAs, who proselytized and burned down the barn (i.e., the USA's manufacturing capability) by globalizing everything in sight. MBAs in finance engineered a series of disastrous economic collapses, each larger than the previous. While the USA has "enjoyed" center-stage in this circus, I would have preferred that we, as a nation, avoided such a sordid business history.
Were it possible to do again, I would put most of the MBAs (along with all political science students) onto concrete boats and let the Navy use them for target practice. India and China would be much poorer but also would have avoided much upheaval. And I could buy good hand tools which, of course, is all I care about!
Clearly some people value this. I know people that go to garage sales just to get vintage better made hand tools. So clearly there is some kind of demand for this.
Why do we not have a hand tools startup come in, and offer 1960s quality hand tools for a price premium? Choices are:
1) They literally cannot be made today. Say the type of steel is different, or there is some physical reason they cannot be built.
2) They can be made, but the price is so high - not enough people would pay for it, and the company would go under.
3) This is a ripe opportunity, and we just need a startup to come along an exploit it.
I am going to rule 1 out without more proof. So down to 2 choices. How much are people will to pay for really nice hand tools? 2-5x the autozone tools price?
They can compete by doing a better job. A lot of people who have outsourced to India have run into problems and regretted it.
Random web service times out once? Don't do any more work on anything, even stuff that doesn't use that service. Bill the full 8 hours though, of course.
Have a question about some tangentially related business process? Stop work until we get an answer, bill the full 8.
Oh, someone is actually checking our commits? The guy that wrote that is on vacation, sorry.
Oh, someone is actually checking our commits? Delete and recommit entire files, now it's impossible to see the volume of work complete.
At my current gig we picked up about 40 offshore developers and ended up dropping every one of them within the first year. We're still remote but US only at this point.
The "usurping" of jobs is because American companies are fine with driving down wages.
Good news: it isn't a total loss; the Clintons and the Clinton foundation are now rich b/c everyone thought Hilary Clinton would win the election.
And Democrats will not forget about the support.
If India can survive outsourcing of her jobs to American companies, America surely wouldn't perish by outsourcing American jobs where it makes perfect business sense to do so.
- pay $250K per child in college costs
- pay 25K/year in health insurance
- pay $3K/month for a small apartment
Btw that is a lot of incorrect assumptions about expenses, including where someone's children might want to go to college, globally fixed costs like work equipment and cloud services, not to mention goods which are actually cheaper in the US.
Also high competition for perceivably cheap candidates.
What I find more interesting though, is that remote first companies behave the same. way E.g. look at GitLab salary calculator[0]. How does that make sense assuming a rational market?
2500 USD to 15,000 USD
http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Job=Java_Software_Develo...
The empirical formula for a new hire is $3000 * years of Experience. The median starting Salary is $4500 ~ $5000, and the salary usually caps out at $25000, and people above that payscale are usually considered architects.
I finally convinced the company to just hire a couple people locally, and they were much better off for it.
I don't know what magical spell has India cast over Americans that all American politicians have become totally stone blind to the fact that how damaging India has been to outsourcing of jobs from America to India and how many highly skilled/educated Americans have been left without jobs due to India's usurping of jobs.
And to those bleeding hearts who highlight scarce attempts of Indian companies hiring in US - don't forget the fact that such job numbers dwarf the amount of jobs that have been outsourced to India. And for those karma-believers who think that one day India will taste its own medicine when they outsource to poorer nations than India - let me tell you something: India is one nation that will never,ever outsource its own jobs to other nations (mickey mouse examples won't count).
How the heck can IT folks from US/Canada/UK and other such nations compete with India (and in some cases with Philippines) where wages are so low that if we here in the Western World were to work with such wages, we would need to have 3 jobs to make our ends meet.