February 26, 2004Economy

Tom Friedman on Outsourcing

Tom Friedman, he of McDonalds Theory of Conflict Prevention fame, is in India. Here’s what he wrote in today’s New York Times

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?” I asked 24/7’s founder, S. Nagarajan.

Well, he answered patiently, look around this office.” All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.[NYT]



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