Edward: Outsourcing is cheaper, there’s no arguing that. But that wasn’t the point…

No one’s talking of banning it. There are times it works and can actually benefit a company. There are also times it can hurt a company. As I interpreted it, Mark’s post talked about how outsourcing can be positive and negative. Why is that controversial? Do you believe ALL outsourcing MUST BE good? Isn’t it possible that it could also hurt a company? I don’t see why you would question that it can be positive or negative. No one was talking about outlawing outsourcing.

There are no rules that work 100% of the time, no matter what the economics textbooks say. It would be better if we all looked at specific situations and found the best solutions instead of applying the same old rules to every situation.

3 Number of companies that control the US voting technology market.

52 Percentage of votes cast during the 2002 midterm elections that were recorded by Election Systems & Software, the largest voting-technology firm, a big Republican donor.

29 Percentage of votes that will be cast via computer voting machines that don’t produce a paper record.

17 On 17 November 2001, The Economist printed a correction for having said George Bush was properly elected in 2000.

$113m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, the most in American electoral history.

$185m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, to the end of March 2004.

$200m Amount that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign expects to raise by November 2004.

268 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Pioneer status (by raising $100,000 each) as of March 2004.

187 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Ranger status (by raising $200,000 each) as of March 2004.

$64.2m The Amount Pioneers and Rangers had raised for Bush-Cheney as of March 2004.

85 Percentage of Americans who can’t Name the Chief Justice of the United States.

69 Percentage of Americans who believed the White House’s claims in September 2003 that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September attacks.

34 Percentage of Americans who believed in June 2003 that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” had been found.

22 Percentage of Americans who believed in May 2003 that Saddam had used his WMDs on US forces.

85 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map.

30 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a map.

75 Percentage of American young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.

53 Percentage of Canadian young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.

11 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the United States on a map.

30 Percentage of Americans who believe that “politics and government are too complicated to understand.”

Anyways, I think its curious how many posters are actually contradicting themselves. I would venture a guess that most readers come here because they are Mavs fans. With that being said, the Mavs have outsourced much of their talent by getting non-U.S. players.

The simple truth is that the U.S. is not as holy as we think we are. There are just as skilled people all over the world.

Whether we outsource or not, business is still going to shift to a global environment as personal and informational transportation becomes quicker and cheaper.

In the words of Eddie Vedder, “It’s Evolution Baby.”

Mark, wanna do lunch sometime?

Speaking of Wall Street, it was good to see Sirius stock leap 10% today after announcing that it had reached a ‘milestone’ of getting 600′000 customers. Great news! until you realise they have 600k customers after they paid $220m + stock to the NFL for programming rights. The current price values each user at over $5000, what is the market thinking?

Mark, how would you do this? You can’t legally prevent stockholders from selling stock or corporate officers from earning bonuses.

As an economist, I can see that the outsourcing issue will be debated for a long time to come. I don’t own any companies, but I can see how you would want to spend your money any way you see fit. Because I don’t own any companies, I am terrorized by this trend of sending jobs overseas and recruiting individuals for the lower-paid positions this situation “creates”.

I completely agree with the Social Security Opt Out. However, I can see that would have been great FOUR years ago when we had a surplus. You are right, it might never happen again!

I don’t know anything about drug companies or stock options, except that having grown up in a border town in Texas, I witnessed first hand people bandaging up serious wounds and driving across the border to the Red Cross for cheaper health care; then “smuggling” the prescription drugs back into the US! These weren’t drug pushers, they were just poor people who couldn’t afford US drugs, but weren’t willing to let their kids die of an infection. That seems grossly unfair to me, but our government doesn’t seem interested in what’s fair. And drug companies are contributing alot more to their election campaigns than I am!