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Why tech execs want taxes

Lots of good feedback to our special. Most of the e-mail responses have been measured and insightful. Of course, you run into the occasional bomb-thrower, but offshoring is the sort of subject that ignites passions. I was bracing for a lot worse.

Our poll turned up the tantalizing nugget that a number of U.S. businesses are willing to pay a per-head tax on jobs exported abroad. My assumption going into this was that any tax-proposal idea would be positively radioactive. Yet in private conversations, I've heard several technology execs acknowledge this is something they would support. Interesting. What … Read more

What's up, Doc?

Amid all the Sturm und Drang about offshoring, America's academic decline in the sciences is getting relatively little attention. The number of new science doctorates has been dropping since it peaked in 1998. Now there's something Lou Dobbs should be screaming about.

The bigger worry is that some of the foreign talent propping up places like Silicon Valley may decide to take their freshly minted Ph.D.s back home. If you believe the National Science Foundation, a mini-reverse brain drain is already under way. That's bad news in bells. And if the trend accelerates, don't … Read more

Long haul ahead

The Wall Street Journal's making a big deal about the creation of 20,000 new tech jobs since late last year.

Fair enough. But after a three-year drought, Silicon Valley's got a long way to go before it starts to feel good about itself. I still get the feeling we're only one massive terror attack away from another 700-point drop in the Dow and another IT customer deep freeze.

Money isn't everything

The New York Times ran a terrific piece about an Indian entrepreneur in Southborough, Mass., who tried offshoring but decided to move the jobs back because the experiment utterly failed. The lesson is that some jobs just can't get exported 10,000 miles around the globe, while others can. It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish, and anybody who thinks it's only about cost is missing the point.

Besides, don't count on Indians accepting lousy wages for brainwork too much longer. The Indian IT industry notched up double-digit salary growth in 2003. Barring the … Read more

AMD opens up in India

The antioffshoring crowd is going to hit the roof when it reads that AMD plans to open an engineering center in Bangalore, India. That's the second big announcement by a U.S. tech company this week. 3Com's got a new VoIP operation in the planning stage, set to open in Hyderabad. Of course, AMD is only taking a page out of Intel's book. It's been setting up shop overseas for years.