You have to love this. I was discriminated against because I was a good old american. Might be amusing if it wasn't so sad.
-- Sun Microsystems is now defending itself against a lawsuit
alleging that it laid off 2,500 older U.S. workers and replaced them with young, lower-paid
workers from India. The lawsuit alleges that Sun discriminated on race, national origin and
age, and that Sun manifested an "institutional bias" in favor of Indian workers because they
are "more compliant" and "less willing to make waves." --
Productivity is a two edged sword. It's what raises the standard of living. But also any area that experiences great increases in productivity, the value of the product or service goes towards zero. If something is easily made or done, you're not going to pay much for it other than as a convenience.
The one area on this planet that in the last ten years had the greatest increase in productivity was the transport of communications. And as one can see the price has gone towards zero. Once upon a time you could charge for phone calls by the minute. And then it became long distance phone calls you could charge by the minute. We're already starting to see all you want for a set monthly fee. As it is now, it doesn't cost me anything extra to view a website any where in the world.
Because of the exponential increase in productivity of communication transport, it has totally changed the playing field. The soothsayers in predicting the future prophesied that people would "tele-a-commute". While that is becoming true, what they had failed to notice is that the tele-a-commute would be from continents away.
One consequence of this will be the popping of the real estate bubble. While rising interest rates might start it's down fall, this will be it's nail in the coffin. The first signs of this are the loss of high paying jobs to cheap immigrant labor. Followed by people that work "here" but live continents away. I would not recommend buying real estate as an investment.
As an aside, the most valuable thing in all the broad universe is ...... communication. There is nothing anywhere that is more valuable.
