# Posted 9:14 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE INDIAN COMPUTER GEEK MEME: In honor of the 10th anniversary of NAFTA, the NYT turned over yesterday's op-ed page to eloquent denunciations of free trade.

First up is Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz's morose meditation on US-Mexican trade relations. Stiglitz notes that

Growth in Mexico over the past 10 years has been a bleak 1 percent on a per capita basis — better than in much of the rest of Latin America, but far poorer than earlier in the century.

All in all, Stiglitz's main objection to NAFTA seems to be that it wasn't the silver bullet of Mexican economic growth. He even complains that US-Mexican trade isn't free enough because of US agricultural subsidies that hurt Mexican farmers. Not exactly an argument against NAFTA, is it Dr. Stiglitz?

The second anti-free trade column comes from NY Sen. Charles Schumer and former Reagan Treasury official Paul Roberts. Their column begins with what iis supposed to be a big, scary anecdote:

Over the next three years, a major New York securities firm plans to replace its team of 800 American software engineers, who each earns about $150,000 per year, with an equally competent team in India earning an average of only $20,000.

An almost identical story about high tech outsourcing was the subject of a Bob Herbert column just a few weeks ago. As such, I think it's fair to say that what we are dealing with here is a "meme". It's more than a concept or an idea. It's a convtroversial claim packaged inside of a compelling anecdote that actually has very little substance to it.

The message of the Indian computer geek meme is that the benighted advocates of free trade

advised U.S. workers to adjust, to become better educated and skillful enough to thrive in a new world of employment, where technology and the ability to process information were crucial components.

Well, the workers whose jobs are now threatened at I.B.M. and similar companies across the U.S. are well educated and absolute whizzes at processing information. But they are nevertheless in danger of following the well-trodden path of their factory brethren to lower-wage work, or the unemployment line.

One objection to this argument is ethical. As Matt Yglesias points out,

Say we changed things around and more Americans made more money, more Indians made less money, and all people everywhere had to pay somewhat more for their software. How is that really better? Because it's better for Americans?...

Come to think of it, American software consumers have interests that count as well. So do the shareholders in US software companies. Why is protecting the salary levels of American geeks so overwhelmingly important?

But leaving that (very good) argument aside for the moment, consider the more important fact that the US computer industry is expanding by leaps and bounds. Consider this:

Eight of the 10 fastest-growing occupations between now and 2010 will be computer-related, according to new projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The sharpest increase is expected to occur among workers who design software programs or develop computer databases. This occupational group had 380,000 employees in 2000, a figure that is expected to double to 760,000 by 2010. That's an annual increase of 7.2 percent.

Just because the industry is growing by leaps and bounds doesn't mean that no one will get fired and that no jobs will be outsourced. In fact, firings and outsourcing are critical to the growth process.

To be sure, being fired or outsourced or downsized isn't a pleasant experience. But if there is tremendous demand for programmers, then $150,000-a-year programmers shouldn't have a hard time finding a new job.

In contrast, if a factory worker loses his or her job, that's probably it. Economies the world over (including China) are losing manufacturing jobs because of techonological advances.

Thus, the basic message of free-trade advocates is still right on target: acquire high-tech skills and you can expect to have a good job. Can you expect $150,000 per year? I don't know.

One thing you certainly shouldn't expect is security. Critics like Schumer and Herbert seem to be mired in an old-economy model of lifetime employment. (Which still seems to apply to senators and NYT columnists.) But in the information, skills are what matter.

Today, job security comes from acquiring knowledge, not building a relationship with a single firm. This model isn't perfect, but it's still damn good.

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