Is the World Flat?

In the March 6th issue of Newsweek, author Brad Stone writes about the outsourcing of American technical jobs to India.

According to Stone, "U.S. tech employment is growing. There are 17% more tech workers in the United States today than back in the bubble days of 1999, states a new study by the Association for Computing Machinery." He continues to explain that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the United States will add another 1 million tech jobs over the next decade, an increase of 30%.

Why are these statistics so favorable when a short time ago, it seemed that American companies were going to India in droves? According to Stone, American companies are realizing that India is a risk due to its "bad roads and a patchy power grid."

It’s an interesting debate if you compare it to the recent discussions involving Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat. Continuing in this direction, take Steven Levitt’s book, Freakanomics.

Amazon states:
Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage.

The Murphy Library owns all three of the resources mentioned above.