Damn, even the "cheaters assistants" have been outsourced....

[Engineer]

I found this interesting. The net has opened up the cheating mills for students across the world (not just the US), now, to save money, it's being offshored to placed like India and other low wage countries. If education is supposed to be the key to the future, it's those countries that are getting paid to do our research (and make our stuff but that's another thread) that are going to be moving forward...

Cheap homework labor...gives the kiddies more time to party and play the X-Box or PlayStation and to keep up a good Facebook page.

The article, to me, brings up two points of view: Lazy American kids who don't give a shit and the issue that almost ANYONE can be offshored by cheap, foreign labor.

Click me!

Cheating Outsourced

Posted by: Lindsey Gerdes on March 27

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had a fascinating cover article on the new mechanics of cheating. So-called ?essay mills,? which churn out everything from 10-page papers to entire dissertations for students at the cost of $19.99 to $42.99 per page, were once found near college bookstores and staffed by former students, says writer Thomas Bartlett. Now these underground outfits can be found online and work is outsourced to writers in Manila and Mumbai.

The Chronicle did a truly extensive investigative piece, particularly in its efforts to track down one of the most well-known of these organizations, Essay Writers.

I was perhaps most interested in the client requests that were peppered throughout the piece. One student even requested a paper that dealt with the topic of ethics. Here?s the student?s actual request:

?be sure to discuss three issues you are likely to face in addressing ethical dilemmas in your workplace based on your ethical style according to the ethics awareness inventory?this paper may be written in the first person.

Can you believe it? It would have been truly meta if the cheater in question had ultimately experienced a change of heart and written a paper about his or her ethical dilemma in almost deciding to cheat on the very paper he or she had ultimately submitted (although I suppose this wouldn?t have technically been a workplace issue.)

I call your attention to this article because I had no idea students were now outsourcing cheating. And if cheaters are receiving original works, as these sites advertise, how are teachers supposed to catch this? For those of us who always did it the hard way-- caffeine-fueled all-nighters, jammed-printer nightmares and all--this is pretty disturbing.

 

[JSt0rm]

India has more honors students then we have children in the entire country. Think about that.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
India has more honors students then we have children in the entire country. Think about that.

I don't doubt that one second. That's why I think that if we don't fundamentally change things, we're in for a very rocky (and sad) road. Every empire in history has failed...and I would prefer if we somehow broke that streak.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
India has more honors students then we have children in the entire country. Think about that.

I don't doubt that one second. That's why I think that if we don't fundamentally change things, we're in for a very rocky (and sad) road. Every empire in history has failed...and I would prefer if we somehow broke that streak.

Ours has already failed, but it is a long road to the bottom. This train has no brakes and the wreck is dead ahead. It would take a revolution (hopefully peaceful, most likely not) to alter our destination in the least.

 

[JSt0rm]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
It would take a revolution (hopefully peaceful, most likely not) to alter our destination in the least.

Uhh, we already stomp our feet and break shit like a 2 year old. What we need is intelligent humans that can compete in a global market. There isn't anything else.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
India has more honors students then we have children in the entire country. Think about that.

I don't doubt that one second. That's why I think that if we don't fundamentally change things, we're in for a very rocky (and sad) road. Every empire in history has failed...and I would prefer if we somehow broke that streak.

Ours has already failed, but it is a long road to the bottom. This train has no brakes and the wreck is dead ahead. It would take a revolution (hopefully peaceful, most likely not) to alter our destination in the least.

There was a posting on this forum years ago that listed the 7 steps of every empire with #7 being the final destruction. #6 was, in effect, relying on the slaves of conquered lands for your goods and services. We might avoid all of this, but #6 sure seems to be in full force right now.

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
It would take a revolution (hopefully peaceful, most likely not) to alter our destination in the least.

Uhh, we already stomp our feet and break shit like a 2 year old. What we need is intelligent humans that can compete in a global market. There isn't anything else.

While it matters how smart you are to an extent, it's hard to be wages that are over 100 times lower than the wages of those in this country. Our plant in China pays $0.08 per hour with no benefits. The same production in the US pays in excess of $15 with benefits. That's hard to beat, no matter how you look at it.

 

[First]

If outsourcing labor has been so bad, then why has the unemployment rate not increased considerably on the mean since 1972 when we fully opened up trade with China after Mao finally caved for ping pong? The average unemployment rate since 1972 to today hasn't changed, and that included an (unrelated) fluke oil supply shock that created massive inflation (and thereby unemployment) in the late 70's. How come that unemployment rate is just as good as any 37 year run in history if we're "losing" jobs to international competitors? The simple answer is we don't lose jobs to outsourcing because outsourcing also allows companies to grow and expand their capital reserves to hire Americans, which on the net makes up the difference in jobs lost to outsourcing, something we can directly see and prove by merely pointing to the unemployment rate. Now that isn't conclusive proof, but certainly when you look at the unemployment rate over the course of American history, there is zero indication that we are "competing" with foreigners for jobs. This is a common fallacy that keeps getting repeated but with essentially no evidence beyond anecdotes.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: First
If outsourcing labor has been so bad, then why has the unemployment rate not increased considerably on the mean since 1972 when we fully opened up trade with China...

BULLSHIT snipped

You like China so much how come you are not there?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: EngineerI don't doubt that one second. That's why I think that if we don't fundamentally change things, we're in for a very rocky (and sad) road. Every empire in history has failed...and I would prefer if we somehow broke that streak.

Perhaps one day we'll be writing essays for Indian and Chinese students at rock bottom prices.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: FirstThe simple answer is we don't lose jobs to outsourcing because outsourcing also allows companies to grow and expand their capital reserves to hire Americans, which on the net makes up the difference in jobs lost to outsourcing, something we can directly see and prove by merely pointing to the unemployment rate. Now that isn't conclusive proof, but certainly when you look at the unemployment rate over the course of American history, there is zero indication that we are "competing" with foreigners for jobs. This is a common fallacy that keeps getting repeated but with essentially no evidence beyond anecdotes.

OK, so where are the jobs? According to what you're saying, the people who were displaced when factories closed and moved to Mexico should have comparable or better jobs now. Where are they?

Why should the businesses with the higher capital reserves hire Americans when they could just take that money to hire less expensive foreign labor while also allocating some of that money for increased profits?

What percentage of today's jobs are solid middle class jobs with benefits compared to the Seventies?

One of the big differences today is that people cannot simply retrain and reeducate for white collar, knowledge-based jobs because the Internet makes those jobs easy to outsource.

Evan, do you really want to use the same avatar for two different accounts and what do you need two different Anandtech accounts for anyway?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

OK, so where are the jobs? According to what you're saying, the people who were displaced when factories closed and moved to Mexico should have comparable or better jobs now. Where are they?

I don't know exactly what jobs they have taken, do you? And how is that relevant?

Why should the businesses with the higher capital reserves hire Americans when they could just take that money to hire less expensive foreign labor while also allocating some of that money for increased profits?

Because businesses in the U.S. can only successfully outsource a very small percentage of their labor overseas if they want a certain level of expertise and efficiency. It's not hard to understand. And with the right outsourcing laws, not something that can't be easily contained.

What percentage of today's jobs are solid middle class jobs with benefits compared to the Seventies?

A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

One of the big differences today is that people cannot simply retrain and reeducate for white collar, knowledge-based jobs because the Internet makes those jobs easy to outsource.

A generalized statement with no facts to back it up.

Evan, do you really want to use the same avatar for two different accounts and what do you need two different Anandtech accounts for anyway?

Huh? They're the same account kiddo. :laugh:

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: First

A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Have wages, when accounting for inflation, skyrocketed since the 70's?

How about since the 60's too?

It's interesting to not that Fox Business did a report a few days ago suggesting that the middle class actually had far more inflation than did the upper classes as a % of their income. (i.e. the goods and services that the middle class spend most of their income had risen well more than the goods and services that the upper class spends much of their income on), but that's another story!

There is a reason why the largest employer in the US has went from GM in the 70's/80's to WalMart now. Great jobs and benefits for all at WalMart compared with those of GM, eh?

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: FirstThe simple answer is we don't lose jobs to outsourcing because outsourcing also allows companies to grow and expand their capital reserves to hire Americans, which on the net makes up the difference in jobs lost to outsourcing, something we can directly see and prove by merely pointing to the unemployment rate. Now that isn't conclusive proof, but certainly when you look at the unemployment rate over the course of American history, there is zero indication that we are "competing" with foreigners for jobs. This is a common fallacy that keeps getting repeated but with essentially no evidence beyond anecdotes.

OK, so where are the jobs? According to what you're saying, the people who were displaced when factories closed and moved to Mexico should have comparable or better jobs now. Where are they?

Why should the businesses with the higher capital reserves hire Americans when they could just take that money to hire less expensive foreign labor while also allocating some of that money for increased profits?

What percentage of today's jobs are solid middle class jobs with benefits compared to the Seventies?

One of the big differences today is that people cannot simply retrain and reeducate for white collar, knowledge-based jobs because the Internet makes those jobs easy to outsource.

Evan, do you really want to use the same avatar for two different accounts and what do you need two different Anandtech accounts for anyway?

Do you really expect an anser from the quirk much less an honest one?

 

[Phokus]

Originally posted by: First

Because businesses in the U.S. can only successfully outsource a very small percentage of their labor overseas if they want a certain level of expertise and efficiency. It's not hard to understand. And with the right outsourcing laws, not something that can't be easily contained.

Yes clearly only Americans have the capacity to learn stuff and the efficiency gains from computers and telecommunications won't be a factor in jobs continuing to bleed from America to the oversees.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: Phokus

Originally posted by: First

Because businesses in the U.S. can only successfully outsource a very small percentage of their labor overseas if they want a certain level of expertise and efficiency. It's not hard to understand. And with the right outsourcing laws, not something that can't be easily contained.

Yes clearly only Americans have the capacity to learn stuff and the efficiency gains from computers and telecommunications won't be a factor in jobs continuing to bleed from America to the oversees.

Damn right.

 

[stateofbeasley]

Originally posted by: First
A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Standards of living went up because households went from being predominantly 1 income households to 2 income households, and relied upon easy credit to buy ever bigger houses and automobiles.

But that standard of living is far less secure because if one person loses their job, everything falls apart. More "stuff" is not better if that "stuff" merely represents lots of debt.

Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that people in their 20's and 30's are struggling much more than their baby boomer parents. Student loan debt has risen to unmanageable levels. Housing is still very expensive in many areas. And knowledge-based jobs are all too easy to outsource to India. I had a thread about legal outsourcing a week or two ago about this. I see my friends and peers having a very difficult time making ends meet, and I know it wasn't like this in the 80s and 90s.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley

Originally posted by: First
A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Standards of living went up because households went from being predominantly 1 income households to 2 income households, and relied upon easy credit to buy ever bigger houses and automobiles.

But that standard of living is far less secure because if one person loses their job, everything falls apart. More "stuff" is not better if that "stuff" merely represents lots of debt.

Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that people in their 20's and 30's are struggling much more than their baby boomer parents. Student loan debt has risen to unmanageable levels. Housing is still very expensive in many areas. And knowledge-based jobs are all too easy to outsource to India. I had a thread about legal outsourcing a week or two ago about this. I see my friends and peers having a very difficult time making ends meet, and I know it wasn't like this in the 80s and 90s.

You're wasting your time. He (the artist formally known as Evan) will never buy into the idea that outsourcing/offshoring is killing the middle class in the US. I've watched 50% of my company's workforce go to Mexico in the last few years. I'm sure that the extra capital they have will be used to hire new US workers! :roll: (my ass).

Oh, and my "skilled trade" tooling plant won't make it past September at this pace. We are down to 3 people out of 30 and ZERO work being put in the plant (Mexico is starting to make their own tools so they are not all simple labor jobs being lost).

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: First
If outsourcing labor has been so bad, then why has the unemployment rate not increased considerably on the mean since 1972 when we fully opened up trade with China after Mao finally caved for ping pong?

This seems like a good point. If outsourcing were such a big problem, then shouldn't the unemployment have been steadily rising since then? Has the unemployment calculation changed since 1972? What about workers who quit looking for jobs and are no longer counted in the statistics? Could we have enough recent college grads entering the workforce to offset the people whose jobs were lost to outsourcing?

 

[CRXican]

you think that's lazy

I saw a news piece that showed American WOW players paying to have their characters leveled up by players in the Ukraine.

Something like this:
http://www.pgmx.com/game/view/world-of-warcraft

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: First

A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Have wages, when accounting for inflation, skyrocketed since the 70's?

How about since the 60's too?

Your link normalized around 82 dollars and $300, which doesn't make any sense without knowing the methodology or whether they included capital gains.

Here's what has actually happened to real wages (including capital gains) since 1916 plus information on how it was calculated:

http://www.visualizingeconomic...ited-states-1913-2006/
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www...ome/histinc/h02AR.html
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www...ome/histinc/h03AR.html

Also, as far as middle class Americans are concerned (middle 5th, 3rd link), their real income increased 30%+ since 40 years ago (through 07).

And I've always said that not enough has been done by gov't to redistribute some of the wealth from the upper crust to the middle class, btw. But that's another topic much more indirectly unrelated to outsourcing.

It's interesting to not that Fox Business did a report a few days ago suggesting that the middle class actually had far more inflation than did the upper classes as a % of their income. (i.e. the goods and services that the middle class spend most of their income had risen well more than the goods and services that the upper class spends much of their income on), but that's another story!

No real data to talk about there either.

There is a reason why the largest employer in the US has went from GM in the 70's/80's to WalMart now. Great jobs and benefits for all at WalMart compared with those of GM, eh?

Not at all, but GM's benefits were insanely irresponsible, as were Fords'. That's more a bad business model than anything else. WalMart makes up an infinitesimal part of the overall U.S. workforce and economy, as did GM and Ford, so it's anecdotal no matter which side of the fence you're on.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley

Originally posted by: First
A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Standards of living went up because households went from being predominantly 1 income households to 2 income households, and relied upon easy credit to buy ever bigger houses and automobiles.

But that standard of living is far less secure because if one person loses their job, everything falls apart. More "stuff" is not better if that "stuff" merely represents lots of debt.

Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that people in their 20's and 30's are struggling much more than their baby boomer parents. Student loan debt has risen to unmanageable levels. Housing is still very expensive in many areas. And knowledge-based jobs are all too easy to outsource to India. I had a thread about legal outsourcing a week or two ago about this. I see my friends and peers having a very difficult time making ends meet, and I know it wasn't like this in the 80s and 90s.

People are in more debt because the demand for those services (college tuition and the like) are far higher than they were 30+ years ago. But the alternative is what, to not emphasize a college education so relative debt levels go down from the lack of emphasis on a good education? Leading to a more poorly educated American population so as to ease the "burden" of work and life? Things have gotten harder since the 1850's too, from the perspective of a 1900 American worker. Life was much harder by 1900 than by 1850, when you could arbitrarily divide up someone's private property far more easily through coercion than you could by 1900. So it was harder to own a substantial swath of land by 1900, making life more of a "burden", but the positive tradeoff was that private property was more respected and far more people could own property in general as a result of the eventual legal rulings that clarified how to define property boundaries and divide up land ownership.

Or how it was also much harder for parents in 1800 to retire because agrarian lifestyles (where families would have children and expect them to farm land their whole lives) suddenly ceased to exist in the same fashion, leaving these parents without savings and without their children to help farm land by the early-to-mid-19th century. But the benefit was that future generations of parents could live without their children because saving was no longer a difficult, inaccessible mishmash of financial institutions. This allowed people to move, and to this day our labor is far more mobile than any other country, which is part of the reason why we are able to keep unemployment so low most of the time.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: stateofbeasley

Originally posted by: First
A much higher percentage given wages and standards of living have skyrocketed since the 70's.

Standards of living went up because households went from being predominantly 1 income households to 2 income households, and relied upon easy credit to buy ever bigger houses and automobiles.

But that standard of living is far less secure because if one person loses their job, everything falls apart. More "stuff" is not better if that "stuff" merely represents lots of debt.

Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that people in their 20's and 30's are struggling much more than their baby boomer parents. Student loan debt has risen to unmanageable levels. Housing is still very expensive in many areas. And knowledge-based jobs are all too easy to outsource to India. I had a thread about legal outsourcing a week or two ago about this. I see my friends and peers having a very difficult time making ends meet, and I know it wasn't like this in the 80s and 90s.

You're wasting your time. He (the artist formally known as Evan) will never buy into the idea that outsourcing/offshoring is killing the middle class in the US. I've watched 50% of my company's workforce go to Mexico in the last few years. I'm sure that the extra capital they have will be used to hire new US workers! :roll: (my ass).

Oh, and my "skilled trade" tooling plant won't make it past September at this pace. We are down to 3 people out of 30 and ZERO work being put in the plant (Mexico is starting to make their own tools so they are not all simple labor jobs being lost).

Yet unemployment has stayed the same, something you simply cannot explain. While middle class real income has increased 30% between 67 and 07 and standards of living have risen due to vastly superior technology, housing, and even the quality of food. Damn concrete numbers! :laugh:

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: Phokus

Originally posted by: First

Because businesses in the U.S. can only successfully outsource a very small percentage of their labor overseas if they want a certain level of expertise and efficiency. It's not hard to understand. And with the right outsourcing laws, not something that can't be easily contained.

Yes clearly only Americans have the capacity to learn stuff and the efficiency gains from computers and telecommunications won't be a factor in jobs continuing to bleed from America to the oversees.

Damn right.

Uh, do you really want to link an article that merely shows the absolute dominance of American microprocessor design over the past 4 decades? Seems sort of, well, dumb.

 

[stateofbeasley]

Originally posted by: First
Also, as far as middle class Americans are concerned (middle 5th, 3rd link), their real income increased 30%+ since 40 years ago (through 07).

As I stated before, real income for households (the figures in your link) increased because there was a transition from single-earner households to dual-earner households.

Originally posted by: First
People are in more debt because the demand for those services (college tuition and the like) are far higher than they were 30+ years ago. But the alternative is what, to not emphasize a college education so relative debt levels go down from the lack of emphasis on a good education? Leading to a more poorly educated American population so as to ease the "burden" of work and life?

A traditional 4-year college education is neither necessary nor appropriate for many people in this country. There should be more emphasis on vocational training, rather than pushing kids who don't really want or need a college education into college.

Some people just aren't wired to learn in a classroom/lecture setting. They just end up dropping out of college and wasting time and money.

Originally posted by: First
Yet unemployment has stayed the same, something you simply cannot explain. While middle class real income has increased 30% between 67 and 07 and standards of living have risen due to vastly superior technology, housing, and even the quality of food. Damn concrete numbers!

Real income increased because most households are now 2-earner and not single earner households.

Read this book and get back to me:

The Two Income Trap

Unemployment can stay the same for many reasons. People can leave the workforce. People can be working in jobs that they are over qualified for. The quality and pay of a job may not be as good as it used to be.

A lot of the jobs in recent years have been "bubble" jobs that didn't really do anything. Like all those people in the mortgage business whose only job was to push as much shitpaper through the system in order to put more subprime mortgages on the books. A lot of financial analysts, mutual fund brokers, lawyers, and other wall street types had jobs that created little or no value (and arguably destroyed a lot of value) to our society. I'm not saying that financial services aren't valuable, as they are a critical part of the economy, but the entire sector was bloated by people whose only function was to pump up markets. The current disaster is the result.

The quality of food is debatable.

The amount of highly processed garbage and amount of fast food available for consumption since the 1980's is staggering.

In Defense of Food

Basically a lot of this processed stuff is empty calories -- basically energy and nothing else. This is not good food. It's food that makes you into a fatass with a lot of health problems (diabetes, heart disease, cancer).

 

[StageLeft]

Damn, I wish that was around when I went to school.

Every empire in history has failed...and I would prefer if we somehow broke that streak.

Magic 8 ball says not a chance in hell, sorry.

You like China so much how come you are not there?

You hate America so much, why haven't you left?