Wow, outsourcing is unpopular

A group of my coworkers just gathered around one of the cubes to give our AA a Christmas gift. When we found out that one of the people they all know (financial industries seem to be rather incestuous) had just gotten laid off, the conversation eventually ended up on outsourcing.

Now, I understand that, to a greater degree than anything I can think of, outsourcing typifies the NIMBY problem. So it's not surprising that economists love it and the people hate it.

(Let me say quickly that my underestimating the unpopularity of outsourcing in the first place is why I'm writing this. I'm writing it assuming the audience is pro-outsourcing, but as I've guessed incorrectly before, speak up if you are opposed.)

Boy, was I surprised to hear them talk about it. These are all people in a consulting industry, all of whom make more money than I'm going to for a long time, and yet they could not have felt much more strongly about it. They went so far as to say that the government should not be allowed to send a single government job overseas, nor should it be allowed to do business with companies that outsource.

(My company, Buck Consultants, is owned by ACS, which does many other things but is largely an outsourcing company. As a side note to this side note, it also administers student loans, so you may actually get mail from them for that. I do, and it really confused me the first time, since I'm also an employee.)

Again, I was just really surprised by this. I wish that whenever a job got outsourced we could magically bestow the unlucky American with all the skills he needed to get a new job. Still though, there are benefits to it, and its the inevitable wave of the near-to-medium future, and not one of them showed even the slightest hesitation about their opposition.

(I was interrupted a number of times while writing this. Also, today's been one of those extra-caffeine days. If either of those things is overly apparent/distracting in my writing I apologize.)