However, Atlanta based Earthlink has reportedly just dumped (laid off)
900

and what the f has this got to do with economic philosophy?

well:

10. newcastle can import cheap coal too, or sumthin
9. globalization doesn't completely succk
8. what goes around comes around, eventually, though we're dying while
trying to get there in the long run
7. the concept of mutual advantage isn't total b.s., as milton
friedman doesn't fully candidly theorize
6.--1. so, hey, import some job for currently empty mills and
factories, while they're at it

Tech firm to bring 500 jobs to Atlanta

By MARIA SAPORTA, DAN CHAPMAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 08/27/07

For critics of U.S. jobs outsourced to India, Azim Premji — oddly
enough – may be your new hero.

Premji, who has spent most of his career building a leading technology
conglomerate in India, came to town Monday to announce a reversal of
fortune: his Bangalore, India-based company, Wipro Technologies, plans
to locate 500 to 1,000 jobs in metro Atlanta within the next three
years.

• More Business news

Better still, economic development officials say the kinds of jobs
envisioned — software developers and engineers — are just what
Georgia wants.

"These are exactly the right kind of jobs we've been working on for a
number of years," said Hans Gant, a senior vice president for the
Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. "And Wipro is exactly the right
kind of global company we have been trying to recruit. This could open
the door to other companies from India."

The Wipro announcement is the latest globalization wave to hit U.S.
shores – the so-called "in-sourcing" of jobs that the United States
lost over the last decade and didn't expect to regain.

Blue-collar work was the first to go as the auto, steel and textile
industries shifted jobs to China, Korea and India. A tsunami of white-
collar, back-office jobs – information technology, software design,
call center operations – have disappeared from the United States
since the turn of the 21st century, again finding low-wage homes in
Asia, primarily India.

Now, the Indians are repaying the favor. Altruism, though, plays no
role.

Stung by wage inflation for engineers in Bangalore, and no longer
beneficiaries of a cheap rupee, India is now acquiring U.S. firms and
establishing manufacturing and research centers across the country.

Premji, Wipro's chairman, said the company chose Atlanta for its first
new global software development center after considering 600 locations
in the United States.

"We got a little carried away," he said. Wipro weighed the presence of
colleges, airline access and retired military personnel with valued
technological skills as key factors.

"For a center in the United States and Europe to build efficiencies,
it must have a minimum critical mass of 500 people," Premji said,
adding that Wipro already has other smaller centers working for
individual customers in the United States.

"For the Georgia center, we want it to be broader," he said. "We are
looking forward to getting this thing kicked-started as quickly as
possible."

Wipro, which is working with Georgia's Board of Regents and its job
training program, already has started collaborating with Kennesaw
State University and Southern Polytechnic State University. But the
company said it has not yet selected the metro location.

"We'll be doing that in the next two to three weeks," Premji said.
Wipro also is considering Texas and Virginia for similar centers, and
the intent is to have a total of three in the United States.

Wipro already holds a stake in the U.S. market. Earlier this month it
bought New Jersey-based Infocrossing Inc. – itself an information
technology outsourcing firm.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber and the Georgia Department of Economic
Development have been courting Wipro for four years.

The company first came to the attention of economic development
officials through Jagdish Sheth, a professor of marketing at Emory
University's Goizueta Business School. Sheth serves on Wipro's board,
and he has been an advisor to Premji since 1985.

"For the first time, this shows that it's not going to be sufficient
to take the work to India," Sheth said. "We have to invest in the
United States."

Premji said Wipro clients include about 600 of the Fortune 1000
companies. AGL is one of those clients as is Delta Air Lines, the Coca-
Cola Co. and BellSouth, which has been acquired by AT&T.

Wipro has about 6,000 employees scattered around the United States and
80,000 worldwide. The company says its customers are primarily Fortune
1000 companies. Premji said Wipro will have revenue of about $4.5
billion this year.

But metro Atlanta will not become Wipro's U.S. headquarters, at least
for now. Despite urging from Sheth, the company recently relocated its
U.S. headquarters from California to New Jersey.

"Their North American headquarters ought to be in Atlanta," Sheth
said. "It's going to start more Indian companies locating in Atlanta.
As many as 10 to 11 large corporations will probably put their North
American headquarters in Atlanta."

For example, Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian manufacturing
conglomerate, hopes to sell SUVs in this country by 2009. An
Alpharetta auto distributor holds the rights to sell the vehicles.

"India's economy is now getting into the next phase," said Ash
Thakker, chairman of the Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.
"It is truly becoming a two-way type of trade. It's jobs, revenues,
goods and services for both India and the United States."

Similar to Japanese and Korean automakers, Indian software companies
need to be closer to U.S. markets. Korean automaker Kia, for example,
broke ground last year on an assembly plant in LaGrange. Even China â
€“ a competitor to India's economic ascendancy – announced in May it
would build an electronics factory in Barnesville.

Yet India's entry into the lucrative U.S. market takes a different
turn than its fellow Asian tigers.

"Usually, from a historic perspective, manufacturing was the path
followed by Japan, Korea and China," Thakker said. "However it was the
information technology, and other service-oriented type of economy,
that has been launched by India."

Georgia and India are no strangers. In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau
pegged the number of Indians in Georgia at 79,169. The Georgia
Department of Economic Development is considering opening a trade
office in India by 2009.

Wipro's foray into the United States, though, may ultimately harm the
overall U.S. economy, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Last
week, the think tank reported that 600,000 U.S. jobs disappeared at
foreign-owned companies between 2000 and 2005.

"There's no doubt some jobs will be created, but who are they putting
out of business with the products they're selling to the U.S. business
community?" said institute economist Robert Scott. "For the first time
we're seeing the process of in-sourcing eliminating domestic jobs."

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