Title: U.S. CEOs Who Outsource Get Bigger Pay Hike-Survey
Source: Reuters
Author: Andrea Hopkins
Summary: A study by the liberal Institute for Policy Studies shows that CEOs at U.S. companies receive more compensation when outsourcing.
Abstract:
Chief executives at U.S. companies that shipped jobs overseas won a 46 percent pay hike last year, more than five times the average CEO raise. If the U.S. minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay has since 1990, it would be $15.76 an hour instead of the current $5.15. CEO pay overall was 301 times higher than the $26,899 earned by the average production worker. The pay for CEOs who outsource was about 3,300 times the pay of an Indian call center employee or 1,300 times that of an average Indian computer programer. More than 3 million service jobs are predicted to move offshore by 2015.

Notes:
See Marx's theory of Surplus Value and Ricardo's "Iron Law of Wages".

In precis, an employer that introduces new machinery that will double the output of the worker in a day. Does the employer then double the wages of the worker? Not at all; the employer keeps the surplus value (the additional profit received for additional output) and the salary of the worker remains a constant.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the institute that conducted this research, "The fact that leading outsourcers make more money than average CEOs is one more reflection of a perverse system that rewards executives for making decisions that may improve their bottom line while hurting workers and communities".
This "perverse system" is capitalism. The excess salary received by CEOs who outsource is the surplus value of moving work off shore.

In practice there must be a measure of surplus value allowed to those who take the risk to open and run a business. The employer who takes the risk is worth more than the employee who labours without risk. Risk is worth a reward. To support a system that denied this would be to support a lessening of the incentive for competition proportionally to the lessening of the reward for risk. With no chance of receiving reward for risk, no risk would be taken.

Is a CEO who earns 3300 times more than an employee taking excess surplus value? An employer who takes an excessive amount of surplus value is guiltly of exploitation.

Just bought a new camera - Hasselbad X-PAN. Hasselblad Site has some info about it. Whole unit was about $3500, including the 30 mm lenses which is a collector's item right now. Also bought a new light meter for 500. Can't wait for a clear day so I can use this - very excited!

It's been a long time since I was hooked on a video game, and played until 2 or 3 am. Age of Mythology is such a game though. I feel like I'm back in college, where time had no meaning and I could stay up until any hour and just missing class the next day never mattered...since I never went anyway.
Screw this. I need to destroy this CD and uninstall from my computer. I can't afford to spend my time like this anymore.

New photographs of Shenzhen, China and Shanghai, China up in the gallery:

Gallery Photos

Just crossed the border at LoWu today. It's the busiest border crossing on earth with 90 million people crossing every year, most of them this morning. I left the Marriott in Hong Kong at 7:30 and arrived at work 9:30, 2 Cabs, 3 trains later. Total cost was about 90HK and 70Y, about 22US$. The actual crossing is in a large building about 100 meters long jammed full of people. Absolutely crammed. There are no empty spots and the "line" bottlenecks at the end of the building into a narrow lane about five people wide. The surge forward is pretty intense. It's like a stack of dominoes that fall over, except everyone falls forward onto the next person and onto the next person, and no one hits the floor, but everyone is pushed forward on a steep angle. I'm 220 lbs and little higher than your average Chin, so on one surge I was about to fall on an old lady about half my size and I just straightened up and put my back against the crowd and shoved backward. The building has several hallways from other MTR light rail that empty into it, if you get caught in the cross surge it can be pretty bad. About a half hour tightly packed into the hall, hot with only a couple dinky fans at the front circulating air, I made it to the visitors line. It was a lot less crowded and much calmer, like Disneyland at Christmas, than the HK residents race. Once they reach the bottleneck, only a trickle are let through customs (it's a quicker, non-passport cusoms for residents) about 3 or 4 thousand at a time. The first sprint is about 60 meters followed by a flight of stairs, and then they move out of sight. If they don't run, they get trampled.
Once I was in line, some officicious looking bloke said something to me I couldn't understand but it seemed to be some sort of survey. He asked my persmission and without waiting for it slapped a yellow sticker onto my coat. When he was gone, I took it off and stuck it on the person ahead of me in line. I'm not sure what it was for.

Well...I've found a new hobby. It sure beats working on my computer after a long day at work. Here's some photographs I've taken:
Link

SF is only a little ways up the road from me (Menlo Park) and since this whole area is as boring as heck, I find myself spending more and more time in that city. It's just plain fascinating.

I don't use digital cameras. I can't stand them - they're just not good enough yet (except the hasselblad Dfininity - 16 megapixels and only about ~$20k) and way too expensive. I use a Minolta Maxxum 9, a top of the line 35mm, very underrated by a lot of people, but an excellent camera. I'm starting to shoot with high speed film, Ilford 3200 Black & White, Fujicolor Super HG 1600.