New Delhi accent on computer support

It is the software problems that can drive you nuts because they are so insidious. They creep up on you one little problem at a time until the problem is so overwhelming that you have to call your computer company's technical staff. Even though I am a seasoned computer programmer, today's technology is becoming so complicated and so buggy that I have to resort to calling the Dell Computer technical support line to resolve my software problems.

When you call a technical support person, you usually are faced with another problem to overcome - that being a language barrier. Most support calls are now handled by technicians overseas in places like India or the Phillipines. These people are very hard to understand and vice-versa. It makes the resolution of the problem more difficult.

American software companies are joining the ranks of our manufacturing companies by exporting many of its jobs overseas. It's not just telephone support technicians either. Its programmers and anaylysts as well. Today's software companies will come up with a new idea for a system, design it, prepare program specs for it, and then ship the programming to a country where programmers will work for $5 an hour instead of $25 an hour.

This trend of exporting our jobs overseas is worrisome. Soon everyone in the United States will be insurance salesmen or short order cooks. Relatively speaking, we don't make anything here anymore. My training in Economics in college indicated that each country has a comparative advantage in international economics. Originally, the United States was rich in natural resources and, therefore, it grew largely because of the abundant supply of iron, copper, wood, and farm ground. Our economy was based on mining, manufacturing and agriculture. Asian countries have less physical resources but have a comparative advantage in labor because they have plenty of people who are willing to work for low wages. Therefore, we exported raw materials to these countries where things could be manufactured cheaply.

The flip side to the exporting of jobs is the influx of immigrants to do the manual labor that most Americans don't want to do anymore. Now President Bush is proposing a program to help protect the rights of the millions of Mexican immigrants because they have become so important to our economy. Without their labor, the price of our food would increase.

Finally, the last worrisome item to ponder is our overwhelming credit card debt. Amazingly, the average debt per household exclusive of a mortgage is $18,000 and the average credit card debt is $7,000. Nobody saves anymore.

So the scenario goes like this. We are exporting our better paying jobs overseas, we are importing immigrants to do our low paying jobs, and we are spending our money like drunken sailors. We are in uncharted waters.

The only solution I know to this problem is that we will have to eventually work for less. Otherwise companies will keep exporting jobs to foreign countries and fewer people will have jobs and money to buy anything anymore. That will take care of our overspending and cause us to work for less which means it will be less likely that more jobs will be exported. Eventually our standard of living will be lowered while the countries to which jobs are being exported will increase until we both have a common level. Isn't global economics wonderful?

I apologize for the digression and will end this depressing article with a positive note by referring back to my original discussion on computer software problems. A Dell technical support person gave me a command that cured my software problems not once but twice. This command is used only for XP operating systems. If you are having computer problems that perplexes you, perform the following instructions. (1) Click on the Start key. (2) Click on Run. (3) In the box of the popup window enter the following command, "sfc /scannow" and click the OK button. Do not enter the parenthesis. This command will run for up to 20 minutes and it may ask for you to insert your XP Installation Disk. It repairs all corrupted Windows files. To me it has been a magic bullet.

One last thing is important mentioning. The technical person who gave me this invaluable tip was an American working out of Houston. In all of my calls to Dell Technical Support, I find that the American worker gave me better support than the foreign worker. This is not an indictment against foreign workers. It is an indictment against American companies that are willing to export jobs not only to save money but are also willing to let the quality of their product decline in the process.