CityBlogz Design Studio / Blog

Looks like the Flames advanced to the final 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Also, I got 3 out of 4 right in my previous predictions. The only team I picked to advance that didn’t advance was Toronto. Calgary, San Jose, and Tampa Bay all advanced. I feel that perhaps I will not offer any more predictions for fear it may jinx my team. All I have to say is that whoever can win the first game of their series will most likely advance to the Stanley Cup finals.

Here are links to some bargain shopping sites.
http://www.smarterliving.com/
http://www.slickdeals.net/
http://www.fatwallet.com/
http://www.froogle.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.shopper.com/
http://www.newegg.com/
http://www.half.com/
http://www.harborfreight.com/
http://www.homier.com/
http://www.techbargains.com

By the way, for you ladies or guys with wives or girlfriends you can take a look at some bargains for cosmetics and beauty products at my sister’s Mary Kay website.  

I’ve just finshed reading a discussion at lndcentral.com that focuses on the merits of offshore outsourcing.  Can you just imagine the heat this topic generates?  Anyway, this is what I had to say about it…

Offshoring to me is an ethical issue buried inside an economical issue. I believe that offshoring for the purpose of replacing current workers for cheaper workers is an unethical practice. I’ve taken business law classes and the class discussed this issue in depth. Although from an macro-economical point of view, offshoring has a positive effect for the global economy, the micro-economics view is definitely undesireable for the near term. As far as future benefits, I am a little pessemistic that it will achieve what the pro-offshoring people are saying. It may benefit the world economy only if all nations are at the same socio-economic level. In reality, I believe that it will end up bringing the standard of living down a few notches for all countries that engage in this practice. I like to think of it as a game of snakes and ladders. We offshore to India. They benefit and climb up the socio-economic ladder. The US immediately lands on a snake and goes down a few spots in the socio-economic ladder. Eventually, India catches up to the US and the cost to do business in their country gets too expensive and they offshore back to the US (which coincidentally has become a cheaper source of labor). We then climb back up, but not as high as we were before. They climb down a few notches and the spiral trend continues. Unless I am forgetting to consider other important factors, this trend just seems unhealthy. – Entire thread

The other point that I want to make is… looking to other countries for workers with skillsets that you cannot find in your own country is perfectly valid. However, replacing an entire workforce skillset that you already have in your country to another country’s workforce who is willing to work for 10 times less, seems unethical. Nevermind the scope of country to country. If this practice was done within this country, it would probably violate anti-trust laws.