"the truth is, if these companies would offshore the jobs to Philippines or India, it easily becomes a $30K-50K/year solution" - If this was a solution believe me the market would figure it out and reflect that. In fact if it was true, there wouldn't be any engineering jobs available in the US in that it would be uncompetitive to have engineers in the US. Outsourcing has its places but it is not a magical solution where costs are dramatically cheaper - in many cases companies are figuring out the hard way that it is dramatically more expensive.
"If this was a solution believe me the market would figure it out and reflect that. In fact if it was true, there wouldn't be any engineering jobs available in the US in that it would be uncompetitive to have engineers in the US."
Isn't this what's already happening right now? The US is still competitive only because of the Capitalist structure that is already in place. Obama and other Occupy(tm) Socialists are destroying that, and soon you won't have any jobs left.
p.s.: Most of us from the 3rd world would like the US to keep its superpower status, to balance the threat of China. :)
Obama and OWS (which I wouldn't lump together) are a red herring to this discussion.
Unless the laws have changed dramatically in the last few years, there was never any barriers in place contracting labor outside the US assuming you paid them as contractors. If anything, US labor laws favor outsourcing over insourcing "native" contractors due to tax laws surrounding 1099 Technology workers that were put in place in the early 90s.
So really, despite the fact that scales are tipped in favor of foreign contracted labor (cheaper rate, less tax and legal considerations) businesses STILL prefer to hire local labor. To me, that's very telling -- it has a lot to do with the fact that much of the foreign talent, like the US talent, is already gainfully employed and tough to access.
