First, a little history.

On May 12, 2004, I wrote about why I’m not worried about Indian programmers takin’ mah jahrb! (BTW, that was South Park’s episode tonight.)

However, there’s no such thing as central air there, except for large companies and hotels. Rooms are cooled by individual air conditioners, largely because the infrastructure for building houses that can be fitted with central air and the components of central air systems themselves just aren’t there. Several other services Americans take for granted, such as reliable electricity, always-on hot water, and good sewer systems are by no means guaranteed, even to comparably rich families.

Then, a little over a year later, on June 14, 2005, I presented a problem for those who believe globalization is a race to the bottom. A commenter took me to task:

Global Free Trade isn’t an absolute race to the bottom. It’s a game of last man standing. As more and more poeple get sucked into poverty, the few at the top begin to bloat. Protectionism comes back into play when they feel the pinch themselves.

Oh yeah?

“Four years ago, a typical call center employee would have earned between 5,000 to 6,000 rupees ($114- $136) a month. Now it may be up to between 7,000 to 9,000 rupees ($159 – $204) a month,” he said.

And as to the first point about infrastructure:

Unless India devises a long-term roadmap to improve infrastructure and consistently grow its skilled labor force, he said India will see some of its offshore BPO clients shift business elsewhere.

“Although India’s infrastructure is improving, it is not keeping pace with the rapid growth of the industry,” the report said.

Yeah, free-marketers are Pollyanna-ish dreamers whose ideas will never come to pass, because the magic market will never lift incomes. And stupid Google keeps raising the salary levels of tech types here.

Yeah, yeah, hand-wave renders it irrelevant and I’m not looking at the real world, because {god has spoken and the world will end soon|that won’t help politicians make everybody live like yuppies here and quaint savages there}.