Outsourcing to India seems to be the defacto "hot" topic in US Television, just behind Iraq. Yesterday , in the compelling prez drama, .West Wing, this topic made its debut. If a topic starts doing the rounds of the Prime time shows, you can be sure it's the "in" thing. The story goes like this , a s/w company is sending off 17000 coding jobs to India, the union members who have supported martin sheen (the prez), start banging on his door, reminding him of the promises he made during the campaign (something of the sort that he will protect the IT white collar jobs at all costs). All the pros and cons of the debate are fleshed out ..ie..how in long term 3 million plus new jobs will be created, stories of people getting 3-4 collge degrees to continuosuly retrain themselves and still losing their jobs..etc. I though the whole manner in which the issue was dealt with in the show was quite good. It surely deserves all the bucketful of emmys it picks up regularly. How it ends?..the prez tells the union members to go take a hike..the prez cant put a leash on the economy..if they r losing jobs..hold on and simply wait for the new jobs to come in.

another interesting thread on outsourcing :
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/newyork/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=2160&ixReplies=17