8-28-95. NYPaper, Page One lead: "Skilled Workers Watch Their Jobs Migrate Overseas. College Educated Foreigners Are Doing High-Technology Tasks for Far Less Pay." The new tools of the information age were supposed to help the United States regain an edge in international competition. And while that has happened in many advanced-technology industries, the combination of powerful personal computers and high-capacity undersea telephone cables is also subjecting millions of white-collar Americans to the same global wage pressures that their blue-collar counterparts have long faced. As with steel and garment workers, the white-collar workers' positions and salaries increasingly depend on whether they can justify their higher pay with higher productivity. Many fear that the growing tendency of corporations to farm out tasks to developing countries is widening the gap even further between the rich and everybody else in American society by eliminating some categories of high-skill, high-wage jobs that make up the heart of the middle class. "Dissecting the information revolution (in advance): With a look at one of Newt's Laws and at 'friction-free capitalism.' " [Expands on last week's Aspen article] The Aspen conference provided some people with their first exposure to Newtonion economics -- which appears to be the information-age equivalent of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics. It is called "friction-free capitalism." Nathan Myhrvold noted that one can now order custom-fit blue jeans directly from the manufacturer. Double trouble: JOB_les (17kb)