A sign of the new economy?

Though I am not convinced it is a direct result, I find myself in an interesting position where I am being contracted by a "household name" company to help manage a project they have off-shored. I am not going to turn down the money but had they on-shored the project, in some other place than the high-tech hot-beds, they probably could have saved a considerable amount of capital.

As all two of the people who read this blog know, I am from Boise, Idaho. Boise is a pretty good sized town with a population > 200k (> 500k in the surrounding area). It has four distinct seasons, great lifestyle and good schools. The only negative I can say about it is that it still tends to be a bit conservative for me. All-in-all it would be a great place to live and raise a family. It has reasonable airline access to Portland, Seattle, Silicon Valley etc. and a good labor pool. Boise State and the University of Idaho bot have campuses there. The biggest names, at least in high-tech are HP and Micron. So why can't we on-shore to places like Boise, I am sure there are other cities that fit the bill as well? I don't know the answer but I think it may have as much to do with a false sense of financial economy than anything else. That 5:1 cost ratio we found in India during the latter part of the 1990's is now more like 2:1 today and shrinking. India is getting more expensive, in fact I have heard tales of India sub-contraction out to places like China and Viet Nam.

I believe in an open global economy but maybe we need to re-think our business strategies; move away from the short term view and look forward to a once again, expanding US economy.

Oh well, for me it is most of the next three months in Bangalore...