Hedging the risk of losing your job to India

Justin,

Just clarifying --- don't you think globalization is a 2-way street. In my opinion, the only way the flow of jobs can stop is due to pure economic factors such as greater integration of the global workforce (and capital) which will eventually reduce the pay-differential across countries.

Girish, you are probably right. Globalization is good in the aggregate, but can cause pain and disruption for (mostly) random individuals in the process. This is in part why it has become politicized. When manufacturing was offshored on a large scale, the same uncertainties were felt by blue collar workers. Today, offshoring has moved up the food chain, to the point where an increasing number of educated professionals find their jobs at risk. And from an individual basis, it is not at all clear what actions those professionals can take to guarantee their jobs and their lifestyles.

If Justin didn't get out and take photos of New York or Washington every once in a while, we could reasonably think he was in, well, the Ukraine making perhaps a quarter of his salary. And even so, his employer may well conclude that the business value of those photos is not worth his salary, and offshore this blog and his column anyway. A professional in that position (and many of us are) may well be smart to hedge.

How do you know that Apple store photo wasn't from Kiev?