Tuesday, January 6, 2009

IBM to Obama: $30B in Stimulus Will Create 90,000 Tech-Tied Jobs

IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano advised Obama aides last month that $30 billion in government investments to expand broadband access, digitize healthcare records and enhance the electrical grid could create more than 900,000 U.S. jobs.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, IBM research shows:
Investing $10 billion in broadband networks to provide high-speed Internet access to areas that lack it, would create 498,000 new jobs in a year. Investing $10 billion in computerizing health-care records and other health-related IT would create 212,000 jobs. The government investment would come on top of $30 billion in public and private investment in health-care IT already slated for this year

IBM also calculated that $10 billion invested in equipment that allows electric utilities to monitor their transmission infrastructure more closely would create 239,000 jobs. Such technology can tell operators when transformers are failing or wires are overloaded.

2 comments:

R. Lawson said...

Invest in small tech companies - it would be stupid to subsidize IBM Global Services and their offshoring operations.

They've had a free ride the last 8 years. Meanwhile the SBA had their budget cut and most government set asides for small business still managed to go to big business.

IBM is no longer an American company. We shoud only invest in American companies.

R. Lawson said...

Just to clarify, I don't disagree with Palmisano on an investment in tech infrastructure. I just believe we should let the money trickle up for a change. Let Palmisano beg us to buy his services and hardware, not us begging him for subcontracts.