Should your state government buy

Should your state government buy IT services overseas, or not?

I agree with Ed Lotterman at the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. State governments should be giving good, cost effective, service to their citizens. If outsourcing gives them an efficiency advantage they should go for it, just like they've substituted word processing for manual typewriting. Why should state governments deny themselves efficiencies available to the private sector? As Lotterman says,

"Maintenance workers at a private college where I teach zip around in small, imported pickups. Similar pickups were rare when I worked at the University of Minnesota because state institutions generally buy U.S.-made vehicles. There seems to be an analogous sentiment that while a private firm may contract to have software written in Asia, Minnesota state agencies should not."

Alaskans could certainly reduce the money sent out of state for bananas if we required (if we could require) all bananas consumed in Alaska to be produced here. And I bet we could grow them too, if we invested enough money in high-tech greenhouses. But it doesn't make sense to do this. It's not even clear that imposing this requirement, and making it more expensive to live in Alaska, would increase employment in the banana growing and distribution sector. Requiring state documents to be produced with manual typewriters might increase state government employment - so long as we increased taxes proportionately. Is an increase in the tax burden the way to grow the private sector?