On Firday, Slashdot cited an article entitled "How India is Saving Capitalism" that sparked yet another argument pitting capitalism against patriotism. This kind of battle over outsourcing is a red herring. Executives who outsource to save money are failing to see the big picture, and anyone who chooses to fight on that battleground is wasting his time and contributes nothing towards "winning the war."
These executives keep asking the wrong question, "How can I continue to develop the same old crappy software, but do it cheaper?" They ought to be asking, "How can I develop better software?" "How can I develop it faster?" "How can I make it last longer and be more useful?" By improving the quality of their software it'll be more desirable. It'll draw more customers and can demand higher prices. Answering these questions can lead to a 100-fold improvement on the ROI versus any kind of cost-saving measure.
As an added bonus, better software is, well, better. If you want to talk about morality, let's talk about how much better our society will be when the software we use provides more intuitive user interfaces, adapts more easily to our needs, offers increased security, and performs faster.
The sad part is that the answers to these questions are right in front of our faces. All we have to do is open our eyes. The 'Net is a free, all-you-can eat buffet of best practices, high performance/high security open source frameworks, feature rich open source tools, design pattern catalogs, refactoring catalogs, ... you name it.
If you really want to keep the programming jobs at home, then quit sniveling and do something to make yourself and your fellow programmers more valuable. Pick one thing and explore it. Read up on a management methodology like XP, RUP, or Scrum. Or, become familiar with a tool like Eclipse. Or, try out the unit-testing framework that goes with your language of choice. Or, otherwise avail yourself of the wisdom of luminaries such as the Three Amigos (UML), the Gang of Four (Design Patterns), Martin Fowler (Refactoring), and Steven McConnell (Code Complete). Apply what you learn and pass it on. It's as simple as that. (Not easy, but simple.)