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Take a kid of dumb parents and have him raised in a smart parents' home. Take the smart parents' kid and put him in the dumb parents' home. What do you want to bet that the smart foster parents will raise a smart kid, and the dumb foster parents will raise a dumb kid?

These days if you want any sort of job you need to know some algebra or be skilled with some power tools, at least have the ability to manage money to some degree and read. Not too long ago even these basic skills weren't needed, so it's pretty crazy to suggest that the baseline intelligence needed to survive has decreased.

Thirty years ago, meatpacking was one of the highest-paid industrial jobs in the United States, with one of the lowest turnover rates. In the decades that followed the 1906 publication of The Jungle, labor unions had slowly gained power in the industry, winning their members good benefits, decent working conditions, and a voice in the workplace. Meatpacking jobs were dangerous and unpleasant, but provided enough income for a solid, middle-class life. There were sometimes waiting lists for these jobs. And then, starting in the early 1960s, a company called Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) began to revolutionize the industry, opening plants in rural areas far from union strongholds, recruiting immigrant workers from Mexico, introducing a new division of labor that eliminated the need for skilled butchers, and ruthlessly battling unions. By the late 1970s, meatpacking companies that wanted to compete with IBP had to adopt its business methods--or go out of business. Wages in the meatpacking industry soon fell by as much as 50 percent. Today meatpacking is one of the nation's lowest-paid industrial jobs, with one of the highest turnover rates. The typical plant now hires an entirely new workforce every year or so. There are no waiting lists at these slaughterhouses today. Staff shortages have become an industry-wide problem, making the work even more dangerous.

With dwindling opportunities for US citizens in engineering, flat wage growth and short career spans for those already in engineering, enrollments have dropped over the past 7 years at most engineering schools. Selectively charging more for engineering curricula is piling onto this trend.

See Jobs Update: The Death of US Engineering

No, from what I have heard, if the current trends continue, whites will only become a minority in 2050. However, I heard somewhere that most births will be nonwhite by 2011.

It's inexcusable to say that murder is ever an appropriate recourse after crime.

Even though it was an unjust system, it was economically successful. Central planning can be more efficient than a free market in many situations. Yeah, that's great, except the Soviet economy was not centrally planned.

We are hardwired to perform altrusim, but we mostly tend to prefer our groups. This is called ethnic nepotism. A study (I can't find the link; here's a summary) performed several years ago by the political scientist Frank Salter monitored beggars in Moscow and found that Russians preferred giving to beggars in this order: Russians, Moldavians (Eastern Europeans), and Roma (a.k.a. Gypsies).

It should be noted that the two most popular candidates in this poll rare
Ron Paul with a B rating from Americans from Better Immigration(and A- recent record)
and Al Gore with an A- lifetime rating.

By Comparison, McCain is a D
Hilary Clinton (despite tough talk) earned a D-
Barack Obama also earned a D.

ABI is an interest group that advocates restriction of immigration-an F corresponds to loose immigration policy and a A to a restrictive policy. The average congression grade is a C-which is in effect support of one of the loosest immigration policies in the world.

My articles on immigration are here

For folks that want to read more of my articles on immigration, here is a link.

First off, look at Japan and Korea-they have no huge immigration-and no huge foreign borrowing and lots of folks there find engineering an attractive profession.

Who is "we" here. You are indentifying with what Malcolm X called the Slave Mind. Someone locked into the slave mind identifies with their master so much they don't worry about their own interests. Read my article.

Guest worker visas aren't that different than slavery from an economic standpoint. When slavery was introduced in Virginia, the planters there either had to use slave labor-or go someplace else. Long run, the costs of the civil war alone far outstripped any short term economic gains from slavery-which were quite questionable and concentrated in a few hands.

H-1b was a measure to address an economic reality: wages cannot be sustainably lower than the cost of workers to live and reproduce. The engineers of the 60's and 70's didn't have that many kids-so by the 90's economics was setting in. Corporate predators reacted by doling out visas which cost them nothing personally-but often diluted the value of US citizenship. Each of those visas could be sold for at least $100K-and really has a theoretical value closer to $300K. Of course a corporation can get a hard worker when they have something like that to dole out-that costs them NOTHING.

The fundamental structure of the US and global economy is bad. Both are predicated on massive liquidation of assets in places like the US-which is what this immigration really is.

If H-1b were gone and US trade was balanced, we'd see a lot of rich folks making a huge adjustment-and engineering would be a very attractive occupation for Americans. Now, I don't think the corporate leadership in any existing major US tech companies would survive. Those folks would be so distrusted they simply couldn't stay in business. But new companies would arise to take their place quickly. BTW Microsoft is VERY H-1b dependent-and Redhat isn't. I can easily imagine restriction of immigration killing microsoft which I consider a very good thing for the industry long term.

There are real limits to outsourcing-particularly if the leaders of the US had the discipline to stop borrowing hundreds of billion of dollars per year.

Expansion of H-1b has caused more suffering to US tech workers than any other single policy. This needs to be on the table. Paul is anti-H-1b. Gore's record is more mixed(particularly as VP).

The basic problem is that IBM is a major corporate welfare recipient. That is the type of thing that can be sustained for a company that is creating US jobs. However, I don't see any reason for the US government to dole out that kind of sugar to what is essentially an Indian company. For that matter, the patents, copyrights IBM and the other large H-1b users hold can be quite easily nationalized. There are lots of American companies around that can utilize virtually any non-proprietary technology. You don't see a lot of H-1b use at Redhat for example. I also think it is high time that we look seriously into treason charges for the senior managers, investment analysts and major investors that have created this mess.

What is especially interesting here: despite the fact that Torvalds arrived in the US on an H-1b visa, on average, open source companies are much less likely to use that program than Microsoft and its allies. Why does Gates need that program so much when his strongest competitor doesn't? Personally, I think the program as it is now structured is corporate welfare-and subsidization of incompetence. If H-1b were curtailed significantly, Linux would be moving onto the desktop faster.

What is especially interesting here: despite the fact that Torvalds arrived in the US on an H-1b visa, on average, open source companies are much less likely to use that program than Microsoft and its allies. Why does Gates need that program so much when his strongest competitor doesn't? Personally, I think the program as it is now structured is corporate welfare-and subsidization of incompetence. If H-1b were curtailed significantly, Linux would be moving onto the desktop faster.

Unfortunately from what I can find online and from a recent Economist article is seem that the Teacher's Unions are one of the bigger obstacles to educational reform.

Tenure keeps the bad teachers around and low pay, etc keep the idealists whi could make a difference from sticking with it. Any plans which would involve a premium on new teachers with specialized skills will be rejected by this group as it does not reward its current membership and goes against the rigid hierarchy promoted by the tenure system which is not based on ability, talent or dedication.

http://www.vdare.com/pb/apple.htm

-I'm just sayin'

Let it be noted that sabotage was more of a left-of-center fear at that time. Stalin had denounced "wreckers" at his show trials, and the international left had become obsessed by fascist "fifth columnists" during the Spanish Civil War. So evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast was supported somewhat more by liberals than by conservatives. The most notable public spokesman against mass evacuations was Republican Senator Robert Taft--and the leading dissenter within the Roosevelt Administration was FBI supremo J. Edgar Hoover.

The particular emphasis of some engineering programs are probably the least of their worries now. Countires that don't make things, don't need many engineers. It seems that our governing class has decided that the United States is to become a country thet doesn't make things. For example, electronics manufacturing has all but vanished in the US. There's plenty of electronic stuff being manufactured in other countries but not here. Few have expressed surprise as the design jobs have followed the manufacturing jobs.

Jobs Update: The Death of US Engineering

Need an experienced engineer with hands on experience? Why fixate on what kinds the schools are turning out? There are legions of unemployed and underemployed engineers. Yes, they are older guys but the hands-on issue is moot. They have that. Not quite as cheap but then the young ones will be making their mistakes and learning. These guys have already made theirs. See, the difference between a 50 year old engineer and a 25 year old enginer is the 50 year old engineer has been 25. Oh yeah, I've known a few who became set in their ways but the vast majority were eager to learn and use new technologies. So instead of spewing forth more warm bodies, why not use some ones we already have?

Yeah, you guessed it: DA Mike Nifong's Hunt for the Great White Defendants in the Duke Lacrosse Frame-Up is a no-show. You see, the long-running pattern of hate crime hoaxes victimizing white male college students is nothing compared to, say, #8 on Lithwick's List, the Bush Administration "Slagging the Media."

In recent news, the hoax continues to implode. Nifong dropped the rape charges but is pressing on with other felony charges. Meanwhile, the North Carolina State Bar is investigating Nifong for ethics violations. And now the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys has asked him to recuse himself from the case.

The U.S.-China economic relationship is a highly unusual one between a First World and a Third World country. Moreover, the U.S. trade deficit with China in manufactured goods and advanced technology products is growing rapidly. What explains the U.S. dependence on a poor country for First World products?

The answer, and the key to China's rapid development, is that corporations in First World countries--American businesses chief among them--use China as an offshore location where they produce for their home markets. More than half of U.S. imports from China, and as much as 70 percent from some of China's coastal regions, represent offshore production by American firms for U.S. markets.

What economists overlook is that when we speak of the Chinese economy, we are speaking in large part of the relocation of American manufacturing to China. Those millions of lost domestic manufacturing jobs were not lost. They were moved. The jobs still exist, only they are not filled by Americans.

In a world where capital and technology are highly mobile internationally, these critical factors of production flow to countries with the lowest cost of labor. China has attracted manufacturing, and India has attracted professional services. This has left the American work force with job growth only in lower-paid domestic services, which provide no export earnings.

-Who Owns the Dollar? (emphasis added)

Most Americans live in a media-induced Never-Never Land, where the American economy, stockmarket and military machines are invincible because they always have been. Never mind that this is demonstrably false (great depresion, 1970's inflationary recession, Vietnam, Iraq, etc) - we're conditioned via compulsory government schooling and the idiot-box (television) to have a short memory.

More on the Screwing of average folk...

I gave people $1 (1 ounce) silver coins last Christmas. Think I traded around 10 or 11 "Feral Reserve Notes" for each one. Silver is now up to $13.75 or so, so I'm looking at having to put out about 50% more funny-money paper if I want to do the same thing this year (coin dealers typically charge spot + $2, iirc). Inflation at work.

If I had another $10k, I'd split it between metals and Euros... As it is, I'm sitting on a couple hundred ounces of silver and a couple ounces of gold. Not a sure thing, but the economy we know is doomed. The stock market is terminal too, but the big money will be sure to get out first, in keeping with the traditional screwing of the masses (that's 'us' - me, you, and everyone who reads this comment who doesn't pull in $1million/year).

Actually, I'd buy more Earthboxes, potting mix, and fertilizer (already have plenty of seed). $10k could get me two pallets worth (200), and all the potting mix and f

You're missing the point. See Paul Craig Roberts' Who Owns The Dollar? for another perspective.

Seriously, why would the ban Segway exports?

Because Dean Kamen had the audacity to open his manufacturing plant in Bedford, New Hampshire (source)?

Everyone knows that the U.S. Feral Government has been actively encouraging the growth of the trade deficit for decades, in the name of screwing average american workers. Banning the export of the few things that Americans still manufacture (Segways, Harleys, Cadillacs and, apparently, personal watercraft) is yet another way of sticking it to 'the masses'. Apple shouldn't have a problem with selling Kim Jong Il his Ipods, because they can just ship a box over the border from their contract builder in China.

... And Sam Walton is surely turning over in his grave. I found an article in my Grandmothers house where Walton played up buying "towels" from an American producer rather than one in Hong Kong. After he died, WalMart lost any semblance of principles the collective company once might have had.

See Patrick Buchanan's New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers for one take on how the "market" is rigged to screw american workers.

(I always thought cosmopolitan was just the name of a magazine, then I looked it up...)

This just in, Bush may have a higher IQ than Kerry:

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm

Plus other sources.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/s fl-brmail790nov13,0,7944024.story

We don't know Kerry's exact SAT or GPA, I think. The Bush "common man" may also be somewhat of an illusion to help him connect with the common man rather than massachussetts liberals....

I would suggest reading the following from Paul Craig Roberts of Hoover Institute:
  Software engineers and information technology workers have been especially hard hit. Jobs offshoring, which began with call centers and back-office operations, is rapidly moving up the value chain. Business Week's Michael Mandel (September 15, 2005: ) compared starting salaries in 2005 with those in 2001. He found a 12.7% decline in computer science pay, a 12% decline in computer engineering pay, and a 10.2% decline in electrical engineering pay. Marketing salaries experienced a 6.5% decline and business administration salaries fell 5.7%. Despite Sarbanes-Oxley, a make-work law for accountants, even accounting majors were offered 2.3% less.

Using the same sources as the Business Week article (salary data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers and BLS data for inflation adjustment), Professor Norm Matloff at the University of California, Davis, made the same comparison for master degree graduates. He found that between 2001 and 2005 starting pay for master degrees in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering fell 6.6%, 13.7%, and 9.4% respectively.

The thing is Cresanti is pursuing a classic corporate welfare strategy. I discuss this in my articles here. These visas have a market value of about $100,000 each. They cost companies a fraction of that amount. If the visas were prices appropriately, there would be no shortage--and US wages would adjust somewhat.

What's so bad about restricting international trade? I know the free-trade propaganda dictates that any restrictions on trade is 'bad, mkay?', and I used to believe it too, but then I started to realize who benefits.

Free trade has definitely lowered the cost of goods across the spectrum. The price of shoes, clothes and electronics have all moved down decisively since free-trade policies were implemented (NAFTA circa 1993, and the WTO circa 1995 or 1996). But at what cost? What happened to the americans who used to put shoes, clothes, and electronics together? Perhaps they're now a part of the United State's stealth unemployment epidemic (if our government measured unemployment the way most European countries do, it'd be around 12%. See Shadow Statistics).

Free trade benefits the corporate middleman - Walmart et. al, who can keep their trinkets' prices low in the inflationary monetary environment we find ourselves in today. It only benefits their customers temporarily, because since their job has moved overseas, they'll only be able to afford Walmart's trinkets until their savings run out.

Patrick Buchanan New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers covers how the government's tax policy actively encourages production to flee the United States.

canary in the coal mine, and 1970's, redux both apply here too.

With the vast majority of people remaining uneducated, which wouldn't work out too well in the current state of the world.

Literacy was higher in the colonies than it is today. Anyone who wanted to learned to read without much difficulty. See Gatto's Underground History, and the slashdot review for the source of the statistic.

No, they haven't. They've allowed companies to send the jobs away without penalty. There's a big difference. See, without government, it would be even easier for corporations to do this, with essentially no hope in reigning them in.

Uhm - just re-read what I wrote, and I guess the government itself hasn't sent the jobs away. They've just encouraged it with their tax policy. See Patrick Buchanan's New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers.

As for my grandparents - I'm not going to off 'em, but Grandpa's been suffering for a good long while, and sincerely hopes that the end of his life is near. My other grandparents have been on a slow descent into senility for a while now - their "higher functions have already crossed over", and the 'caretaker' is just keeping the body running out of habit. They're all shadows of their former selves. But my mother's parents both still collect full Feral Government pensions, and get the Feral Government to pick up 90% of their perscription drugs.

Less primitive societies accept dying as a part of living, and handle the inevitable appropriately. But ours tries to keep dead and nearly-dead people (e.g. Terri Schiavo, my grandmother when she was an end-stage cancer patient, etc) going as long as technologically possible, no matter the cost to the individual or to society at large. Which I guess is just an artifact of our materialist indoctrination - even most christians doubt that there's more to existence than the physical world, and avoid the inevitable like the plague.

There's a simple reason why people don't hire ambitious people: Ambitious people want to rise in the ranks and that would force YOU to work harder, or that new guy will saw off your chair's legs while you're not watching.

That sedate vegetable who's too lazy to tie his own shoelace if you don't make him, on the other hand,...

This results from a thing called injelitance.

The question we should be asking, is why is US growth so low, and how can we fix it.

Your post has the answer to your question:

Contrary to popular belief, a substantial amount of engineering for Dell is done in the US, not in Taiwan. Employees have constructed an effective wall to foreign design centers and have actually left the company any time mgmt has tried to tear it down (thanks to HP for showing employees what to be afraid of).

Dell is an exception, rather than the rule. Jobs have been fleeing the United States for years... First it was manufacturing, then engineering/technology too. Foodservice and low-level Health Care positions don't pay nearly as well as manufacturing, IT, or engineering used to. Wages in the jobs that are still in North America are being squeezed by competition from low-wage China and elsewhere.

There's no chance of fixing the economy now - the time for action was in 1992/1993, when Traitor Bush the Elder first negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement and Traitor Clinton pushed the NAFTA implementation bills through the congress. Or in 1995 when the World Trade Organization was first organized. Or in the 80's, when Reagan (really, Puppet Master Bush the Elder) was printing money to pay for his military buildup. Or in the late 60's/early 70's, when the Feral Government was printing money to pay for the Vietnam war. Or even more recently, when Traitor Bush the Junior negotiated the Central American Free Trade Agreement (and others).

There's also the hordes of illegal immigrants (encouraged by the corptocracy) depressing working class wages... But vdare was yesterday's story...

The best we can do now is elect a congress who will impeach/convict the Bush/Cheney junta. Tell your friends - Fire the [republican] incumbents, the Bush depression has already begun.

Economic restructuring is a good thing, because many of us are miserable in the current political/economic climate. Look at the people you see out in WalMart's isles: fat & sick, and looking for satisfaction in meaningless trinkets. Going to get a little rough, but it will certainly be worth the struggle in the end.

I've some earthboxes and seeds, so I won't be entirely dependant on produce shipments from far away, picked by mexican slave labor.

These earthbox pictures are from 3 weeks ago (start with the last picture). The plants are coming along nicely, and I'll be harvesting my first lettuce & tomatos soon (I'm in the desert southwest, so the plant-killing summer heat has just recently abated).

That quote does not appear anywhere in the linked article.

Correct.

It's not even a put-together of various quotes from the article. The word "African" doesn't even occur.

Correct.

It's a complete fabrication.

Wrong. It's a direct quote from this article, which is by the same author and published on the same site.

The GP mislinked. Big fucking deal. Give him a break, these racist rants all tend to blur together after a while, and it gets difficult to distinguish one torrent of hatred and bigotry from another.

VDARE.com

I wonder why it wasn't in the article. Well, not really.

I don't think I could honestly condemn them as a "hate" site, anymore than (and probably less than) I could CNN or Reuters.

You mean CNN and Reuters regularly publish racialist pseudo-science by eugenecists? People who argue that:

What you won't hear, except from me, is that "Let the good times roll" is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.

Got proof of that? There was a wire-service article making this claim that got a lot of ink back in 2001, but it turned out to be a hoax.

Bush's SAT scores would put him in the top 16% of prospective college students, with an IQ around 115, statistically indistinguishable from the 119 of John F. Kennedy.

Moreover, Bush did very well on his military aptitude tests, so well that it is at least arguable that his IQ is in the 125-130 range and well above that of John Kerry.

Morons don't fly fighter jets without killing themselves, or get degrees from Harvard and Yale. George Bush's daddy may have got him into Yale, but he didn't get him out.

Too many people mistake a lack of glib speaking skills for a low IQ, especially when it confirms their own political prejudices. They are not the same thing at all.

Finally, genius-level IQ is not correlated very well with successful Presidencies, as Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter may testify.

-ccm

If you believe NSA spying, bill of rights violating, presidential singing statement congress undermining Bush is a "strict constructionist," you are an utterly naive fool. It's not just "liberals" who are fed up with Bush but ex-Reagan cabinet people like Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.

See: http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060501_constitution.h tm

In office, and still smarter than John Kerry.

-ccm

http://www.vdare.com/misc/archive00/friedman.htm

Q: Dr. Friedman should the U.S.A. open its borders to all immigrants? What is your opinion on that?

A: Unfortunately no. You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

He goes on to call having classes of workers as H-1Bs as "a very undesirable proposal".

Vote with your wallet, if money is all they understand, ask everyone you
know to close their accounts BofA and move them elsewhere.

If enough ppl do it, it will have an impact.

This is not the first time this has happened with Bank of America.

http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_052103.htm

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=risen0909 03

This has been going on with them for years.

Only money will make them change their mind, as this person killing
himself in their parking lot over it did little but make them laugh.

So as I and other members of my immediate and extended family have done,
ask them all close their bank of america accounts. Then tell them
to pass the word on to all the ppl they know.

Ex-MislTech

But our LEGAL immigration is already EASIER than anywhere else in the world. And the whole idea of limited immigration is to keep it at a manageable trickle, to avoid overwhelming our resources (particularly at the expense of our own people). If it were as easy as some folk would like (to the point where it's no more difficult than walking across the border -- and there are a lot of areas along the border where that's all you need to do) we'd have an unmanageable flood that would dwarf even the current illegal immigration numbers.

BTW check this article for an interesting viewpoint from an American Indian: http://www.vdare.com/misc/yeagley_indian_view.htm

Another with some interesting points:

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/viewAr ticle.asp?articleID=7272

You're right. The truth is that there are not any shortages of unemployed IT workers/engineers in the US. There is, however, a shortage of well-paying IT/engineering jobs.

It's well known that the corporations cry bloody mary to purposefully get congress to increase the number of work visas in order to pay lower wages to their workers, assuming they can't send to the work overseas where laws are more lax.

See Reagan's economic advisor comments:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060215_reality.htm

The fact is that jobs in the country since the early 1970s have increased their wages about, what, somewhere between 1% annual growth and -3%, depending on your source. Meanwhile, inflation has been increasing around 3%-9% per year, again depending on your source.

The same shrill crap people spout about IT/engineering jobs is just a reflection of what is going on everywhere else in America, and the picture ain't pretty.

They're a bunch of racists just like the Japanese with their aging population being cared for increasingly by robots rather than low-paid immigrants.

They're a bunch of racists just like the Japanese with their aging population being cared for increasingly by robots rather than low-paid immigrants.

Thanks for the reply. I think it'd take a book to fully explore and support the hypothesis I'm trying to make, but I think some interesting things can be said about it on a discussion forum regardless. I'll limit the scope of my assertions as best I can. If you think I'm wrong about something do call me on it. That said, there's not much literature on the exact subject at hand, so if I can't cite anything specific, it may be there's nothing to cite (pro or con).

The IQ test, (Often the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale) is a standardized test. When you standardize on a population you reject questions that produce both a low or high score. When applied to a population that is different from the standardized one, some of the questions that they would have performed well may have been rejected.

That's interesting. I believe that methodology is specific to certain IQ tests, and it appears the IQ tests used in the study tended to be non-verbal and not standardized to a specific population per se. Here's a quote from the person responsible for posting this data on the web-

"A large number of the studies were done by professional psychometricians "standardizing" well-known IQ tests, typically culture-fair nonverbal ones like the Raven Progressive Matrices on nationally representative samples." ( http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynn_and_flynn.htm )

Furthermore, though it's an interesting topic, my hypothesis doesn't really need IQ tests to reliably measure any real dimension of intelligence, nor does it really require IQ tests to be valid across cultures; all it requires is that the results be stable (and I believe all modern IQ tests are) and be correlated with a higher-than-normal propensity to online game addiction.

So, it gets down to whether high IQ people (whatever that may entail) tend toward online game addiction, all things being equal. There's anecdotal evidence in favor of this in my personal experience, in popular culture, and perhaps from intuition.

Off the cuff, I'd suggest the mechanism involved might be related to the attraction high IQ people have to abstract contexts and well-defined, meritocratic, intelligence-based competition, or to put it another way, online games present rewards in ways that appeal more effectively (statistically speaking) to the dopamine structures in high IQ people. In any case, online gaming pushes certain psychological buttons, and will affect people with different brain structures differently. Intuitively and anecdotally, people with high IQs tend to have different psychological buttons than others. It's no stretch to say that probably translates into a different propensity to online game addiction.

This is pretty uncharted in scientific literature, but I can imagine it'll be charted in the upcoming years. Considering how significantly negative online game addiction can be it's an important topic. Anything that takes much of its toll from the high IQ segment of society is also serious for practical reasons.

Cheers,
Mike

p.s. In Japan (avg IQ 105) there's a phenomenon called the "missing million".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/corresponden t/2334893.stm
As anecdotal for IQ-MMO addiction correlation evidence this doesn't really control for culture, but it's still fascinating stuff.

One poster nailed it on the head .

NYC is not a cheap place to live, and it is not a place most ppl would consider
for relocation for MANY reasons .

The cost of living there is one of the highest in the nation as are the taxes there .

You have to buy/lease parking spaces at a VERY high price in most of the city center .

Traffic is UNREAL, and crime is pretty substantial .

With IT jobs receiving right-sizing and right-pricing thru the not enough workers FUD
that was falsely pushed thru congress, A "C++ coder" will choose almost any other location
other than NYC for home unless he is from there and likes it there .

A LOT of HR departments also have a extreme method of filtering applicants, and some
are openly looking for Visa workers looking for a xfer here in the US .

Visa workers tend to work past 7 pm for salary when deportation looms over them .

I saw many of these fear/incentive tactics used on Indians, Pakistanis, and Chinese
while at Cisco Systems in Herndon Virginia working in their Voice over Ip lab there .

Norman Mattloff a professor @ UC Davis in california has written extensively and presented
his case in washington . http://www.vdare.com/pb/matloff_h1b.htm

Keep in mind H1-b is just one type in a alphabet soup of visa's .

With the L1 visa #'s being unlimited still to this day .

It is all a cheap labor scam, and the never ending race for the bottom .

GM's 35,000 jobs cut, and Delphi as a GM supplier cutting 20,000+ is just the creaking sound
before the crash , and trust me it's on the way .

Until they can get the labor laws revoked, and wages driven down to compete with 3rd world wages
the downsizing of US industry of all types is going into over drive .

Our government is not for the ppl by the ppl, but for the Corporation by the Campaign funding and graft.

The US has failed to learn from the fall of Rome, and the Bread and Circuses has the masses
distracted with the latest mongoloid chasing a animal skin inflated with air or filled with string .

Million dollar reality TV shows that have nothing to do with the reality of the average american .

The IT sellout is just a small sample of the total sellout of the manufacturing sector, and
the Electronics sector, and anything and everything they can near/out-source .

They care not for their own, and spite those that buy their products and live next to them
in hopes of squeezing a few dollars more to push that stock price a few dollars higher .

But they cannot see that when the neighbor cannot buy their product because his job
was outsourced, then it will effect their long term recurring profits .

And thus they will reap what they sow, and if ppl can't see it I say they are blind .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Anyhow, I covered the corporate welfare aspect of companies like Intel in this article.

I honestly doubt we really can have guys like Barrett running companies like Intel and really improve the math/science situation in the US. We need to rethink US immigration policy, money in politics and the whole set of intellectual property laws and the tendency for lawyers and CEO's to dominate the legislative process so.

How the heck did this site get linked to by Slashdot? The article is just flamebait, for anyone who bothered to look through the site.

http://www.vdare.com/why_vdare.htm

There are 5 billion people that live in countries poorer than Mexico-and a big chunk of Mexico's population would come to the US if they had the chance(and a lot are here already).

What Bill Gates wants are programmers that will work cheap-and kiss his ass-to get a green card. That green card would be worth $100K if it were available on the open market(that is what a girls family in India will pay him to get that green card). Until Gates has to pay that amount for a green card, this arrangement will still be a free ride for the likes of Gates.

Tell that to the Japanese and for that matter the Koreans and Taiwanese.

You might want to read this article I wrote a while back.

Part of the issue:
citizenship is a form of property right-like a share in a large condominium. Letting companies import workers in a specific profession dilutes the property rights of condo owners in that profession-and has the effect of letting employers pay in immigration rights rather than cash. The "market value" of an H-1b visa right now is around $50,000. If companies paid that in visa fees, there would be much less of an issue(also if the visas were up for public auction without being tied to a particular job/profession).

Now, that aside, I'm not sure if the move of countries like Canada to let folks essentially buy residency rights(i.e. by promising a certain level of investment) is a good idea. H-1b is nothing but a corporate welfare program though. Companies pay in green cards rather than cash. The real issue is why major companies are so dependent on these kinds of subsidies.

The job of the government isn't to enforce some kind of utopia property rights applicable only to the very wealthy. The job of the government is to create a situation in which the broad base of its citizens have decent life-while being a good "international citizen". The present US government isn't doing that job-and is in fact liquidating the assets of the broad base of citizens for the profit of wealthy elites(technies and African Americans have been among the hardest hit BTW).

Just FYI, the group among which immigration is the hottest issue according to Pew Research are the heavily black "Disadvantaged Democrats". The way immigration continues is massive buying of corrupt politicians. Most Americans want less immigration.

You just said a mouthful there... Nothing is going to pull things out of this nose-dive but a radical restructuring of the US's political and social structures. Not even nanotechnology:

July 15, 2005

America's Descent Into The Third World

By Paul Craig Roberts

The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the US economy continues unabated.

Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services.

56,000 jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services.

38,000 jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance.

19,000 jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses and bartenders.

Membership associations and organizations created 10,000 jobs and repair and maintenance created 4,000 jobs.

Financial activities created 16,000 jobs.

This most certainly is not the labor market profile of a first world country, much less a superpower.

Where are the jobs for this year's crop of engineering and science graduates?

US manufacturing lost another 24,000 jobs in June.

A country that doesn't manufacture doesn't need many engineers. And the few engineering jobs available go to foreigners.

Readers have sent me employment listings from US software development firms. The listings are discriminatory against American citizens. One ad from a company in New Jersey that is a developer for many companies, including Oracle, specifies that the applicant must have a TN visa.

A TN or Trade Nafta visa is what is given to Mexicans and Canadians, who are willing to work in the US at below prevailing wages.

Another ad from a software consulting company based in Omaha, Nebraska, specifies it wants software engineers who are H-1B transferees. What this means is that the firm is advertising for foreigners already in the US who have H-1B work visas.

The reason the US firms specify that they have employment opportunities only for foreigners who hold work visas is because the foreigners will work for less than the prevailing US salary.

Gentle reader, when you read allegations that there is a shortage of engineers in America, necessitating the importation of foreigners to do the work, you are reading a bald faced lie. If there were a shortage of American engineers, employers would not word their job listings to read that no American need apply and that they are offering jobs only to foreigners holding work visas.

What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?

What kind of country destroys the job market for its own citizens?

How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or daughter who end up employed as a bartender, waitress, or temp?

Dr. Roberts, [email him] a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He is