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Are Silicon Valley's Glory Days Over?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pete Carey writes in the Mercury News that there are 'clear warning signs' that Silicon Valley has entered 'a new phase of uncertainty' in which its standing as a tech center is at risk and that decisive action by business, government and education is needed if the region is to retain its standing as the world's center of technical innovation. 'It could be that Silicon Valley has a different future coming,' says Russell Hancock. 'It's not a given that we will continue to be the epicenter of innovation.' Among the troubling indicators in the Silicon Valley Index (PDF): 90,000 jobs lost in the last two years; the influx of foreign science and engineering talent has slowed; venture capital funding has declined; per capita income is down 5 percent from 2007; and the number of people working as contractors rather than full-time employees is rising. Adding to the valley's problems is a malfunctioning state government that is shortchanging investment in education and infrastructure."
I keep telling these idiots that the first option you should look at when jobs are declining is to increase the importation of foreign workers but do they listen?
nnnnNOOOOOoooooooo....
Seastead this.
Need that money for more prisons.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Yeah, 2009 as a whole was terrible, but VC funding in Q3 and Q4 was way up according to the Mercury News and Techcrunch; as are help wanted postings to Craigslist.
recent years have made working freely by contracting much more easier and feasible. in addition the respect for that kind of contracting and telecommuting increased as well. bright and capable people are now more and more working freely in contract fashion rather than being tied to some company by a salary. this can only increase.
Read radical news here
In California? Are you serious? California has always rewarded bright, young students interested in the sciences. Here's a recent example:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/15/students-evacuated-school-chollas-view/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Silicon Valley is going to be the new Detroit!
The synergy of government, university, corporation in Silicon valley
is glued there by one critical component -- the venture capital lives
down the block and they like to see how their money is spent --
daily. Perhaps others have more direct life experience but I've
definitely seen it in biotech.
As soon as the lure of big bucks goes away, tech will be a commodity
to be found in any medium sized city's office park. The cost of life in
CA is insane.
We are all in a global recession. As such, there are no "Glory Days" for anyone anywhere. I wouldn't count Silicon Valley out just yet.
My advice? Keep your current job if you can, and suck wind like the rest of us do.
Life is not for the lazy.
Actually we needed the exact opposite of H-1B, V1, B1 and all the rest. We built the tech industry without these corporate communist regulations because without them wages went up. Rising wages brought people into the field and encouraged risk.
All the federal government's interference in the US labor market has driven down wages and increased fear. It has also discouraged the best and brightest American students from entering tech. And what people seem to not understand is that Americans bring unique skills to technology. A diverse workplace is good. We had that back in the '90s. But today, we are way past that. In my office I am the only American. Mostly we have Indians. When you get over 25% Indians on a team you start to see their cultural influence. Hindus believe in a cast system where certain people are just better than others.
It starts to kill the team. And that's were I see most teams today in my company. They are Hindu teams where it matters which cast you are from more than anything else.
Only the ones that don't have a pair of balls. See what happens when you do steroids?
Life is not for the lazy.
#1. criticism on the poster or whoever came up with the Slashdot article title "Are Silicon Valley's Glory Days Over?" -- yes, catchy and attention getting, but jumps to conclusions.
#2. what is this article about? It's from the business side of things. They spoke with:
- chief executive officer of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network ...where's the techies? "decisive action by business, government and education is needed" -- what about technological innovation? That is the other side of the equation too other than those funding these operations.
- chief executive and president of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation
- chief strategist in San Jose's Office of Economic Development
- Santa Clara County's budget director
YES! and more offshoring. I mean, it's not like it affects anyone who matter$.
If this stagnation and job loss was happening everywhere else in the country, we'd be in a recession.
Does this imply that continually electing right wing governors and the like has a little bitty teenie weenie something to do with economies falling into the toilet? Could it be?
I believe you'll find it's bloated government spending that's bankrupt California. And I'd hardly call Arnie 'right wing', except perhaps by Hollywood's standards.
It is hard to know how to respond to something so utterly ignorant. Where does one start? California has not gone to a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. That is 22 years since basic comprehension of reality is apparently beyond your grasp. The state's legislature is loopy leftist. The governor is a RINO.
As the testbed of liberal ideas, California is going the same way as its 1970's predecessor, New York City, did: into bankruptcy.
> the influx of foreign science and engineering talent has slowed
That's a good thing. For many years the biggest challenge with hiring here has been with weeding through all of the Indians and Chinese with fake degrees. After hiring over four dozen Indians and about half that many Chinese, I've found that only about ten percent of them have at least an equivalent to an AA. Slowing the insurgency of useless employees would be a great help towards helping the area rebound.
Just flood it, and we can turn it into a lake.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The obvious next step: Ban people who don't have H-1 visas from tech jobs. There's lots of jobs at Starbucks left for lazy overeducated white guys.
Instead of just blaming Republicans or Democrats let's look at the problem. Right now in California about half the employed people are working for the government. State workers in California retire in the their 50's with a pension for life that is 90% of the average of their 3 highest paid years. Combine those 2 facts and you have the horrible malaise that is the California budget problem.
Gee! Does this imply that continually electing right wing governors and the like has a little bitty teenie weenie something to do with economies falling into the toilet?
I was thinking it had something to do with the almost entirely Democratic California state representatives who refuse to cut spending, even at the point California is at now.
But then hey, I only read what actually happens there instead of taking every possibly chance to bash one side or the other... as an independent I can call out whichever side is misbehaving instead of pretending my chosen "Side" is pure as the driven snow.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In this state's case, a lot of things led to poor money situation, but two stand out: 1) when times were good, they didn't allow themselves a 'rainy day fund' and mandated that any surpluses had to be spent out. 2) Net taxes paid OUT to the federal gov. are staggering, and California is the gross highest - in 2001, their "balance of payments" figure was 58 BILLION dollars.
What is Kleiner Perkins up to these days. If they're all-in on local tech investments, I'd say SV is good to go.
welfare for illegal aliens.
The actual problem is the set-asides imposed by referendums. The politicians in Sacramento are lousy at budgeting, but most of the money has already been allocated by whatever special interest groups have managed to pass set-asides as ballot issues over the past three decades.
Did he also cut too many taxes?
Makes it even more important to put the money you do have to good use. The principal problem here is corruption.
New England and the West Coast, due to a number of elite universities and military research labs.
Midwest region has been underdeveloped for ages. This is about time.
New Economic Perspectives
Part of the problem in Silicon Valley is that the venture capital community has become noticeably more risk averse than it was many years ago. Many (most?) firms act more like investment banks than high-risk, high-tech venture funds.
Additionally, I think the rise of social media has biased venture capital deals in strange ways, steering even more money toward social network and media whores than actual tech ventures.
The cost of living here has been cited as a concern. The number one cost is housing. It's still too much. Don't support housing prices. Let 'em fall. California, from the first strike of "gold!" to the first rusty ghost town where the ore ran out, has always been a "boom and bust" economy. Take away the bust, and you don't have boom and bust. You have boom and fizzle. It needs to go teh schitz so that people will say, "Look, Sunshine, worldclass universities, and affordable housing. Let's start a business there".
"Blah, blah, blah taxes" from the Republicans; but you don't pay taxes unless you make money. Startups don't worry about taxes, they worry about the stuff you need to get off the ground. You need someplace cheap to crash, cheap to eat, and you need smart people crashing out in cheap apartments and eating ramen a few miles from where they're getting the world class education. JMHO, totally backed up by any real data of course.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What do Presidential elections have to do with the malignancy that was Pete Wilson, or the incompetence of Arnold? Their last Democratic Governor was recalled.
California is as much an object lesson in the stupidity of Reganism as "liberal ideas" (liberal ideas like props 187, 209 and 8?).
But of course, Arnold is RINO. Even when the party of personal responsibility is in power, they are not personally responsible.
But of course, Arnold is RINO. Even when the party of personal responsibility is in power, they are not personally responsible.
Arnie married into the _Kennedies_, for Bob's sake.
I doubt very much that the Hollywood entertainment conglomerates consider him to be "right wing" by any stretch of the word.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Does that mean that they're all working at cupertino working on the next iPad (Now with 25% more absorbancy!)?
Adding to the valley's problems is a malfunctioning state government that is shortchanging investment in education and infrastructure. Maybe part of the problem is not that the California government isn't spending enough money, but that it's spending too much.
Laws might also play a much bigger role in something like this. Rife abuse of things like the DMCA to halt innovation for fear of lawsuits, a well known fact of a highly broken patent system would cause less of a desire to want to get too creative lest you get a court issue summoning to east Texas ( http://blog.innovators-network.org/?p=922 ) and being sued to death. Other issues are that I have a feeling that laws like the US-VISIT Act ( http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/usv.shtm ) might cause some people to re-consider going to the US since being digitally finger printed and photo'd for just wanting to enter the country is real discouraging (and I think this info stay on file indefinitely). Lots of legal problems, rising costs of business, the recession, laws that just make you less wanted by the country as a whole and stories of people being assaulted by border guards, and that the US Customs can and do copy your laptops and all of it's private business information ( http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/appel/no-warrant-necessary-seize-your-laptop ) possibly risking millions of dollars to your business (and don't think that a leak could never happen, they do). With all this to consider, it's less and less of a reason to want to start a business or take a business from another country and do it in places like Silicon Valley in the US.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
First, bypassing the "story" and a layer of blogs, is the actual report.
What's really happened in Silicon Valley is that it's been hollowed out. Silicon Valley used to be a major manufacturing center. San Jose once had the highest percentage of manufacturing employees of the major US cities, something like 54%. Today, the assembly plants are gone. Most of the fabs are gone. Much of the engineering is gone. This is what happens when you "outsource". Eventually, everything moves to where the production is, including management and finance.
Part of the problem was the "dot com boom", with its fake companies and fake prosperity. That caused a major change in the culture, away from engineering and towards marketing. When the bottom fell out of the dot-com boom, most of the marketing types left. The number of twentysomethings in San Francisco dropped by half. (A friend in the club business says "and the other half are working their butts off and don't go out much.") The big name in Silicon Valley now is not HP or Intel or IBM or National Semiconductor or Fairchild. It's Google, which is an ad agency. That's a huge change in emphasis.
The innovation culture is declining. Portola Valley (a rich suburb) used to have the highest percentage of patent holders of any US community. That's dropped. There's not that much exciting innovation going on. I go to venture capital meetings, and the ideas being presented are just not very exciting. (I've heard a pitch for a social network for cats. And that made it through two rounds of filtering before I heard it.)
People are still struggling to get semiconductor line widths down, solar fab costs down, and such. But that's a grind. Mobile devices are not a fun area in which to work - the weight budget, the cost budget, the power budget, and the time budget are all very tight. The manufacturing is in Asia, anyway, and the engineering is going there. New areas aren't appearing.
There's noise about "green tech", but realistically, "green tech" is either vaporware, like the "smart grid", silly, like small windmills, or something that requires massive manufacturing, like big windmills. Five years ago, the noise was about "biotech", which doesn't employ many people.
Fewer young people in the US are going into engineering, and that's a rational decision. It's hard, it's expensive to study, your job may be outsourced, and it's now a low-status field. In 1970, lawyers and electrical engineers made about the same amount of money. That was a long time ago. On the other hand, in Asia, an EE degree puts you in the top few percent of the population in terms of income and status.
US government polices haven't really had much of an effect one way or the other on Silicon Valley, except that allowing the runup in real estate increased living costs substantially and that free trade has made outsourcing so easy.
2) Net taxes paid OUT to the federal gov. are staggering, and California is the gross highest - in 2001, their "balance of payments" figure was 58 BILLION dollars.
Wait, doesn't that mean that the bread and circuses/Keynesian method, high immigration numbers, and social service spending is working? If they finally legalize marijuana and reform their enormous prison system, looks like they'll continue to be the top performing state economy in the US.
California was too expensive to live in back before the Dot com Boom and worse today. You have regions around the US where the cost of developing sectors of R&D are a fraction of that in Silicon Valley and would better serve spreading the talent around the US instead of concentrating it into a zone where you drown in debt while gaining experience.
I left Apple a year after my former company, NeXT, merged with Apple because the cost of living and going through a divorce was bankrupting my ass. The cost has far surpassed the cost of living adjustments and it is not worth going back.
Finally, the GOP has wised up and has set out to systematically destroy Silicon Valley and all those liberal-minded programmers and their support for leftist educators that have nothing better to do than fill the minds of children with all sorts of thoughts.
If jobs aren't outsourced to India, how can American corporations make enough money to pay executive salaries? If Silicon Valley can be broken, computer talent can be had at pennies on the dollar, so that once again we will be able to compete with India and China.
1: Silicon valley has nothing that Dubai, Beijing or Bangalore has. The US allowed people to get college educations on the taxpayer's dime with a higher priority than native citizens for tier 1 universities. Giving tax breaks for offshoring allowed India, China, and other nations to have the same tech, but without the cost of R&D.
2: American companies lack of security, with the attitude of "security has no ROI" has resulted in no new stuff to be stolen by hackers and foreign intel departments.
3: The US government has given the middle finger to R&D, while allowing banks to slurp at a trough. China, Russia, and even Iran actually realize where their future is, and are putting their rupees/yuan/rubles/other currency into this. No R&D funding means no cool stuff.
4: Education. American high schools schools can teach someone how to strip a Cadillac in 30 seconds or that a 45 caliber is a better weapon than a 9mm for gangbanging, but basic knowledge for technology (calculus, differential equations) that is paid for by the government in other nations, costs 5-6 digits in student loans here.
5: Education again. American students are told that science is for nerds and dweebs, and won't get you chicks. Instead, go law and the J. D. gets you a meal ticket for life. Or go get a MBA and be a ruler of a corporation. Scientists are viewed as grunts or slaves, a completely fungible resource. Same with IT workers.
In short, the US is fucked, and Congress has absolutely zero interest in dealing with it.
The poor california school system was one of the big reasons my wife and I moved out the Bay Area several years ago. Things are worse now, I see.
That, and CA is one of the most business-unfriendly states I've ever lived in. I'd rather do a start-up in a location that's cheaper.
Is it not the population that puts EVERYTHING on the ballot. There is a lot of Astro-Turfing that goes on.
Malfunctioning state government?! Cripes, man, the state government here has basically declared open warfare on anyone remaining in the state who exhibits a microgram of productivity or independence. And when questioned (by the rare few in the news media that even bother) about the sanity of their actions in such a bad economy, they pretty much come out and admit they don't give a shit about anything other than some legacy involving bunnies and unicorn farts. Nearly every professional person I know is planning on leaving as soon as they can by looking for out of state work, getting their homes cleaned up for sale, etc.
And for the record, this state spends a lot on education- nearly half the state budget. The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the foundations. Hell, you probably want to dynamite the foundations as well. But the political brain trust will just throw more money down the black hole, and they'll sit and wonder why it didn't help, and throw some more because doing anything else is ideological heresy. Rinse and repeat until the sate declares bankruptcy or armed insurrection occurs.
[Citation Needed] If one checks out CL postings for tech people in various Bay Area cities, there are a *lot* fewer positions available for tech people this year than even three months ago.
Maybe if you have a valid TS/SCI clearance and/or a CISSP certification, you might be needed by CL postings, but anything under that, good luck, as your job is in India.
It's a combination. It's a Democratic majority that refuse to cut any spending combined with a Republican minority that, given the California 2/3rds requirement, vetoes any tax increase. It's a deadly combo that guarantees the state will never be run in a fiscally responsible way. (i.e. insisting that inflows == outflows.)
If either party were able to fully define both tax and spending levels, the state would be better off.
The cake is a pie
hogwash! they're just starting!
Yeah, Arnie is as right wing as a pro-environment, gay-friendly, pro-choice Republican can be.
The cake is a pie
Policies that you can't argue against without putting yourself in an inferior position:
Patriot Act-->Who wants to be labeled as unpatriot in a time of grave danger?
Accounting by Fair Values-->Who wants to support "unfair" values?
Tax Relief-->Who the hell can be against relief?
etc; ad nauseam... The problem is that examples such as these are all complex laws with hordes of pages and technicalities, yet they sound FAIR, COMMONSENSICAL, HONEST, and with CA's direct democracy, Joe Average will be sucked into this type of framing trick.
I for one have always thought that ThePirateBay.org should change its name to "OurSharedCulture.org", or "AllHumanCulture.org". I REALLY Want to see a politician screaming on TV "We gotta shut down those bloody criminals from "OurSharedCulture.org"!!
For some reason you are posting from 2008. We just had the largest state tax increase in national history here in California last year. The Republicans capitulated in backroom deals, thus giving the required 2/3 majority.
We're now the highest taxed state in just about every area.
Guess what? It didn't help. It just raped an already bleeding economy in the ass.
here we are ... we preached it and now we see it; did we did something to prevent it? no. in toronto there is no job to be found without the requirements of being performed
as for at least 3 persons. the norm for a java enterprise developer is to perform everything from sql query programming till javascript browser for at least 12 hours per day - heard of
16h too couple of times - often weekends. often, doing .net/c#/c++ is also on the same plate as *it is also programming pal ... are you too stupid for the industry?!*. there is no
place anymore for ppl with personal and family commitments , you must submit and live owned. if you don't have the right connections so that you don't get enslaved only being a
slave master aka at least *team leader* allows you to not live the misery each day ...
You just don't notice them under the Chuckie Cheeze cunt cap.
What is wrong with you, California? Why do you keep electing Republican actors as governor and then wonder why your government sucks so badly?
Just how long-lasting was that acid they dosed the reservoirs with in the 60s?
First Reagan, then Ahnold. Ya gotta be kidding.
Oh, and let's not forget your other prominent actor politician, yet another Republican't, Sonny Bono.
It's the drugs, it's gotta be.
...better and richer than before. Silicon Valley was born from a revolution that was fueled by fast and cheap semiconductors. Revolution is also what sustained the Valley. Now this first computer revolution is winding down (you can't f*ck with Moore's law and walk away to brag about it), Silicon Valley needs to prepare for the next big one. If the next big revolution does not come soon, Silicon Valley will indeed die because that's what it feeds on. So what's the next big thing? Super fast and massively parallel computers that are cheap and super easy to develop applications for. If Silicon Valley can crack this puppy, it will be downhill again for another ten to fiifteen years.
But nobody knows how to make parallel programming easy, you say. Well, that's where you're wrong. The solution has been staring us in the face for years but the baby boomer generation who gave us the first revolution and who still control the industry, don't want to hear it. Too bad. Crash and burn is what Silicon Valley will do if they don't replace the old guard with better and more agile brains.
How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis
Rebel Science News
I would be more concerned about my home town (well, home area, it's really several towns) if other parts of the US seemed to be prospering. But the way I see it, we're still doing as well as any, and better than most. We are still home to companies that get a lot of good press and make a lot of money. Yes, it costs a lot to live here, because this is still a great place to live.
The better question, to me, is whether or not the US in general is in long-term decline. I think the jury is still out on that one. There's certainly cause for concern. But how many of the products we use every day were invented in China? Fireworks and spaghetti? The simple fact is that top talent still seems to be dying to get out of China (or India, or Eastern Europe, or wherever) and come here.
People have been writing this type of story for decades now. They've all been wrong so far. That doesn't mean that they'll always be wrong. But I'm going to go ahead and stick it out here, and watch stories on the news about blizzards that happen to other people. All good things do come to an end, but I think we've got at least one more good boom left in us.
Outsourcing was not a problem in the 80s because Silicon Valley could do it cheaper that everybody else in those days. And the reason that they could do it cheaper is because they were riding on the crest of a revolutionary wave that they started. Lately, the has begun to dissipate and SV's superior technology can no longer give it an edge because it doesn't exist anymore. As I wrote elsewhere, SV needs a new revolution because that's what it feeds on. So, what's the next big thing? Massively parallel machines that are cheap and super easy to program. That's what. SV needs to be the first to come out with a solution to the parallel programming crisis and the first to exploit it. Otherwise, they're doomed. Ghost Valley will be their new name, a real bummer.
How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis
Rebel Science News
The governor is a RINO.
From watching the antics of the Republican party, RINOs are actually the only ones that try to be republican. The rest are loony religious people trying to push their brand of god on everyone.
Reboot macht Frei.
Very true. Every country/place has its own share of problems. Cost of living in SF bay area is high, because there are still most the jobs. Also comparing to cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, where a condo can easily cost US$300K+ while engineer salary is only about US$10K-, SF is actually quite affordable.
California is as much an object lesson in the stupidity of Reganism as "liberal ideas"
Well, yes, getting yourself possessed by the devil is kind of stupid. But I think that was just an isolated incident, not a fiscal policy.
Advice: on VPS providers
Gee! Does this imply that continually electing right wing governors and the like has a little bitty teenie weenie something to do with economies falling into the toilet? Could it be?
Can you please expand on this with your conclusions based on your study of other states that have elected "right wing" governors? Surely, you have interesting data to sahre and are not just knee-jerk groupthinking...
Advice: on VPS providers
If by 'Silicon Valley' you mean the area north of that and east of the other thing, then yes, may be, I don't know, perhaps.
If by 'Silicon Valley' you mean a place where a large number of intelligent, creative and well-educated people mostly concerned with computer science and engineering can find meaningful and well-paid employment or start a company with relatively few hurdles and a fighting chance of commercial success with a genuinely good idea - then no, I do not believe Silicon Valley can die out. It may no longer be in the same place in California, or in California, or even the United States or the western hemisphere, but Silicon Valley as an idea simply will not and can not die out. Silicon Valley as a concept existed before the literal Silicon Valley itself, and it will continue to live on, even if it's closer to Bangalore or Doha or Shanghai than Mountain View.
And when it does, let's put up a sign - "The valley spirit never dies." [Verse 6, Tao Te Ching]
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
Yes, Silicon Valley's "Glory Days" are over. Duh. Just the fact that we recognize a place, person, or thing has had "Glory Days" means that they are over. However, despite the current recession, the valley has clearly established itself as a major tech center and will remain one for at least our life times. Of course these points are fairly obvious to all of us, but apparently some journalists feel they can justify there existence by writing articles debating them anyway.
According to this: (shows CA is 17th per in capita ed spending. Caveat: Data 2006, not sure if they've cut anything) Most of it to primary levels too.
http://www.ppinys.org/reports/jtf/educationspending.htm
You could argue cost of living I suppose, but overall the US is about normal. This is normalized for GNP. We're down at 35, but the Ukrane and Sudan are not really kicking our asses, so I'm guessing they have GNP issues and the ed spending is lagging.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_pub_spe_per_stu_pri_lev-spending-per-student-primary-level
They are Hindu teams where it matters which cast you are from more than anything else.
So, Hindu programmers are strongly typed and there can be problems with the implicit casting system?
Sounds like these teams need some programmer duck typing!
Tweet, tweet.
Wanna blame? Blame yourselves !
Silicon Valley's glory and gloom has nothing to do with H-1.
Silicon Valley bloomed in yesteryears because of the incentives that were there for innovators to innovate.
Innovators were aplenty, and they were willing to share the findings to each others, and they actually encouraging each others to do more !
There were no patent trolls back then. No teams of lawyers who will sue innovators to bankruptcy or subpoena them to court to explain why they come up with this little piece of code/gadget/idea which happens to have similarity to another piece of code/gadget/idea.
In other words, there were no rent-seekers back then.
Nowadays? There are more rent-seekers in Silicon Valley than the innovators.
Blaming the H-1 visa is too easy, and everyone is doing just that. But will that help Silicon Valley?
What if all the H-1 visas are revoked tomorrow? Do you seriously think that Silicon Valleys can magically bloom again, just like that?
C'mon, guys ! Use your brain for once and stop regurgitating the vomit of others.
And PS. I was in Silicon Valley when it blooms, and yes, I was one of the innovators. Now I am no longer in the Silicon Valley, and heck, I am no longer staying in the United States, and you know why? Because I have had enough of those rent-seekers !
then your problem is the draconian, almost near feudal insurance system in usa.
Read radical news here
...I'd say that the moment silicon valley (a dynamic, spontaneous effusion of capitalism on the tech frontier) requires GOVERNMENT intervention to remain viable, you can probably stick a fork in it.
Adam Smith cringes in disgust.
-Styopa
then your problem is the draconian, almost near feudal insurance system in usa.
No, his problem is MS. It's just that people who need medication think they are entitled to it, and its a pretty reasonable to thing to just give it to them when it is cheap, but, now, that is expensive, that question needs to be reasked.
First off, if you need 2k a year in medical expenses, can you ever really be considered "productive". Only if you are in a high end job. Secondly, if that 2k a year is not coming out of his pocket, then whose pocket is it coming out of, mine? So that's great, my dream of sending my son to college or even having a retirement just evaporated so I can foot the bill for someone else's problem.
In your society, I should be running up to some government honcho through my political representatives arguing that my problems are worse than his, so I would not be taxed, turning myself, like every does, into a victim to curry myself some perceived favor on the altar of mercy. But I don't care, I don't need that.
Maybe its because they don't believe in god, or maybe they think they are more important than they really are, maybe they are just too into themselves, but as for me, I've got a couple of things I want to get done with life, if I didn't have a son, I'd have probably blown myself up doing something already, and I just don't give a shit that much that I'm going die. But the fact is, all of this pay people in the name of mercy is just another form of greed. Everybody is entitled to what I do, except for me, and honestly, I don't need to rationalize what I have to anyone, and certainly not to anyone who would be unable to work at all without my support.
This is my sig.
at least compared to the foreign workers I've worked with. They'll never tell you about a problem,
they'll never say they're behind until too late, and a lot of them will blame anything else rather
than their own work. The GOOD American workers I work with will gladly say "I have no idea
what will happen if you..." if it's the truth. They'll look to their own work first, and bring up
potential problems before they become disasters. It's cultural, and it's a huge advantage.
What a lovely country you live in, filled with wonderful human beings like yourself who would happily let a stranger suffer so that they could buy a bigger TV.
Yeah, like sending my son to college is having a better tv.
So, you pontificating cockroach, try this on:
If you care about these people so much, why don't you sell your computer and mail out a check?
After all, does your right to post on slashdot exceed the need of some suffering dude in Africa who doesn't even eat? Your time of relaxation is more deservedly spent working for the benefit of your hopeless pets. But oh no, you have some exception for yourself, I'm sure.
Goddmanned imperialist! The King cries! Will there ever be a knight to deal with this Beckett!
This is my sig.
Yes. Insurance is a risk pool. The less risky subsidize the more risky.
This conflates risk and fortune, a common misunderstanding of statistics. The purpose of insurance is to pool misfortune, and it works best with homogeneous risk (and homogeneous aversion to risk). In a population of N people, let's say we all have a risk (probability) P of having some misfortune that would cost us X as individuals. For the whole population, there is a cost N*P*X from this misfortune, and we can pay for it by having each of us may our fraction P*X = N*P*X/N rather than some of us paying zero and some of us paying X when misfortune strikes.
This proposal becomes confused when heterogeneous populations exist. If we do not share the same risk of some misfortune, we sometimes lose interest in supporting insurance for that sort of thing. Or, due to our different financial circumstances and irrational emotional conditions, we may not have the same aversion to risks we do share: one of us feels it essential to get insurance while the other is inclined to risk paying the whole cost X himself rather than pay the certain P*X. (Note, the latter choice can happen when you are wealthy enough to afford X or when you are too poor to afford the P*X.)
This issue leads to different solutions: a "free market" system allows different sub-populations of risk and risk aversion to organize their own pools, but now the pools are smaller and potentially less robust to randomly clustered misfortune (the probability P does not guarantee that misfortunes occur in a uniform distribution, exacerbated as N gets smaller); a national social solution, which requires government panels to administer a nationwide pool and decide which risks are worth covering; and hybrids of the two where small pools are organized but some mechanism allows funds transfer between pools as a sort of meta-insurance. People can get so caught up in the politics of the power/control systems at play in real implementations of these ideas, such that they never get around to thinking about the underlying ethical or compassion questions. The debates are not about "which kind of care would we all want?" but around "which sort of leaky organization am I going to subjugate myself to?"
Kim Walesh, chief strategist in San Jose's Office of Economic Development, said the report "really nailed" the valley's increasing need for a healthy educational system. Because of post-9/11 restrictions on immigration and increased opportunities in India and China, the valley can't rely on foreign talent as it has in the past 25 years.
Similar articles come out practically every day. They all have the same message: US education system is inadequate, we need the "best and brightest" from offshore nations. Funny thing: the "best and brightest" always come from nations where the average wage is about $1 a day. No smart people in the UK, Germany, or any 1st world nation.
Strange how the country that build that IT industry is no longer capable of producing IT workers. No qualified IT workers from the country responsible for Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon, Intel, Dell, etc. No good scientists from a country where one top university holds more Nobel prizes in technology than the entire nation of India.
Remember the massive tech layoffs from one year ago? Practically all the major tech companies fired Americans by the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Yet with all of those unemployed, yet highly qualifed, US techies we need more offshore labor to take even more US jobs. Even with the highest unemployment since the great depression.
BTW: US restrictions on guest workers were a complete toothless joke, and US companies got all the H1Bs they wanted anyway.
you missed something, or didn't mention something..
a mere million dollars in a new business makes a green card very easy
http://www.business.ca.gov/page.asp?o=cabth&s=cabusiness&p=390346&i=273647
Under federal law, 10,000 immigrant visas per year are available to qualified individuals seeking permanent resident status on the basis of their engagement in a new commercial enterprise. This visa program is popularly called the EB-5 visa program.
Permanent resident status based on EB-5 eligibility is available to investors who have invested - or are actively in the process of investing - at least $1,000,000 into a new commercial enterprise that they have established. A new commercial enterprise includes creating an original business; purchasing an existing business and restructuring or reorganizing the business such that a new commercial enterprise results; or expanding an existing business to a certain extent. Applicants wishing to seek status as Immigrant Investors must demonstrate that their investment will benefit the United States economy and create full-time employment for not fewer than 10 qualified individuals; or maintain the number of existing employees in a "troubled business."
If the investment in a new commercial enterprise is being made in a "targeted employment area," the required investment is at least $500,000. A "targeted employment" area is either a "high unemployment area" that has experienced unemployment of at least 150 percent of the national average rate or a "rural area."
Applicants for EB-5 visa filing an application with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) must demonstrate they meet all requirements under the immigrant visa program. Investors may be granted conditional permanent residence status for two years if they meet and document the investment criteria. With timely filing to remove the conditional status, a permanent green card may be issued; five years after the initial grant of conditional permanent residence, an investor may apply for U.S. citizenship.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Silicon Valley should be allowed to die out in California, so that it can rise somewhere else.
It NEVER made sense to put a STARTUP-centric environment in one of the most singularly expensive to live in areas of the country, YOU GIGANTIC MORONS.
That's always pissed me off - startups should be focusing money on getting off the ground; not matching 6 digit salaries just so their employees can live in a shoebox.. or having to have on-site catered food every day, because that's what Google has, or whatever the latest ridiculous way to COMPLETELY WASTE investment dollars is.
I'd like a factual research study done on all the companies that started up and/or exist in Silicon Valley today, and how much total wasted dollars that cost over having Silicon Valley somewhere in the middle of nowhere, even taking into account the quick rise of the cost of living in that area that'd come with such an influx of technology companies. I still wager it's on the order of multiple billion dollars.
The reason why people came to the US was that it won WWII. The US became the superpower nation (formerly UK) and most of Europe was recovering and rebuilding from WWII. Most of the Western European brain drain dropped off in the 1970's. The Indian and Chinese started coming here in huge numbers after 1980, largely because they felt that their economic situation would improve over conditions that they had at home (largely due to remenants from losing wars to their Western colonizers), a situation which seems to be changing back now that China and India are becoming an economic power. In 1990, the US had more citizens leaving than people entering to become US Citizens (not H1B visa). After the end of the Cold War, the influx of Jewish Eastern Europeans and Russians increased substantially.
... get over it.
When things are humming again, the jobs, money and talent will return.
What is completely absent of mention here is primary factor you will actually hear from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the US. That is the Sarbanes-Oxley act. While its intent may have been noble, its effect has been to add a virtual "accounting tax" of several million dollars per year on any small, publicly-held company in the US. That has roughly doubled the revenue hurdle for companies going public. At 50% annual growth and roughly zero profit (EBITDA), $50M used to be the requirement; now it's typically $100M. That's nearly two additional years, plus the risk that growth isn't sustained between $50-100M.
The ripple effects of that are enormous, in terms of willingness of VC's to invest, employees to forgo salaries for options, and entrepreneurs to choose the US for their corporate start. Granted, this isn't specific to any one US area, but as the prime center of US innovation, the Valley has seen the greatest impact.
As a result of SarbOx, if the "big 4" accounting firms agree on anything, then you have to do it as a publicly-held company, or as a company aspiring to go public. It doesn't matter how stupid the policies are from a technical or business standpoint or how needless the extra auditing. You have to do it, pay for it, implement it, or the CEO risks jail.
Have we actually killed our golden goose? We'll have to wait for the next economic cycle to judge. But it's severely disturbing that approximately nobody in US politics is even mentioning this issue. All those supposedly "pro-small-business" politicians don't dare to criticize legislation that was posed as the solution to possibility of another Enron. Perhaps it's done that, but it has also created an innovation-destruction engine of unimaginable proportions.
"a malfunctioning state government that is shortchanging investment in education and infrastructure." wake up, this isn't just silicon valleys problem; this is going on all over whole country.
The guest worker programs were have were mainly designed to lower technology pay. In this sense, the guest worker programs have been a success. Unfortunately, this has also cost us an entire generation of the best and brightest. The same type of brilliant minds that made the US a technology leader no longer take up Computer Science as there are much more viable careers available.
If you want to look and see what unlimited immigration can do, check out the state of California. It has been destroyed in like 15 years. But hey, I'm sure the answer is shove more people into the failed state.
The rest of the world can go fuck itself.
A mod point, a mod point, my kingdom for a mod point!
US standard of living vs India is an arbitrage opportunity for big US multinationals. When you smell shit and curry all the time you know parity has been achieved. I don't hold a grudge against the Indians, I hold a grudge against a government that doesn't respond to the majority of its citizens. Politicians should wear Nomex coveralls like race car drivers do, plastered with the logos of the companies that own them. That way we could make better informed voting decisions.
Try again. One of his campaign promises was that schools would have first dibs on the state government's money.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
http://h1bdebate.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/h1b-logical-fallacies/
Covers many issues raised in this thread and a few others as well
If you meet anybody from India, ask him "What Is Your Caste?". And see the fun.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days
To Everything
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
Wheels within wheels and nothing lasts forever
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
I am sorry. I appear to have forgotten to use the <sarcasm> tag on that last comment.
The cake is a pie
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110
Gifted individuals account for only 5% of H-1B visa holders at most, so cutting the numbers of H-1B visas from the current 110K to 2,000 or fewer per year and auctioning them off monthly to the highest bidders on the basis of compensation would improve the likelihood that the best and brightest would be welcomed. Cutting them to 1,000 per year would begin to bring back the huge pool of unemployed and under-employed US citizen science and tech workers toward full employment, and thus boost the economy. If all else fails, we should set the bar by conducting multiple IQ tests and admit those whose average scores exceed 160 (or aggregate ACT score above 34 or aggregate SAT score above 1560 or "new" aggregate SAT score above 2100 or aggregate GRE above 1615).
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200705.html#20070513
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/NotBestAndBrightest3.txt
"the mean literacy test score for U.S. adults (272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey (270)... Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 high income countries surveyed by ETS. U.S. natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high income countries. U.S. immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 countries." --- Edwin S. Rubenstein 2005-12-22 _V Dare_ "The stupid American? Think again"
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
It's impossible to make a case that executives should continue turning their backs on some of the best science, tech, engineering and math talent in the world and instead hire lower-quality, low-skill, cheaper labor from over-seas.
"I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if [Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming] -- none of which has a substantial under-class -- had been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been out-scored only by Singapore (professor David Berliner, 'Our Schools Versus Theirs', Washington Post, 2001 January 28)... This [both the TIMSS and PISA tests] once again shows, tragically, that the U.S.A. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its under-class. But if one takes the white score as 'main-stream', the U.S.A. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th."
http://www.k
Typical USian, wrapping themselves in the flag at every opportunity.
The real problem for you and other developed countries is your consumerist way of life fuelled by unrealistic amounts of debt.
The Chinese are going to own you, big time, not because they are cheap labour, but because they save money and their consumption is not as conspicuous as the US's.
You may still convince them that they should become and idiotic consumerist society, where it is your birth right to own a car and burn petrol like there is no tomorrow, overeat on behalf of 2 or 3 people, and gett whatever you want whenever you want it, which is why you can have as many credit cards as you want.
Many US people around here are quick to blame others for the *relatively mild" economic problems they are facing (are you facing an Haiti situation in the US? No? Then pull yourselves up and stop whining), but are hard pressed to look at how their personal choices are completely unrealistic.
USians: you got a great free ride in the second half of the 20th century: that was an illusion, China, India and to some extent Russia were non entities economically, that is going to change, and no amount of patriotic nonsense is going to change that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What makes a country such is their people, countries are an human, not natural, form of organization.
Population of Australia is 21 000000 give or take.
Population of California is: 36 000000.
For comparison: Population of Mexico City's Metropolitan Area: 20 000000
To say California is so awesome because it produces more than a full Continent is frankly idiotic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Companies have no loyalty for their employees. They not even pretend they do anymore.
So people that see through all this bullshit become mercenaries of the trade.
Obama is telling you the system needs reforming and half of you call him communist or worst for it.
I was reading in amusement your post since I am in the UK and didn't not know which insurance you were talking about and what could possibly cost so much.
If you were in the UK (or most EU countries) you would not pay a penny for your treatment and medicines would be very cheap or even free.
Scoundrel communist ideas I am telling you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He is most likely already taxed?
You guys have no idea how the system works.
Our taxes are a bit higher but few of us have to worry about medical care (which is not perfect, but in most situation for most people is perfectly adequate).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Just for starters your space program and nuclear capabilities were designed by foreigners.
You did not have the talent.
I really don't know in which alternative universe some of you live. Your patriotism is scary, it clearly is blurring your reasoning.
Look at any company of note and they will normally be staffed with lots of foreigners which are clearly there due to merit.
Other countries paid for the basic education of those people, you get (or used to get) the best picking, and you still complain!
Unbelievable...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So in the name of what do you expect them to feel at home?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Your country needs the cheap labour, the poor people needs the work.
That is all the justification *economics" requires.
That populist politicians and rabid quasi racist media can't live with that economic reality will not stop people trying to feel those economic niches.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He enjoyed it for many years.
His son, who didn't like school much, was a plant worker doing stuff in the assembly line. He left after 3 gruelling months he described as the worst of his life.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People with well paid, safe, comfortable jobs, are always happy assuming what people that don't threaten their jobs would like to do.
Actually workers in rich countries are speaking: here in the UK the difference in commitment and work ethics from East European people in menial jobs is now well cemented. The locals can't be bothered to takes those jobs and seem to be quite happy what several people here are mocking as no-jobs or "shitty" service jobs, like if the pseudo-manly sweaty nature of a jobs was directly proportional to its usefulness and satisfaction potential.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"BTW: US restrictions on guest workers were a complete toothless joke, and US companies got all the H1Bs they wanted anyway."
But there is no amount of evidence that would convince people ejaculating this view of the contrary.
Just where I used to work no visas were required: all jobs where relocated elsewhere (India, Romania, Ireland, Singapore).
But you want to have your cake and eat it against the obvious economic pressures to transfer jobs one way or another to countries where labour is cheaper.
Many USian Slashdotters are pervers protectionists, advocates for inefficiency and economic mismanagement, as long as all is neatly wrapped in the old bar and spangled one.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When you export manufacturing, you export jobs and those foreign workers who want very much for their children to succeed. So, when Regan decided to change the global economy by exporting jobs, one generation later, the jobs of design, architecture and support are being done off shore for a third of the US cost. There is no country or community that has exclusivity on intelligence or innovation. Next step is to figure out how to become creative at home with local job creation and to compete in a financial or other favorable way against the highly educated foreigners.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada