Slashdot Mirror
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Startups don't worry about taxes, they worry about the stuff you need to get off the ground.
Evidently, you've never started a business. Taxes and bookkeeping suck up more start-up capital than you can imagine.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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.
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 haven't seen what the roads are like. They've been raiding the gasoline tax for years now. Driving in San Diego is an adventure. The roads look as if they've taken a bombardment.
...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.
Like this one? The $4,000,000 townhouse in San Franscisco (It is the second-most photographed street in the USA though
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
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
I do wonder why more businesses don't move to lowtaxland, particularly states with no corporate or personal income tax. Why Silicon Valley hasn't migrated to Austin TX or Vegas I'll never know. I wouldn't start a business, hire folks, or live in CA at this point.
Don't forget the Cadillacs that they all drive...
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.
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. How glad I am that I won't ever live there, and you probably won't ever leave. It's a great deal all round.
Secondly, if that 2k a year is not coming out of his pocket, then whose pocket is it coming out of, mine?
Yes. Insurance is a risk pool. The less risky subsidize the more risky. If you don't like it, feel free to roll the dice: Opt out and self-fund. Let me know how that works out for you, especially when you get sick and end up with outrageous medical bills.
You think $2k a year is high? Seriously?? How about $2k a month? Can you suck that expense down without participating in insurance?
Of course you're right and I'm a hypocrite to some significant degree, but it doesn't change the fact that a balance can be struck between complete selfishness and complete altruism. You don't want to strike it, you like getting more than your fair share and you don't give a damn about other people less lucky than you. That's fine, good for you! Sleep well.
you can't afford to send your son to college in your dream world. that requires loans. Loans you can't get because you don't qualify.
Tough shit your son is too stupid for college anyways.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You think $2k a year is high? Seriously?? How about $2k a month? Can you suck that expense down without participating in insurance?
As someone with a "pre-existing condition," yes, I have no choice.
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.
That's like being forced to renegotiate your fire insurance between discovering your couch is on fire and your house has burned down. The whole point of insurance is that you pay a small premium on an unlikely event, and if it strikes you get compensated far more than you paid in. The way people with health problems are treated in the US is the greatest insurance fraud in history.
But I don't care, I don't need that.
You don't need it now, so you don't care now. This precious son of yours, does he have a medical insurance? Or is your theory you can just hit him over the head real hard and make a new one if he ever has a serious medical problem? And if he did develop a problem, would you like it if they just cheated their way out of paying for treatment and hiked the premiums until you couldn't afford it?
The reality is that spread across the whole population, health care is not that expensive. I just checked out national budget here in Norway and the costs for all the hospitals was 4.5% of the GDP/captia. That is all medical facilities excluding nursing/senior citizen homes (local, so no central figure) and subsidized health related supplies (another 1.0%). If you include all health stations and school nurses and whatnot that's another 0.4%, but then you're really scraping the barrel. For that, I don't have a private health insurance and I don't know anyone else that has either, unless they're professional athletes or the like.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
Will it have its own Robocop too?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
California still has the advantage of the fact that the semiconductor industry started here. This state wasn't always so hostile to new ventures.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What are you talking about, sending your son to college? That's great and all, and if you can afford it, more power to you. There are people who manage to get through college without their parents paying for it. Some people might even say that it builds character when your parents aren't handing everything to you on a silver platter.
... get over it.
When things are humming again, the jobs, money and talent will return.
"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.
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.
If you let people self select into smaller and smaller pools of similar probability P, as the pool (N) approaches 1, the expected value of everyone's individual cost approaches their individual P*X: what they'd pay without any insurance at all.
Insurance only works if the is large enough and includes people with different probabilities of incurring costs, otherwise, we might as well just self-fund.
The rest of the world can go fuck itself.
A mod point, a mod point, my kingdom for a mod point!
Started myself? No; but I've been around it. To reiterate, taxes are pretty low on the list of worries. Here's a description from somebody well known who you might respect. Grepped the essay for "tax". I wasn't surprised that it didn't appear. Not once. Not even as a metaphor for trying situations.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Governors and almost all other politicians in California are dedicated to stealing everything and blaming everyone. Both Democrats like Gray Davis and Republicans like Schwarzenegger have terribly increased the budget. (Take note: Arnold's attempts to cut back have been minimal and ineffectual.) Reagan was a long time ago, and his governorship temporarily reversed the trend that continues to this day. Blaming him is just plain ignorant.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
GP said $2000 a month, and with the big deal you were making about it, I'll assume that's what you meant instead of $2000 a year.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that one in 100 people have a terrible condition that costs them $2000 per month. Are you too cheap to spend $20 per month so that someone can afford to, you know, not die? Would it change your mind if that someone was you? Or your son?
404: sig not found.
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
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.
people who need medication, are entitled to it, in goddamn 21st century.
this is 21st century. not 10.000 BC. if we are at the edge of becoming spacefaring, but still cant feed and cure our population, then it means there is something grandly wrong with the system on this planet.
no surprise though. a system in which 15% of the population gets 80% of wealth and income could only be able to produce this.
Read radical news here
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.
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