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Gates Warns of Software Replacing People; Greenspan Says H-1Bs Fix Inequity
dcblogs writes "Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan, in separate forums, offered outlooks and prescriptions for fixing jobs and income. Gates is concerned that graduates of U.S. secondary schools may not be able stay ahead of software automation. 'These things are coming fast,' said Gates, in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute 'Twenty years from now labor demand for a lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don't think people have that in their mental model.' Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan believes one way to attack income inequity is to raise the H-1B cap. If the program were expanded, income wouldn't necessarily go down much, but it would go down enough to make an impact. Income inequality is a relative concept, he argued. People who are absolutely at the top of the scale in 1925, for instance, would be getting food stamps today, said Greenspan. 'You don't have to necessarily bring up the bottom if you bring the top down.'"
People in all societies get their ideas of what's necessary, and what's enough, and what to buy, by looking at the people around them and comparing it to their own situation. The don't use any kind of empirical or absolute measure, unless they're chronically hungry or in similar dire straits.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
All Greenspan wants to do is further shaft the US worker and help Big Business cut its costs even further. He's nothing more than a shill at this point.
So Greenspan rightly pointed out that inflation means the top 1% from the '20s would be in poverty now if their wealth hadn't been subjected to inflation.
Yeah. So what has that got to do with ANYTHING?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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I can't see the logic with this one. Off-shore even more well-paying jobs to low-cost replacements in third world countries? How does that fix income inequity? The H-1B visa is being perverted by big business. It was intended to bring skill workers to the US, presuming that at least some percentage of them would stay and add to the economic engine. In practice, these visas are used by shell companies to bring migrant workers here to train, then return to their off-shore operations centers, taking permanent positions with them. Greenspan is correct only in the theoretical use of the H-1B, not in it's actual practice.
When he talks about eliminating inequality by bringing the top down, he doesn't mean bringing down the 1%ers like himself and Gates. He's talking about bringing down all the skilled workers in the top 5-10% down to the level of unskilled workers. This doesn't actually reduce income inequality (it actually makes it worse), so he's full of crap. This has long been Greenspan's desire; it annoys him to no end that people who do things can aspire to salaries as high as lower-level banksters.
I thought he'd been laughed out of Washington DC following the mortgage securities fiasco.
former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan believes one way to attack income inequity is to raise the H-1B cap
Econ 101 - Supply and Demand. You just increase the supply and prices go down. So, what does Al think the 'bottom' is? H-1B visas for tech workers hit the middle class. The bottom is the fast food, dishwasher, gardener, etc. That's the people who wade across the Rio Grande. Fast food restaurants and farms don't go through the H-1B process for labor.
How about we import some lower priced talent for the executive offices? That'll fix inequality. Seriously, I've seena number of situations where corporations on the edge of failure were sold to foreign firms and are now being run quite profitably. Same factory, same tools, same unions. Better managers.
Have gnu, will travel.
a few decades ago to shift some gravel or move some snow it took a crew of people with shovels. now, one guy in a skid-steer. dozens of people doing paperwork fixed by software. auto manufacturing relies on robots. technology kills jobs all the time. and technology is exponential, we can expect to remove huge swaths of jobs in the coming years. our economy is going to have to shift. we need robots doing everything for us but we need them to be in some way financed so that they can do the work without the bulk of the population dying of starvation. if that means rebellion against robocorp, or richman inc, then so be it :)
That's a red herring, because we don't need to; we need to manage it with what's coming out of our universities.
There have been a _ton_ of advancements that become available when you have money. Medical Science has advanced to the point where we can do maintenance on the human body and improve it in general. This can be as simple as your kid's braces, or as complex as resurfacing your hip so you can walk without a cane in your 50s.
Also, what's "necessary" is defined by employers. If I'm going to function as an office worker I'm expected to have a car, cellphone, college education, etc. If I don't have these I become unemployable... I lose access to all of the benefits I described above.
Also, why in God's Green Earth are we talking about regressing to the 1920s? When did we give up on progress? When did poverty become an acceptable condition? When I was a kid we'd already sent a man to the moon. Keeping kids out of poverty seemed simple by comparison...
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Greenspan is right that taking the lid off of immigration will drive the top of the wage scale down, greatly reducing wage inequality.
Gates is right that there's one "job" that won't be automated: ownership.
I confess that I am assuming that Greenspan (who was never a dummy) is talking about wage, rather than income inequality. Otherwise I'm not sure how he expects a rise in immigration to do anything but accelerate the shift of income from wages to rents.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"If we're not going to educate our kids, bring in other people who want to become Americans," said Greenspan, in arguing for an increase of H-1B workers.
H-1B is not a path to citizenship, apparently by design. Green card holders can say "Screw you, I quit" without deportation, which is not what companies want when they reach for H-1B's.
In the context of income inequality, Greenspan put the H-1B program in his light: If the program were expanded, income wouldn't necessarily go down much, "but I bet you they would go down enough to really make an impact, because income inequality is a relative concept.
H-1B's are competing for the bottom. Executives don't bring in indentured servants to be their own replacement, nor are meaningful numbers being placed into "rock star" slots (rock stars can command perks like actual green card status anyway). H-1B's only drive down the wages of the bottom, not the top, exacerbating wealth disparity.
I'm pretty local. I'm stuck here because a) I only know one language and it's a bit late to learn (what with being an adult of only sightly above average intelligence) and b) not having tons of money.
:P, taking a break from a large code project to troll /. :) ). I made a lot of mistakes in life, but I also had a lot of things just fall apart around me through no fault of my own. I watched as 90 % of the IT industry was shipped overseas and nobody noticed or cared. Just like with the car industry. Now I'm watching what's left get automated away
I keep getting told that if I don't like being poor I should just stop being poor. Gee, that'd be nice, but I don't see anyone lining up to give me capital.... I've got ideas and I'm willing to work (I am in fact
I haven't once heard anything constructive come out of the "Don't be Poor" crowd. If you have real solutions I'd like to hear them. What are we going to do in 20 years when robots drive cars, make food, deliver packages and pick our fruit? What are we going to do with all these people we just don't _need_? If you're OK with letting them starve to death on Resevations (like America did with the Natives) and brutally oppressing them when they get out of line then fine, say it and be done. But stop pretending you have an answer that doesn't end with the entire planet looking like North Korea.
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And that Greenspan and Gates are telling you about H1-B's is only half the story.
The other half of the story is that there aren't enough Green cards to give out for the H1-B's that are in line for them. So you end up with H1-B workers in essentially indentured servitude to their employer with no bargaining power driving down wages for everyone else.
Increasing Green cards for existing H1-B workers currently in the US will help the US economy a lot more than creating more indentured servitude.
A little background: The number of Green cards is set by Congress. In 1999 congress increased the number of H1-B's to 190,000 but left the number of employment based Green cards at 135,000. The rule of thumb is that you need 2.2 Green cards for every H1-B issued to satisfy demand (because H1-B workers normally come with spouses and kids). To satisfy demand, they should have increased Green cards to 400,000 when they increased the H1-B numbers to 190,000 - but they didn't.
This created a huge backlog of people waiting for their Green cards - including me. I am 31 years old, I did some math, I will be 62 by the time I get mine at the current rate.
The corporations LOVE the idea of creating more H1-B's but you don't hear a peep about increasing the number of Green Cards. They claim that increasing H1-B's will increase innovation and so on - but without a commensurate increase in Green cards, that is complete nonsense. Someone who has been stuck at the same job for decades can hardly innovate.
FYI: Congress is trying to increase the number of H1-B's without increasing the number again (to the magic 195,000 again) http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2131 . Call your Congressman/Senator and tell him/her to vote against the bill unless it includes a commensurate increase in H1-B's. The Bill is HR-2131. http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2131
People who are absolutely at the top of the scale in 1925, for instance, would be getting food stamps today, said Greenspan.
Has Greenspan blown the dust off his Rolodex lately? I can't think of anybody with the last name "Rockefeller" or "Vanderbilt" in 2014 that's hurting for cash.
"We cannot manage our very complex, highly sophisticated capital structure with what's coming out of our high schools," said Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
That complexity and sophistication turns out to have been a game designed to keep worthless securities moving in the derivatives market. Standardized, regulated OTC derivatives was something Greenspan fought against. And then later admitted that he'd messed up. Standardized derivative contracts are the sorts of things that don't take Wall Street geniuses to generate. That becomes a clerical function that the average banker/broker can handle.
if we don't actually address the problems in our education system here in America.
One of the biggest problems of our American higher education system is the practice of injecting funds into the system as student loans. Loans that push the demand side of the higher education market up, causing an endless cycle of bigger loans and higher tuition. As a side effect, securitized student loans provide the investment market with a near zero risk of income due to the difficulty of loan discharge through bankruptcy. Another gift to the 1%.
Provide more direct assistance for tuition, effectively making the government a 'single payer' in the market with more clout to hold tuition and other expenses down.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the New York Times Conservative columnist was opining last June that what the what the lower economic brackets really need is to develop a "rich inner life" and derive joy and satisfaction from whatever they have, rather than "focus on external wealth". if they are unhappy with their lot they have only themselves to blame.
That's right folks, the solution to extreme inequality is for the poor to learn to make themselves happy! Just as the solution for inequality for Greenspan is to compress the Middle Class downward, make those who aren't struggling a lot, struggle a lot more.
No, no don't look at the rich and super-rich! You're just making yourself unhappy - shame on you! Trust us you don't want, and shouldn't have a bigger share of the rewards of your labor, really those that have the most really need more of what you have
In other news, the New York Times had a front-page article comparing the health and longevity of two groups of Americans living close to each other - one wealthy and one poor. Guess what? The poor are in poor health and die sooner.
That's right. Inequality is killing people. Telling them to be happy ain't going to make them live longer, and making the upper middle class poorer won't do it either.
It is quite apparent the plutocrats have an army of sycophants ready bury us in platitudes to divert any attention from how the entire nation is rigged to their advantage.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You have a very nonstandard definition of “rich” if it encompasses the entire top quintile. (Of modern industrial/post-industrial civilizations — we’re not talking about compared to Haiti.)
Holy shit, how can people be so clueless. You think an unemployed programmer should just pack up his family, ditch his mortgage, and move to fucking Vietnam to work for a dollar a day? When is he going to find the time to learn a language, while he's struggling to feed his family? How's he going to afford the trip? What makes you think his chosen country will even allow him to immigrate in the first place? What makes you think there will even be jobs there, if the problem is technology making human labor unnecessary?
No, you know what he can, should, and will do? He'll fucking murder you, and take your stuff. If your world view relies on the underclass laying down and dying for your convenience, you're going to be in for a rude, and fully deserved, awakening.
How does this "true communism" you speak of differ from the one that's been tried, and has failed over and over and over?
remember this is the same Bill Gates that helped pioneer the 'Perma-Temp" and the two-tiered employee systems.... The ones where the "good" employees have the great perks while the "grunts" don't even get to call themselves "employee" and get passed from shady temp agency to temp agency every 3-5 years.
The problem isn't upgrading skills, it's reducing the hours per week so more people can work full time and making a big culture shift away from the era of "work addiction" and 50+ hour weeks. Companies would rather pay Bill Gates 3/4 of your salary than pay another employee... he's been laughing and rolling in sacks of money for 3 decades because of that tendency.
I truly don't think these guys understand the economics involved. the per capita wages in most of the USA is in the $40k range from low to high depending on region. They are so disconnected from the idea of money as anything except a "score card" they have no concept of what regular people do with it.
Most of the poor get richer slowly as technology raises their standard of living. Those controlling the system get richer much faster as they reap the same benefits, along with the majority of the usable output of the poor. Some kind of a despised, often disenfranchised class is maintained to focus the anger of the population away from those controlling the system. Almost everyone advances; the gap grows ever larger. It has always been this way; likely it will always be so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I would give a lot to meet you in a dark alley sometime...
What if he beat the shit out of you? Would you want your money back?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
... said Greenspan. 'You don't have to necessarily bring up the bottom if you bring the top down.'
Sounds like Greenspan is arguing for a CEO salary cap. I'd say 25 times the lowest paid contractor or worker in the CEO's organization cap on CEO pay would go a lot more toward lessening this income inequality.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
No one in the United States has problems with food, clothing, or shelter.
Is this like Ahmadinejad saying there are no homosexuals in Iran?
Because the 600,000+ homeless people in the United States certainly have a problem with shelter.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You demonstrate complete ignorance of what a true state of desperation is. Any society that allows its citizens to become desperate has abandoned any chance at a peaceful existence, regardless of the delicious flavor of its rhetoric. Keep an eye on the constantly growing convicted felon class for profound examples.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Greenspan thinks anyone making 'earning income' should get a smaller share of the pie. The higher paid workers, engineers, doctors, etc in Greenspan's world all of them are overpaid. Its not just Greenspan it's the whole culture in the management suite.
For instance, an anecdote. A friend works as an executive accountant. She remarked grumbling that the execs, at the place she was working spent a about 30 minutes going back and forth over whether a manager at a store deserved a 25 cent or 35 cent an hour raise. Meaning they wasted more of the their time convincing themselves that 25 cents was the right amount than the extra ten cents would have cost. And it was all motivated by a desire not to pay more than the person 'deserved'
This kind of Robin Hood-style violence does not belong in a civilized, developed society.
The society in question -- one that has decided that its lower classes should just lay down and die, because they are no longer economically productive -- is not a civilized, developed society.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
That has always been the problem for AI. As soon as it works, we no longer consider it to be AI, so they get no credit for the accomplishment.