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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.'"
Extending on Greenspan's idea, you can reduce inequity by having the top 0.01% take all the money from the remaining 99.99%. All that demonstrates is that having low inequity as your sole target is stupid.
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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.
Exactly! Anyone that can't see how his logic is broken should ask a friend to read it to them while they polish their red tipped cane. Increasing H1B imports, when companies pay these people less than they do college graduates, helps the US economy how? An executive getting a big fat bonus check by keeping 100 US citizens from working does not help out our economy, and _can not_ help our economy.
This line of crap is almost as pathetic as the "jobs American's won't do" crap. Both of those are simply excuses to pay foreigners less money than a company would have to pay a US employee due to minimum wage laws. Just Google "h1b visa abuses in the US" and read the first few results.
I won't bother Billy Bashing in this, his comments were not so bad for a change and I just bashed him yesterday for claiming Snowden was no hero.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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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Here's a better idea Mr. Greenspam. How about we make your pay equal to everybody elses? (My insulting consulting invoice is issued by the way)
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
"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.
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
Well, that is not quite true and quite frankly points out what kind of a bullshit artist Greenspan is. Basically the 1% of the 1920 owned a lot of capital assets like properties, farms, business, shares, jewellry, even what are today vintage auto mobiles and these would all have adjusted to inflation accordingly and they would be exceedingly wealthy based upon today's standards and today's property and business values. So Greenspans statement is 100% total crap.
When you own the means of production, the means of generating wealth you are never poor, until it is stripped away from just after a bloody and ruthless revolution.
What these asshats are alluding to is the truly disposable workforce. When you are no longer of use to psychopathic capitalism you are disposed of, parked in concentration camps for the unemployable, only let out for chain gang style mass labour projects. These are very evil people as they make no mention of reduced working hours with increased pay against productivity gains, more time for leisure and free education, with the contributions to society spread out to take into account automation.
All these fuck heads see, is automation, ahh no expensive work force more profits for me. With no concept of who they are going to sell the shit to, other than that workers must accept significantly reduced status unless their existence is sponsored by an employer. These people are a real and present danger, a threat to humanity.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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
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.
it could be extended to minimising inequity by making almost everyone dirt poor.
You do understand that IS the point of all this?
In case it hasn't been clear to you, there's been a class war happening all along, with the precise goal of disempowering 99% of the population and (re)turning society to a kind of neofeudalism.
This statement from Greenspan is basically his way of hanging a "Mission Accomplished" banner across the bridge of his office.
... 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.
Excellent! Let's replace the over-priced CEOs with more reasonably priced foreign ones. That should REALLY help the inequality situation.
The keys are twofold: First, don't borrow money. Ever. Not from the bank, not with a credit card, not for a house and not for a vehicle. Buy the very least expensive thing that will do the job you *require*, and no more. If you find opportunity to do so, loan money out at interest and see to it you get paid. If you can, continue to live with your parents, otherwise, share expenses as much as possible, and be a *great* person to room with, temperment-wise. Second, disengage from racing with the Joneses. Learn to cook and be efficient in your use of materials and ingredients. Learn about reuse. Garage sales, etc. You don't need to drink, to party, to have cable or satellite or streaming or CDs or DVDs or Blurays, to smoke, new clothes, jewelry, to go out to eat, to have books (libraries are still around, and there's the net), to have a spouse or to have children. Exercise. Take those two ideas and exist in their embrace for a decade or two, and you *wlll* have money unless your health significantly fails. In that case, at least in this society, you're screwed.
Then invest your money in the performance of the upper tier, and it will grow. Don't spend your capital. That's it, in a nutshell. Either you do it that way, or you find a job- or trustfund-based way to accrue money faster than you can spend it -- but most people have no access to that kind of income, and the lottery, well, participation in the lottery is simply an indicator you can't do math.
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.
As someone who lives in Redmond, Washington, and works as an engineer in the IT field; a place where very large portions are Little Mumbai, filled to the brim with imported IT workers, I can tell you, right now, that you do not represent the "we" you think you do.
Now, that aside- I'm totally pro-immigration.
The part that sucks is the H1-B part.
I don't like being forced to compete with indentured servants. Play by the corporate rules or be deported- that's fantastic. Enjoy your highly theoretical rights regarding switching employers or obtaining green-cards or permanent resident status. Bring your family on over, no really- they'll let you.
I want companies to be forced to sponsor full immigrate visas for foreign workers they think they need. None of this non-immigrant worker horse-shit.
I also don't believe you, AC.
Can anyone make any sense of what he was saying?
The solution to income inequality is to import more labor supply and further depress wages, but make those who *own* the businesses that hire them even richer? What? What is that guy smoking?