Slashdot Mirror
The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage
walterbyrd (182728) writes in with this story that calls into question the conventional wisdom that there is a shortage of science and engineering workforce in the U.S. "Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce."
Why link to an article about some studies that "prove" common knowledge is false, instead of linking directly to the studies themselves?
Is it journalistic courtesy?
yup there is a shortage.
.. no shortage ..
Wanna install windows 8 on 100 machines ?
Nope
There is a lot more to this article than the mythical labor shortage. There is a discussion of the complexity of the issue. That includes things like labor market cycles, shortages in some specializations with surpluses in many, the cost of misinformation to graduates, and a fair bit more.
To the summary skimmers, this article is probably worth your time.
Speaking for only the IT shop where I work, there is a shortage of young people (under the age of 40) who want to work for State Government (union dues must be paid). Average age is 58.
So can the "shortage" be quantified within specific limits? Union dues, age, location, pay?
An analysis of salaries and salary trends for STEM employees will tell you exactly whether there is a shortage or not.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
We are full on socialists, have been for many many years and the socialists in charge seek only to confiscate more and more of the wealth of the citizens.
You have no clue what it means to live in a socialist society. So stop putting completely inapprobriate labels everywhere just to appear alarmist. The U.S. is capitalist. Pure and simple. With a very small amount of socialist icing on top. I've grown up in a socialist state. To call the U.S. socialist is akin to calling snow black.
So you're saying they want to raise taxes on bazillionaires back to where that pinko Eisenhower had them?
If you need to have ten engineers above of the 10sigma distribution of capability and have use for 10000 engineers otherwise, of course you have a shortage of engineers when you have only 100000 available.
Unless joblessness and consequently insurmountable student debts are "somebody else's problem", increasing the number of students is not the solution. In particular not if you push people into the education that are not interested in engineering and are certain not to reach outside of the 10sigma range.
Instead you need to increase the quality of education.
Countries like Germany traditionally have a two-pronged approach here: university education is free. Any student loans are purely for the cost of living. That increases the base material. And there is basically no externally organized effort or incentive to keep students from failing and/or procrastinating (there are student organizations trying to help, though). That causes a wider sigma.
In a way, it is a lot of social Darwinism based on capability, whereas the social Darwinism of the United States is based on silver spoons. The latter, of course, creates more stable social castes.
Is it me, or does "a shortage of workforce" make no sense at all?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There isn't a shortage of STEM graduates.
There's a shortage of _cheap_ STEM graduates for businesses too cheap to pay properly.
You're an idiot, AC. You have _no_ idea what it's like to live under full blown socialism.
Stop watching Fox News. It's filling your head with shit.
The degree shows that you are able to go through a significant amount of nonsense for years and prevail with reasonable access.
What do you think a job is like? Putting your skills to a task, finishing it, and going for vacation for a few years before the next? No, the work you and most particularly the work others have designed and done will come biting you in the ass until retirement, and much work will be a total waste of time by muddling along best with stupid and psychopathic customers. And thanks to "intellectual property", you will be reinventing the wheel for most of your life as well as trying to come up with non-round wheel shapes because the circular ones have already been patented.
A degree shows that you can do something of moderate relevance in the presence of frustration and idiots.
The authors agree:
"Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations."
Companies have no desire what so ever to train up employees. Which is of course part of the shortage right there. Companies bitch that they can't find people with the exact skill set they need, but are unwilling to hire and train. Also the management set has their heads very far up their asses and have convinced themselves that engineers and other highly skilled workers are overpaid.
Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.
Unreasonable to the political and management class, why? Cause reasons.
What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
We had plenty of qualified workers back in, say, 1997 when the internet first boomed.
The economy was strong as ever.
Can't we just pretend it is 1997 again?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
60-80, stopped right there...Most people, excluding the rich and the poor, are not paying 60-80%, in fact I would be willing to bet no one is paying anywhere near that much, unless you are fairly well off. The max is 43% for federal those making over 200k a year, which I would argue puts you in the rich catagory. Add in about 8% for state taxes and you get up to 51% as about the highest tax rate.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You just don't know how it is when a farmer is blackmailed to join a farmer's collective by having a truck outside his house all night with a running engine, shining the beams into the bedroom. When his son is put in jail for trumped up traffic violation charges, and the charges will only be dropped if his father joins the collective. You don't know how it is when a private owned print shop just doesn't get any paper, because the order for new paper was put back and back and postponed again by the state owned papermill. You don't know how it is when you can't rent out your house anymore, but you are required to report all available appartements to the municipal appartement administration which then will send you whoever people they allocated the appartments to.
Stop your clueless musings about how socialist the U.S. would be. It just isn't true.
Just as there is in every other area of media coverage, manufactured crisis?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There is shortage of people who will work with as low pay as possible.
CEOs want to reduce payments and have worse work conditions for science and engineerig people. It is all about money.
There is no major shortage that would hinder economy signficantly.
It is like saying there is shortage of medical people because there are no people unemployed that can be hired to do whatever you like.
If only I had mod points today .
You have hit the nail on the head - no investment in growing and developing exactly the people that are now in short supply.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
to the wealthy investor look to individuals as an investment. a young person selling themselves on an open market is becoming an option, i think investors are familiar with that word. slayerwulfe cave
Well gates was already from a well off family, so he would have been rich anyways, and even then pointing out the exceptions does not dismiss the general claim, which is you will not become rich.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Apparently, you don't believe in education either, or you wouldn't spell "global" as "globul" or "religion" as "religon". Tax rates in the U.S. are well below those of other countries. That alone doesn't make the U.S. not-capitalist, but it does put it in perspective. Yes, the company tax rates need to be adjusted, that usually happens about every 20-30 years, so hold on to your britches.
Socialized medicine? Errr....how come the insurance companies are still in business and the new ACA requires everyone to get insurance somehow. Ma and Pa Kettle do get Medicare, but that is because the sainted insurance companies want to cherry pick the healthy people and insure them. Death panels you say? What do you think actuarial boards of insurance companies are?
Global warming is a fact, stop trying to turn it into a political issue. Don't believe me? Look up Miami and the plans they have for sea level rise and how expensive it will be for them. And even if you do not believe in global warming (although frankly I think it is like not believing in gravitation), observe the data on the acidification of the oceans. That's directly due to CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere. It's killing coral in....Florida and throughout the Caribbean. Localized? Hardly, it is also killing coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They expect it to be gone within about 50 years if something isn't done. Yes, I know, what's a good Libertarian care about coral. Well, the crux is the ocean is the bottom of the food chain. Maybe you've heard of it, you're at the top...for now.
And if the U.S. isn't a capitalist economy, how did the real estate market manage to tank the U.S. economy and give the world's a cold? The basic problem is that a pure capitalist economy spawns bubbles and monopolies. In order or to level that out, laws and regulations were needed. Don't believe me, look at the U.S. before the Great Depression. The economy was a wild west of an economy and lurched from crisis to crisis. Of course, if you lost your money in one, your days of lurching were over. The Great Recession happened because the Bush Administration did not believe in regulation. The head of the SEC was a puppet of Wall Street. That allowed Wall Street to run amok. Realtors, the local zoning officials, the builders, and the sainted American people worked with almost no rules and...splat...there went the economy.
That's not socialism. 80% state ownership, heck if you have that then you might as well have 100% ownership, wich as we all know is full on communism.
Nope, socialism means the state owns the means of production, communism means the state has vanished and the people own the means of production. Socialism is a transitory phase towards communism.
What Americans call "socialism" is actually the welfare state built by "social democrats" which may employ similar methods as socialism does but which has a completely different goal - it's goal is to maintain a capitalist economy and soften it a bit to make it more bearable. It is a concept that you Americans constructed to immunize Western and Northern Europe against actual socialism.
And no, you don't still have a clue. You come across like the american jews in the 1930ies and 1940ies, who told their European brethren who could barely flee: "we also had hard times." Yes, there are regulations in the U.S. and there are taxes. That doesn't make the U.S. in any way socialist. The municipal appartement administration has no comparable counterpart in the U.S.. The owner of a house under the municipal administration can't enter any contracts anymore. Not even necessary repairs. He can apply for repairs at the office, but the administration will determine the time, allocate the money, will hire the craftsmen (or send their own), and oversee the execution.
Do the Colleges and Universities bear some of the responsibility for the quality of graduates they're churning out, or are these chickens coming home to roost from a well meant but misguided push to give every child a chance to get an advanced degree?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
For any skilled profession the resource availability usually dictates what the wage price would be for that resource. The exception being lawyers and healthcare because they've been given a licensed right to charge prices outside of market forces. When Businesses look at labor costs they always want the cheapest price because usually labor is the highest cost by percentage, meaning anything they can do to drive that cost down is thought to be best for the bottom line. That's why H1-B Visas exist, not because of a shortage but because of the mythology that somebody from another nation with a lower standard of living and costs can be brought in to do the same work for less. That's why you have lawyers and companies who specialize in gaming the system by lobbying and helping companies avoid legal risks for skirting the law to ostensibly demonstrate that yes, the H1-B system does lower labor costs and it's good for the economy and allows businesses to compete in the global marketplace. That means we need more H1-B workers. All it really does is devalue your domestic workforce and place more experienced people out of work by putting up a laundry list of reasons why you shouldn't hire somebody even though they have the skills. The same can be said for "diversity" initiatives in companies which are really which are quota systems that allow legal discrimination. Because a company has a "diversity" program, some even have senior level positions for diversity with absolutely meaningless job functions, they can claim that they'll promote the hiring and accelerated advancement within the organization for people who are considered "diverse." So H1-B programs logically follow into this because the company has an "active diversity program." Again, all a smoke screen for the fact that they just want to screw local resources looking for work. As they say be cautious in trying to buy a $10,000 Ferrari because finding one, while possible, will take a long time and when you get it it'll probably be a piece of shit.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
My total compensation as a qualified Engineer is similar to the average compensation for a doctor. I think that's reasonable. It's very hard to fill positions right now.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Granted, the vast majority of CEOs and lobbyists are good at what they do, but their jobs do not involve finding an engineer. The lobbyists do not need engineers, and the CEOs have minions who can find engineers for them. I suspect that the typical CEO thinks that an engineer is a cross between Dilbert, middle management, and a random faceless guy with a pocket full of pens and bad personal hygeine plus the social skills of Sheldon Cooper - "if all those factors are not present, the person is not an engineer, and I am right because I am the CEO".
I would, however, be interested to see how strong the correlation is between people who say that there is a shortage of scientists and engineers, and the groups who are advocating for broader H1B visa use, because I suspect that what the CEOs and lobbyists really mean is not "there is a shortage of trained engineers and scientists", but "there is a shortage of qualified individuals who are willing to work the hours we demand for the wages we are willing to pay".
This one.
Ohh yes you do. It might be against the rules on paper, but when you can threaten the worker with deportation back to their third world hellhole of a home country, they tend to not complain about you breaking the rules.
You use an H1B when you're too cheap to pay market rates domestically and you just want to tick off a laundry list of skills without any assessment of whether they're actually good at their job or not. Have you seen any code H1Bs turn out? It might run (technically) but it's shit.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
An ex-Soviet satellite nation was communist, not socialist (despite what the CCCP stood for).
USA is, like many places, a blend of capitalism and socialism. Public-sector support and aid to the private sector, tax breaks for companies, etc. are a form of socialism but it is rarely framed as such.
This is a business as usual so far as I can see from what companies claim.
There's no shortage.
There's a shortage of highly competent, high producing, years of experience individuals willing to work for peanuts.
Everyone else needs training, which companies are no longer willing to pay for. In some magical fashion, employees are just supposed to be hired and become immediately productive.
Spare us your juvenile politics. You obviously have NO idea what true socialism is. You americans make me sick , sitting between 2 oceans without a clue what its like in the rest of the world, whinging about trivia.
"Yea, this is exactly what our founders fought and died for so many years ago"
Your founders were a bunch of religious extremists. Be thankful your country isn't run by them any longer or you'd be a christian version of Iran.
This is political wisecrackery with no legitimate basis to back it up. Congress has been informed for over seven years that this is an untruth. (Here's an article in Businessweekfrom all the way back in 2007 citing a study done by the Urban Institute debunking this myth.
This information has been reported to Congress on both the floor and in committee hearings. (Sorry, at one point, I had an old printout of one report supporting this statement. I can't seem to locate it, either in paper form nor on Google.) Congressional leaders willingly refuse to accept this truth, simply because there is more to gain politically by not accepting it. (Huge amounts of money are circulated by lobbyists in support of political agendas influenced by this...opening up more H1B visas, for example.)
With rising income inequality (the 1%), there is an element of hypocrisy coming from those (generally) making any critique that STEM workers are overpaid.
When Zuckerberg et. al. speak of a shortage of STEM workers, they are speaking as vastly overpaid CEOs. For someone paid in the $2B range, to claim that $100K-$200K is too much for a STEM worker is madness.
Additionally, we have salary data points for other professional level occupations with similar training, hours, and expertise required.
Finally we see can look at STEM salaries vs inflation, and find that in many cases they are flat or falling. (But admittedly I am not able to find a good, comprehensive source to put this in proper perspective). Google "STEM Salary vs inflation" for more.
The reality is that US History courses don't do enough to explain what it was like to live in the 1800s and the kinds of shit people had to put up with.
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
It's easy to look at that on paper and say "well that wasn't very long!", but there was a period of 68 years between the first state law limiting child working days to 10 hours and the push for national reform. Most of the people on slashdot have not been around for 68 years...At 68 years, some of your friends have already died after working in factories for most of their lives, and you are on the edge of your death bed.
Oh, it was also Unions that made this happen.
There's far more involved with labor situations in the early industrial era.
The issue can be experienced first hand by anyone in a big tech center trying to build a team or expand one.
Finding people isn't too hard. Finding good people, at a price where there's SOME return on investment (that is, as much as you'd like to, you can't pay everyone 7 figure...but you can still pay them high enough to all toss them in the top 2%, and still be looking), is really hard.
If you put your office in the middle of nowhere, you won't have enough people. If you put it in a tech center, you'll be competing with google, twitter, amazon and all the other big names, so that even if you offer more money and benefits than they do, you still lose. You can offer telecommuting, but only a small portion of people work effectively like that (a few days out of the week, most people can handle, but all the time, not so much), so that doesn't scale either.
So you're boned, boned, or boned. Pick your poison. Oh, or you can hire the peanut gallery, train them for a year or two, and then lose them to Google or a video game company the moment they get good.
Arguably, social security @ 15% and Medicare, most states add in sales taxes @ 6%, local property taxes, fuel taxes; no 60% isn't that far fetched.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That's the hard part: defining precisely what is meant by "shortage". If there are more candidates calling themselves engineers than there are jobs does that mean there's not a shortage? If so then there's probably not a shortage. If every company could immediately fill all its positions by offering exorbitant salaries does that mean there's not a shortage? If so then there's probably not a shortage. In my limited experience interviewing candidates, though, we seem to get a lot of people who aren't that impressive relative to what they expect to be paid. So maybe there's a shortage of "good" engineers?
Repeat after me: No private ownership or private control of production means. As long as most of the production means ownership and control is private, you simply don't have Socialism. You can call me Euroweenie or Hans or whatever, but you still are wrong. Swearwords don't change that.
Choose a new swearword for the situation you don't like in the U.S. or be prepared to further be called for misunderstanding and misusing the word Socialism.
They'd rather look to individuals as a consumable resource. It's more profitable for them that way, at least in the short term.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think the alternative minimum tax kicks in at some point and imposes a (hefty) flat tax structure.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I have no opinion about STEM as a whole, but there's a huge shortage of competent engineers in the US. Depending on how hard nosed we are about it, between 50-80% of candidates with nominal programming backgrounds fail FizzBuzz or equivalent even with their choice of language. Similar rates of EEs fail a basic question about series and parallel resistance, V=IR and P=IV.
The solution however is not H1B visas. They fail at much higher rates than those not seeking visa sponsorship. In fact I feel sorry for them - they've gone to a foreign country for college, paid 5 or 6 figures for an education, and have a piece of paper they might as well wipe with because somehow they managed not to learn a thing. Someone sold them a bill of goods.
Sure, well-designed stuff is easy to code - if you are a solid programmer.
It's amazing how many people carry the qualifications of a programmer, but can't actually code their way out of a paper bag. Abstraction, interfaces, any sort of advanced design pattern, and their eyes glaze over. By the time you break it down enough for them (write a method that takes a, b, and c - do d, e, f and return g), you'd have been faster writing the code yourself.
Of course, you also get crappy design, but that's a whole 'nother problem, usually coming from a solid programmer who just isn't able to think "big" enough. I disagree with the earlier poster who says you can have good software architects who are lousy programmers - at least, I've never seen an example of that.
Once you're making enough money though, you can start using 'tax efficient' accounting schemes to avoid paying anything at all.
You have hit the nail on the head - no investment in growing and developing exactly the people that are now in short supply.
It's worse than that, many have the attitude that skills gained while employed and paid for by the Employee doesn't count and most seem to feel that company paid training for skills benefiting the company places the employee into an indebted status.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Social security is regressive, and once you make over about 130k you stop paying on your further income, which would apply to the stated 200k+ example the previous poster noted.
Social security is 6.2%, and 1.45% for medicare, making it combined 7.65%, and that is for the middle class, it is lower for the rich due to caps, however since I was speaking off effective rates that is already included..... The average property tax in the US is around 1% (AVERAGE) of home cost, which means unless you have an expensive home and a low income the actual % of your income used will be low. Gas tax is in the state taxes bracket, it is variable, and relatively small part of your taxes. All in all I dont see anything that you stated that counters, it is like you are breaking down specific taxes and trying to add them on top of tax rates that already include them to make it look like more.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Pot meet kettle, do you not think that calling people socialists is not name calling and unfounded assumptions?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You mean "Thanks Obama and Bush and Clinton and Bush and Reagan!"
This is just Corporate-speak for a shortage if dirt cheap slaves that will work 80 hours a week without any company stock or bonuses.
The time is long overdue to unionize IT worker and protect us from this crap...
Case in point, we had 2 layoff rounds where we cut citizens and green card holders, but kept our H1B. He took over for one of the first guys laid off, so you can't argue he had some special skills. He does however work evenings and weekends for free, as well as leave a trail of destruction in the lab.
No place has ever been 100% capitalist or socialist. It has always been a matter of degrees. To call 95% capitalist USA socialist because it has 5% of socialism is either ignorant or disingenuous.
What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
So what's the problem? India and China get the factories and know-how, and for now the American companies control patents and trademarks and distribution. The executives at the American companies make lots of money. In a decade or two, the American companies aren't needed any more and dry up, and Indian and Chinese companies dominate, but the American executives don't care because they've all retired with generous golden parachutes, and are sitting on a tropical beach being waited on by beautiful women. Why would they care about the state of the US at that point?
When the returns on capital are used to buy representation, extend time limited legal protections and defend monopoly positions you no longer live in a capitalist society, it could even be argued you no long live in a democracy. So pure and simple, the U.S is ......
Fascist? Corporatist? An oligarchy? A plutocracy? Ok, I'm out of guesses...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If our founding father's were extremists, then they must have been extreme believers in deism. http://nationalhumanitiescente...
Or, it's basically the same as every single country. There is no shortage of workers, there's just a shortage of qualified COMPETENT workers. Seems people usually rise to their level of incompetence.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
A few misconceptions in the above: (speaking for California, here, where I'm licensed)
1) a degree is not required; 6 years experience with reference letters from other Engineers is. Some fraction of college can serve as, I think, 2 years of the 6, if it's the right courses, etc.
1a) passing a pair of day long tests is required: Fundamentals of Engineering (formerly EIT), typically before you start working; and the actual PE exam, which is field specific (e.g. Civils take an exam on concrete and steel; Electricals look at EM fields, control loops, and logic design, etc.), and which you take after doing your 6 years.
2) It's not a professional association/order (although such do exist: IEEE, CSPE, etc.): it's a license issued by the state (Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, in California; similar in other states), just like Bar Licenses, MD licenses, etc. The BPELS can take your license away if you seriously screw up. There's a delightful newsletter that comes out with all sorts of examples of struck-off Engineers which make you ask "What were they thinking that this would be ok to do".
3) PE "wet stamp" is really only required for a limited set of things: building plans is the best example. The vast majority of engineers in California toil under what is called the "industrial exemption": you're not personally liable for stuff, the company is. Product design, for example, is usually under the exemption.
4) There are laws about the use of the title Engineer in certain contexts. I can put up a sign advertising myself as an Engineer (because I have a license). Someone without a license cannot, and must call them self a "consultant" or some such. There's subtlety too, in some states (e.g. California) about "title" and "practice". The former is using the title Engineer (e.g. in advertising) and the latter is about doing engineering (e.g. designing buildings). Some kinds of engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) are actual practice areas: as an Electrical branch PE, I can't do Civil engineering work. Some kinds are just titles: Petroleum Engineer or Traffic Engineer, and are essentially flavors of one of the "big 3".
There's also rules about whether one can practice engineering in another state, and that is, of course, state by state dependent, and whether one has to get licensed there (with or without a test, etc.; but almost always involving paying a fee).
There is a STEM shortage on the global economy. The rest of the world recognizes the importance in investing in these fields while the US continues to focus on making athletes and mediocre musicians for our children to idolize.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Ok, I will be trolled into oblivion. But please, managing and programming a computer is not engineering.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
"The U.S. is capitalist."
Perhaps your time in whatever state you are from has clouded your view some?
What us capitalist? Wikipedia tells us "Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy."
We do have private property ownership here in the states, but then you are allowed to own private property in Europe, in Russia, even in China, are you not?
We are taxed here at all levels, income, sales, property, capital gains, death. Local, state and federal. These taxes pay for all manner of social programs from food stamps to SSI (it's a tax), Obamacare (medicare/medicaid), unemployment, I could go on. And this is a progressive tax, that is those who earn more are taxed more, excluding of course those elites who find themselves very powerful and connected to the state decision makers and this get themselves out of these things. These people exist but they are not large in number, basically unless you are very poor, or very rich you are paying anywhere from 60 to 80% of what you earn to government in one form or another.
And for all that we live in a society of regulations from cradle to grave. You cannot buy a light bulb without the permission of the state. You cannot buy a toilet without the permission of the state. You cannot wash your car without the permission of the state. Your food must pass the inspection of some nameless faceless beauracrat. Likewise your medicine. Your clothes. Your home. Your car. Your barber cannot cut your hair without a state license.
This isn't capitalism, not by any stretch of the imagination.
And by the way, I am not trying to attack you in any way, I have no doubt whereever you are from it is also highly socialised. I am just trying to make the point that so many "progressives" and liberals (a terrible word but it's what people here use) constantly accuse us of being "evil capitalists". We haven't seen the free market here for generations, and every year taxes go up, government get's bigger and individual liberties go away.
I don't know about you but I rather liked the whole "freedom" thing we used to have.
You seem to be confusing an economic system with a governmental system. Your definition of Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy. I don't see how any taxes or regulations negate that. Even with all that stuff, the US still has an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy.
Or do you mean that the trade and means of production aren't really in control of their owners because those owners must comply with regulations and pay taxes? Many (not all) of those regulation were enacted to solve problems. I actually like that my food is inspected by some faceless bureaucrat; likewise my medicine. In such a complex society we need rules and regulations to maintain a standard of quality, safety and responsibility. You may counter that we do not achieve that, and I might agree. But not everyone is an honest or virtuous actor. There is an old saying that if men were angels, we wouldn't need government. I agree with that. I would love to eliminate government. But men are manifestly not angels, and they act in short-sighted and selfish ways. Capitalism without regulation is the Devil's playground, as has been demonstrated time and again. I don't see how those regulations make it not-capitalism.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Additionally just because the planet hasn't warmed in 17 years...
Wow, do people still actually point at the anomalous 1998 data and ignore the decades before that? I didn't think anybody did that anymore, ever since GWB finally admitted global warming was a real thing (though he never accepted it was man made).
Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.
Checking the math...
Let's assume 50 40-hour productive work weeks each year. High-school work isn't as good as college, which isn't as good as professional work, so we'll assume wages of $10, $20, and $30, respectively.
High school is 4 years * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 10 dollars/hour. That's $80,000. College is 5 years (assuming a 1-year master program) * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 20 dollars/hour. That's $200,000. A fresh graduate therefore has invested $280,000 in time with no return. Then they enter the workforce, and start getting the return.
The entry-level position is 3 years * 50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 30 dollars/hour. That's $180,000, but the subject is actually being paid for their time, now. Rather than adding that to the investment cost, that's the first three years of returns. We'll extrapolate that out for further insight.
After a total of five years in the workforce, even without any raises, the investment is fully reimbursed, and any additional returns are profit (reaching 7% ROI in ten years). In contrast, the employee could have simply dropped out of high school, and worked at $10 the whole time. That comes out to $20,000 per year, compared to the college track now earning $60,000 per year, so there's a profit of $40,000 per year for a college education.
With the initial investment cost of $280,000, the time investment in college is recouped in 7 years. Add a $40,000 investment cost for tuition and other expenses, and the investment is recouped in 8 years, still assuming a constant $60,000 income.
Of course, then there's taxes. Interestingly, since taxes aren't being paid during schooling, that actually lowers the relative value of the time being invested. Rather than an education costing $280,000 in lost income, it only costs $168,000 in post-tax lost income, assuming a 40% flat tax. Even with the lower take-home pay rate, that cost is recovered in only six years, and after ten years the ROI is 11%.
Your estimate of $50k to $100k to get a 5% to 10% ROI is close, but extreme. The low end of the salary range puts you in the high end of the return. However, the estimate of $750,000 for an education doesn't seem to make sense. Perhaps that's why a 6-figure salary for every employee seems unreasonable to the political and management folks - they've already done the math.
Of course, math is only a part of the issue. The costs and profits involved here are assuming that $10/hour is an acceptable baseline for wages. We've assumed that without a high school education, a baseline employee could sustain a $20,000 annual income, but we have not considered whether this is a suitable income for an acceptable standard of living in the modern age. That, however, is a discussion for another time.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You use an H1B when you want the best guy, not when you want some low-cost faceless drone.
So now you get the "best guy" for the cost of a faceless drone plus some nominal administrative overhead. That's still much cheaper than having to get a "best guy" by a more conventional route, such as enticing the top staff of your competitors to come work for you with higher pay.
Moreover, you focus on a single case. However, in aggregate, there is no doubt that increasing the supply of workers for a particular field will lower the average salary paid for everyone. So companies can hire everyone at lower salaries.
A more efficiently stated, "thanks H1B Perverters"
"Creep" by Radio Head #mcconnelling
So of course we must import more geniuses because clearly there is a shortage.
There is no shortage of STEM workers, just the basic fact that all businesses want to hire geniuses - for standard pay of course.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And the truth comes out. Why is it that every time someone gets up in arms about Socialism, or regulation or taxation it turns out to be about the government taking your money and giving it to those people? You know why the state has to do that, Cletus? Because Capitalism can't seem to provide enough for everyone.
Capitalism is an economic system concerned with bringing goods and services to market at a profit for the capitalist. That's it. It has nothing to say about making sure everyone gets fed. It has nothing to say about whether people in a society have a roof over their heads, or safe roads to drive on, or a fire department, or help when they are sick, or courts to redress their grievances, or are discriminated against. It's an economic system, not a governmental system.
You may not like how the government is run, but the minorities and the poor are not the problem. Sure, the government takes some of your (and my) money to support some of those people. But that's only because Capitalism doesn't do it. Society is more than economics and commerce.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It has to do with far, far more than just visas and immigration policies, it has to do with all the policies backed by these administrations (and the Congresses during their terms) and their cumulative effect on the American economy: NAFTA and other trade policies, wars, defense spending, spending on research (or lack thereof), corporate welfare, and on and on.
...never been a shortage of science or engineering staff in the United States. The only shortage is science/engineering staff that refuses to work for peanuts, and that is the only reason why there are so many H1B visas. People with 60,000 worth of student loans don't want to work for $20/hr it's ridiculous to even expect them to.
Boy you socialists sure are fast with the name calling...
Maybe, but you're faster with the irony.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
> If I had a dollar for every professor whom I have met who shows up on campus at 9 a.m., teaches one lecture, takes an hour for lunch and leaves campus at 3 p.m. thinking that he has put in a full day of work and who actually believes that the smartest and most capable people work at universities, ...
I have a STEM PhD. I do not know a *single* professor who did that. All of them worked longer than 9 - 5. I have not even heard of a faculty member who puts in less than 40 hrs per week, not the tenured ones and certainly not the ones on the tenure track.
Spare us your juvenile politics. You obviously have NO idea what true socialism is. You americans make me sick , sitting between 2 oceans without a clue what its like in the rest of the world, whinging about trivia.
"Yea, this is exactly what our founders fought and died for so many years ago"
Your founders were a bunch of religious extremists. Be thankful your country isn't run by them any longer or you'd be a christian version of Iran.
First of all, please don't lump us all in with this guy. Second, I'm going to need some backup for the idea that the founders of the US were religious extremists. They went out of their way to say that the state could not establish a religion. Is that what religious extremists do?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If the supply and demand model applies to the job market then you can identify shortages by looking at the highest paid jobs first. Some of these professions are likely not very large, but even grouping some of these together then it appears we have a doctor shortage and lawyer shortage (Yes I hate saying that) and a shortage of middle managers. Based on these averages there is not meaningful shortage of Engineers, Scientists or IT because if there were a shortage then the average compensation would be higher. 1. Doctors $184,820 2. Chief Executives $176,840 3. Petroleum Engineers $147,470 4. Architectural and Engineering Managers $133,240 5. Lawyers $130,880 6. Natural Sciences Managers $130,400 7. Marketing Managers $129,870 8. Computer and Information Systems Managers $129,130 9. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers $128,760 10. Financial Managers $123,260 11. Sales Managers $119,980 "Shortage" shouldn't be defined by CEOs who are going to Congress looking for more H1B visa indentured servants.
That's true. In the USA, we have strong government influence over the means of production. This type of government is dirigism, which is associated with fascism.
So you're right, the USA isn't socialist. It's closer to fascist. Thanks for the clarification!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Your founders were a bunch of religious extremists. Be thankful your country isn't run by them any longer or you'd be a christian version of Iran.
Haha! Have you seen the GOP platform recently? They hopped in bed with the religious right decades ago, and thanks to their influence, not being religious enough will immediately destroy a person's chance to be elected, let alone as a Republican. 60% of Republicans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, i.e. evolution is a lie. 60%! Granted, Democrats' 38% isn't much better, but religion is (rightfully) not nearly so important an issue. It's pretty obvious that Obama isn't a very religious person, but he puts in a token effort to appear otherwise, because without doing so he would have never been re-elected.
If Thomas Jefferson was cryogenically frozen back then and brought back alive today, he would be appalled at the US, and there would be as much vitriol against him as Obama. His stance against organized religion and the fact that he was the driving force behind the whole separation of church and state idea (and let's not forget his "alleged" personal views on interracial relations) would immediately alienate him from the Republican base. Not that he would fit in at all with the Democrats, of course. He'd be shunted off to the side and considered a pie-in-the-sky Libertarian crackpot. Not that I can blame him, of course, having no experience governing such an enormous population and such an enormous economy, but it just amuses me how often the right revere the Founding Fathers and invoke their names when, in fact, none of them would want anything to do with the modern day Republican Party.
Thanks Obama!!!
Partisan moron is a moron.
This meme is used so often it's hard to separate first order sarcasm from the second order sarcasm.
Dark Reflection
Thank you, so many people want to blame just one when obviously, like you pointed out here, we have been going downhill for some time now due to our so called leaders. Unfortunately though people just want to point their finger at one person, and don’t want to admit that their favorite politician is in on it just like the rest of them.
As companies grow, it's more profitable to buy legislation then compete. The move to expand the H1-B visa program is a perfect example. The best employee is a slave. The closest we get to that in the USA is an H1-B serf. CEOs across the board will try and purchase legislation that reduces their labor costs by insuring a supply of imported serfs, since remote serfs often prove to be less useful.
That's the reality. Anything coming out of the mouth of a CEO or a media company(s) where that CEO sits on the board, is simply self-serving noise.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I am running for a school board seat in my local community. I am a vocational school graduate with around 25 years of experience in the IT/Programming field. I have been a network guy and a DBA and I can code. I am running against college graduates who continuously tout what this article is trying to refute so it was a refreshing read. After reading the comments as well, I am left wondering why, as the article states, would there be a cycle of over training in the first place? Also, how would I use this in my campaign effectively? STEM is the rage, along with the achievement gap, so how best to articulate this without coming off as a loon?
Yes, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Obama is just the latest in a long line of shitty presidents, all with mostly identical policies.
It does. If my company spends $2000 to send me to training, they have a right to retain me until that debt is satisfied.
Unfortunately, you get employment agreements stipulating 2 years of retention or pay the costs back. After 1.5 years, I should only need to pay 25% of the cost.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Some of you may have seen the common core style math problems going around the net. If that's the kind of B.S. that's being taught to future STEM students, we're in deep doo doo. When a bridge you designed collapses killing people, you don't get to talk about how you felt while you were designing it. The court will want to know why you did your math wrong.
Don't misunderstand me here. Slamming endless, pointless math problems pushes the very definition of tedious. IMHO, STEM education is too focused on theory as opposed to practical applications. No non-academic employer is going to care if you can solve differential equations in your sleep if you don't know how to make practical use of them.
They want H-1B that can be pushed to the max as if they quit or get fired they are kicked out of the USA.
Also the management set has their heads very far up their asses and have convinced themselves that engineers and other highly skilled workers are overpaid.
They ARE overpaid, since the pressure of the Global Mean Wage for every class is relentless... the GMW is much lower than the American Mean Wage in every class. Work is mobile. Comparatively, workers are not. Therefore the work will move to the workers, and it does so while seeking the lowest cost. And American workers are perfectly fine with that, considering their purchasing behavior supports that 100%.
True, management is counting on dirt-cheap oil to lubricate this sort of thing, for the cargo ships and airliners and trucks and trains. For now, and for a few decades into the future, globalism will still be the prevailing economic paradigm. Decades. That's much, much longer than the average American worker can "hold out". In fact, there are Americans entering the workforce today who will spend nearly their entire working lives, and surely their PEAK working lives (age 25 to 45), being forced to accept lower and lower wages due to globalism. They can't plan for a future. They have no future. And there's no alternative, since falling American wages will force Americans to either buy cheaper goods, or borrow more money. It's over. The American middle class is essentially extinct.
Not quite. Corporations are quite happy to lobby for increased government interference when it suits them. They want the government to stay out of their way but they are more than happy to lobby for measures that increase government meddling in a way that harms competition.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Don't forget U.S. corporate tax rates which are the highest in the world,
Stop swimming in the Fox News Kool-aid.
The US tax code is specifically set up to be easy on anyone that's not a working stiff. Those "published rates" will quickly get reduced to nothing as all manner of legal loopholes and exceptions are applied to corporations that don't apply to individuals.
Even a single working person can benefit greatly from being reclassified as something other than a wage earner.
If you think US corporate tax rates are high, you really have no clue at all about how things really work.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And this speaks directly to my central point, the government of today is lawless and beyond all control, and it uses the power of taxes and of the color of law to tyrannize the people, under the guise of socialism.
Agreed, our government is lawless and out of control. I just don't see how that makes the US not a Capitalist country. By your definition (an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy.), it still seems to be.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
As a PhD EE currently on a H1-B, fuck you.
Social security is 6.2%, and 1.45% for medicare, making it combined 7.65%
That is the part that shows up on a paystub, then the employer pays the same again making the total 15.3%. Those who are self employed get to pay the full amount themselves. I always thought it was tricky to hide half of payroll taxes in that way. It's always better to have the real numbers in people's face.
EIT = Engineer in Training, and a necessary precondition to taking the PE exam for getting your license (as well as your record of engineering work under the supervision of licensed engineers).
after passing the Fundamentals of Engineering test, you don't get to sign drawings, etc. nor legally use the title Engineer (where such use is regulated by law). Nope.. you've basically proved that you know basic engineering principles..
But no matter, really... by the time you take your test, you will have learned the difference.
Arguably, social security @ 15% and Medicare, most states add in sales taxes @ 6%, local property taxes, fuel taxes; no 60% isn't that far fetched.
This is fantasy math. The 15% (roughly) payroll tax drops to zero on income above $113,000. If you are making so much that your effective Federal tax rate is close to 43% (only levied on income above $250,000) then your payroll tax percentage is very small. And sales tax is only levied on taxable purchases - a rich person uses little of their income in this way (mostly this money is 'invested'), unlike poor people where it is a large share. So, yes, 60% is extremely far fetched.
The actual overall tax burden of the rich is only about 33.0%, not much more than the average tax burden for Americans of 30.1%. The effective U.S. tax system overall is already nearly flat, with the income tax the only prgressive component to offset extremely regressive taxes (e.g. payroll and sales).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Except the individual is not paying it as you said, which does not necessarily mean that it would go to them if they did not need to pay it.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The policies achieve exactly what they are designed to achieve. It's just that your goals differ from those of the policy makers by a fairly large margin. For example, you would probably like your children to live. They would prefer that your children die.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
umm no I am not.. We re specifically talking about the US, and the US does not have VAT.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Convention wisdom knows that putting out the real shortage they are concerned with won't get them what they want...
that there is a shortage of cheap science and engineering workforce in the U.S
H1Bs help fix this problem.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
To encourage you to read the article, here are a few quotes:
Do read the IEEE Spectrum article.
The number of persons to whom that applies is vanishingly small. Of course they control the bulk of the wealth, but their number is quite small.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
True, but it's one of the many factors fueling the current inter-class resentment.
Social security is regressive,
Is it a retirement plan, or a charity. If it's a retirement plan, of course the cost is capped as the payout is capped. Makes sense. If it's a charity it's regressive, but shouldn't people have a retirement plan so they don't need charity when older? (And it's a damn crappy retirement plan, returns-wise, but that's a different subject.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Nice try, those jobs were sold out way before Obama took office.
That if there actually were a shortage, the price for those jobs would be going up, not down or level. The only shortage of labor in this country is that where people are willing to work cheap.
Read The Billionaire's Apprentice, paying close attention to p. 139 where Gupta explains how at McKinsey they took the GDP of America (and Germany) and broke down all the jobs which could be offshored, then made their big bucks selling corporations on offshoring them (which didn't really take much selling, after all).
"Socialist" is an insult now? Cool! The battle has been won.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
He'll have a green card soon enough. You should probably cower in fear: another brown-skinned person becomes a citizen.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The outsourcing of jobs is a direct result of policies which make that advantageous to profitability. It doesn't have squat to do with onerous mandates or your political views. Oh, and all those mandates are typically a direct reaction to those same business activity. Obamacare is the best thing to happen to US business in a 100 years since they'll be dumping those costs on the taxpayer as time goes on. Deal with reality.
These bozos and rubes making such inane comments have no idea how the super-rich "earn" their wealth, by rigging ALL the financial markets (LIBOR rates, interest rate derivatives rates, precious metals markets, forex, commodities speculation/manipulation, virtual naked short selling through the DTCC's Stock Borrow Program, internalization --- where the top brokerages sell almost 100% of their retail stock orders everyday to the top banks and hedge funds, where they control the matching internally on their own computer systems, or "dark pools" and therefore have insider knowledge of the market, etc., etc., etc.). Bet the commenter has no idea how naked swaps work!
...the corporations use H1Bs is the first phase of offshoring the jobs, as they need to prepare offshore project managers, etc., next comes your reason, good citizen.
I honestly believe that because individual income tax rates are higher the corporate rates and additionally because to the liberal expenses that corporations are given, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if tax revenues didn't increase if corporate taxes were completely eliminated.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I have been hiring engineers in Silicon Valley for the last 8 years continuously. I have a preference to hire people who are already authorized to work within the US, without any conditions on that work such as length of time I will need to replace them if their status doesn't change. And I know from personal experience, having hired over 75 positions in that time period, that it's VERY HARD to find people who were trained here and authorized to work here. I end up sponsoring a lot of work visas by pure necessity, not because I want to pay people less. So I don't need a study; I have first-hand knowledge and experience, and have shared that experience with my industry peers (and no, that's not an echo chamber; we are the DOERS that these studies are studying).
Interesting the much hated 1%ers get a little over 21% of the income, if we took it all it wouldn't do jack to the debt or the deficit.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The policies achieve exactly what they are designed to achieve. It's just that your goals differ from those of the policy makers by a fairly large margin. For example, you would probably like your children to live. They would prefer that your children die.
No. You would prefer your children to live. They would prefer they remain in office. If your children need to die for this, then so be it. But they are just as happy for your children to live if it also means they get re-elected.
To be cynical, here's my train of thought::
Employer needs a developer. Employer claims that there are no qualified applicants at a salary of $X, which employer claims is the prevailing salary. Employer then hires H1B for $X, and if H1B doesn't work eighty-hour weeks (which is very ineffective, but try to tell some employers that) the employer threatens to fire H1B.
At this point, employer has a worker for $X doing eighty-hour weeks, instead of a US citizen or green-card holder working $1.2X and forty-hour weeks, and as a bonus drives down domestic salaries.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Oversimplification. For one thing, some professions (like doctor) require a lot of expense up front. An MD entering the profession with over a hundred thousand in loans can't afford to take a low-paying job, and hasn't gone through that many years of really hard work to work for peanuts. The pay level at which essentially no new doctors enter the field is much higher than the average pay level of a lot of occupations. For another, the supply and demand curve is not the only thing that affects average pay. High executives tend to be able to set their pay higher than it would cost to find another exec, and some jobs are underpaid. If companies are complaining about shortages, that means the pay offered is lower than equilibrium. (I once knew a painter/carpenter who did wonderful work, who complained of not having enough money or enough time. We suggested that she raise her rates. Not everybody has internalized the supply and demand curve of pricing.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Well the answer still isn't "socialist". Do you seriously think the political world is binary, either capitalist or socialist with no other possibilities? What about socialist and capitalist at the same time, since capitalism is mostly an economic theory whereas socialism is mostly a political theory.
If it's money that is allocated for me in the payroll, and winds up, by law, in the Federal government, I call it a federal tax.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Feudalism.
What it comes down to is that in the US we've had roughly 100 years of brainwashing to learn that socialism is evil.
Ie, communism is bad because, well.. um just accept it as a lemma and if you don't agree you're either not American or else a traitor. But now socialism is just communism-lite, so that's bad. Time to teach the kids to stay awa from the socialism gateway drug, don't emulate those scandinavian socialists who eat smelly fish. Next up is unions; unions are bad because they are a gateway towards socialism. Besides unions means workers getting more money which means that they have to take that money from someone, and that someone is the hard working god fearing anti-socialists (which should be you if you've been attending all the brainwashing sessions). At this point everyone should instinctively know how to treat anything new; shorter work weeks is a gateway to godless communism, civil rights activists are just trying to keep us out of Vietnam so that the commies can win, and so forth.
However it all sort of fell down once the soviet union collapsed. We lost the great force that we could all be united against. But it was soon replaced with terrorism. You could tell that it was the replacement because the same cold war rhetoric was being used: "they hate our freedom!"
They do understand those issues. What they don't understand is that once their competitors also outsource to India and China, they cease to have any advantage, and only then does it dawn on them that they can't undo the damage.
Well, that's certainly my big problem with it. I think a payroll-tax funded 401K would be a vastly better ide, myself (with the government only as the manager selecting the available funds, to ensure it's role as a safety net, but keep the actual money out of their sticky fingers).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you're choosing your own investments (even from a set selected by the government), how does the safety net side of it work? Is there some sort of guarantee at work?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I strongly suspect that you're right. Corporations are crazy malleable shape-shifters that can do all sorts of crazy stuff to lower their tax incidence, so why bother trying to extract it from them? Just wait for the money to end up in the hands of investors and tax the investors. There's a much smaller set of things a human being can do to avoid taxes, and it has the added advantage of progressive taxation. With a straight up corporate income tax, grandma's penson plan pays the same tax Warren Buffet does on a per-share basis. This is not a big win.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You're not getting it. They understand that completely, they just don't care. Why would they care about the "damage"? It'll take years for the damage to be done, and by then, the executives will be long gone with their golden parachutes. Why should they give a shit about what happens to their company in 10-15 years, or even the country?
No need for a guarantee. "Target year" funds have a proven track record here, for well-understood reasons (you gradually roll into quality bonds as you approach the target year, so you're not vulnerable to a bad couple of years near retirement). Guarantees are fantastically expensive in investing, like you can have $X guaranteed in 30 years, or a 99% chance of having between $2X and $4X. Any sort of firm guarantee would be gamed and turned into really bad investments being shoved in there: just the wrong approach.
Give people a few choices, like "all stocks, gradually rolling into bonds" and "socially aware stocks, gradually rolling into bonds" or whatever, and set the payroll tax to where the safety net will work out for all those choices by aiming high.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So we're not talking about a safety net at all, then--just a prudent savings and investment strategy. That's fine, but it's also not quite the same thing Social Security was there to provide, and I generally think that people who are proposing turning Social Security into a big investment pool are looking for a free lunch that isn't there, macroeconomically.
That being said, I'd love to see the 401(k) as it is totally obliterated and replaced with something far more competitive (or a straight up government-managed account like the one you propose). If I said to you that I was starting a company whose niche was to offer people saving for retirement a small selection of investment products, most of which have higher fees than the typical competitive product outside of my listing, you'd probably tell me that it's a bad idea because I would get no customers. But if I add a substantial government subsidy to encourage investors to buy my crappy funds and set up the system to make sure that investors don't choose me themselves but rather have their employer pick me based on the amount I charge the employer to manage those funds, it's a goldmine. As far as I can tell, the 401(k) is basically just a Rube Goldberg machine for funnelling taxpayer money to 401(k) management companies.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I think you may miss here the point, safety-wise. What does "guarantee" mean to you? I don't expect Social Security to be there for me, but I do expect my personal investments to be. What's more likely to provide: depending on the government of the future, or owning the means of production?
It's not a matter of free lunch, it's an understanding of how investments are priced. You get lower returns over time by seeking more guaranteed returns. Bonds with a 1% annual change of failing pay much more than 1% more than safe bonds. There's no sane reason to buy 100 safe bonds over 100 slightly worse bonds if your goal is investment returns. The strategy of fixing your tolerance for volatility to your target date works great - you benefit from the higher returns when the volatility doesn't matter, and you pay for the lower volatility when it does, and you come out ahead from the trade-off.
But even the safest investment strategy will put you ahead of what you get from Social Security.
As far as bad funds in 401Ks, sure that happens. I'm no fan of government regulation, but this area needs some standards. A broad-based stock fund (S&P 500, or all stocks, or somesuch) with a management fee below 1/3rd of a percent should be required to be there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You're looking at this from a noble position. You're thinking like you act in real life (I hope) i.e. work 8 hours get 8 hours pay and do the best job to your ability. That shit is old school, sorry. Think like the corps do. If you are afraid they're gonna enslave you for 5 years, remember you have the upper hand. Just show up and then don't do shit. What are they gonna do? Fire you? If they do that then you're out of the loan and so that debt is not chaining you anymore. Problem solves itself. Now before you and many others process what I said to mean "be a useless piece of shit", I'm not saying that is your initial plan. That is the plan you fall back on when you believe they're mistreating you.
Stop the anti-Union trolling AC. My union dues cost $48/mo and that is only because I've opted for the "A" ticket. If you're working somewhere Unionized, I seriously think you can afford the dues and I have absolutely zero belief that the dues are a make/break thing.
The shortage is in a workforce that provides opportunity for slush funds and kickbacks.
Contract work with H1Bs maximizes the middle men, minimizes the employee's power, and makes the corporate honcho's decision of which body shop to contract with a hugely important one, with millions of dollars riding on it, going to companies that exist solely to help circumvent both the law and fiduciary obligations.
Additionally just because the planet hasn't warmed in 17 years...
Wow, do people still actually point at the anomalous 1998 data and ignore the decades before that? I didn't think anybody did that anymore, ever since GWB finally admitted global warming was a real thing (though he never accepted it was man made).
Well lets see,
I didn't pick out the dates, reality did.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
People attack whom they can see, and blame. The politicians are always in react made and they will constantly change their tune as a result. Why blame them when they are at worst just opportunistic? Why not look a bit deeper and look at where the memes come from? If you want to criticize somebody, why not look at economists and investors and the business managements that appeal to them for funds? Why not look at the business schools who train people to think in a certain way. To make it appear that they can assign value to things objectively, when they can't, or that they have too much opportunity to rig evaluation to their personal advantage. And what about the desire to reduce every evaluation to a line item? Isn't the objectivity of that suspect from the start? Some of the people with the most to gain want you to tihnk that their opinions are impartial and objective, maybe the light of scrutiny needs to be shown on these guys as much as on any politicians, on the rating agencies, on the market analysts, on the economists, on the biz schools, on investors, all of them and in a theoretical unity that acccounts for more than just capital.
I think the problem here is that too much time and money is spent on the hiring process and much of that, including a stingy attitude about training, comes from the stress of an oversupply. Taken from the candidate's perspective this is a disheartening effort of blind shots into the wastebasket, something the job-hunting so-call-experts think is worth while. It generally isn't.
From the Hiring Manager's perspective this is highly stressful, if he or she trusts the filtering of the on slot by the HR department, or not, the stress spent talking to candidates takes its toll in time and money. They might save both time and money when hiring non-senior people to find a candidate with at or just below the skill level desired, and to pay to train them, even at the risk of losing them to a competitor.
If training was the only value add of hiring on, maybe the company ought to think about what it offers its employees in the first place. Often the training is not general or applicable to other situations. A market process on the cost and quality of the training would result. So, to talk about forcing employees to pay for training only plays into the greed of employers and then maybe they deserve disloyalty.
My point was that not escalating the standards and writing highly specific job descriptions and paying for training might actually cost less than trying too hard to discourage the unqualified. Then if they really want to hold the feet of candidates to the fire, they do that only with lead employees and even let them recruit the non-lead employees and encourage a shorter hiring process. Or spend less resources on hiring the non-lead employees at the company level.
There is a shortage of science and engineering speciailists that will work for free. There is a glut of unemployed scientists and engineers that wish to be paid.
Oh no no, you mustn't let anyone know that it is a myth! It is imperative that we make it especially clear to every youth that the only profitable, respectable, and practical path of study and practice is science and engineering! It is more like a noble lie; even if the related industries are over-saturated with individuals, we must convince every person that reality is concretely grounded in science and engineering because it is what is closest to the truth. The success of science and engineering fulfills its own demand for power: we are headed toward a singularity, we can genetically modify entire forests to prevent the extinction of species, and the comfort of contemporary life is unparalleled.