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Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration
dcblogs (1096431) writes The Senate's two top Republican critics of temporary worker immigration, specifically the H-1B and L-1 visas, now hold the two most important immigration posts in the Senate. They are Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who heads the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and his committee underling, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who was appointed by Grassley on Thursday to head the immigration subcommittee. Sessions was appointed one week after accusing the tech industry of perpetuating a "hoax" by claiming there is a shortage of qualified U.S. tech workers. "The tech industry's promotion of expanded temporary visas — such as the H-1B — and green cards is driven by its desire for cheap, young and immobile labor," wrote Sessions, in a memo he sent last week to fellow lawmakers. Sessions, late Thursday, issued a statement about his new role as immigration subcommittee chairman, and said the committee "will give voice to those whose voice has been shut out," and that includes "the voice of the American IT workers who are being replaced with guest workers."
Sudden breakout of common sense??
Score one for the Republicans! I'm a pretty solid democrat, don't live in Arizona but I'm starting to like Jeff Sessions.
I worked with roughly 300 developers in the Bay Area, 3 were Americans.
By the time the contracting companies all took their parts, it got the wages for the H1b workers down in the 60-70k range. It's why they all live in BFE Freemont.
Got the fuck out of "liberal" California. Not that different here in the Midwest now. Every engineer where I work (state agency) is H1b except 1 (I'm in an external agency, so I'd be 2 out of roughly 10-12).
When you pay shit, H1b is all you can get. Switching from Finance/Accounting to Software Engineering in the late 90s was a terrible career choice. If I had it to do over again, I'd stay in the more stable but boring environment.
... who thought that a Republican would be against bringing cheap labor in from other countries.
I wonder why the IEEE agrees with them? http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo...
"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get" - Jerry Avins
Republicans going against big business and sticking up for the little guy?
Shit! I thought it was the booze and I dumped a perfectly good bottle of 12 year-old scotch down the drain! It was too young to die!
from around the world looking for work being treated equally,
and assessed based on their qualifications.
[sadly necessary sarcasm delimeter] But wait! That wouldn't let me prefer my buddies, who look just like me! [/sadly necessary sarcasm delimeter]
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
To the outside world, my manager says there is a shortage of qualified labor. In managerial meetings, he states openly that his intention is to replace all new openings with H-1B workers for budgetary reasons. Entirely coincidentally, during that time it has become less and less pleasant to work here, and also coincidentally, all of the attrition last year was amongst regular (non-H-1B) employees.
What I take away from this is that "qualified" in this context means "willing to work for third world wages and no benefits".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I have no idea what to say. It's been so long since Congress has done anything not moronic and/or treasonous in my judgment. I've forgotten how to respond.
OTOH, there are probably so many ways these two senators can get hamstrung, that we'll never see any benefit from this. The side-lining of them will be quiet and effective.
Common sense requires choosing someone who doesn't have any ideas about how the job should be done?
Let me guess ...
You voted Obama, didn't you.
... are not these super intelligent coders. They work in the accounting department. I tend to this this is all a scam to suppress worker wages.
1. need some rare expertise that our competitors have vacuumed up. (although working campus to hire grad students tends to work well)
2. want some work done, but don't want to pay full price.
3. want the person we hired for reason #2 to not quit and go to our competitor for more money.
4. want someone who isn't going to leave in the evening to pick up their kids from soccer practice or whatever nonsense people with families get involved in.
5. need people aren't likely to raise sexual harassment complaints against the manager in charge of the project.
It's not so much of a hoax, as there aren't enough American citizens willing to put up with bullshit tech companies.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Both Canada and the US have no shortage of tech workers. What they have is a shortage of companies willing to pay the prevailing wage, benefits, etc.
I've lost three jobs over the years to "lowest price" bidders -- every single one of which was an Indian-run sweatshop bringing in their workers from overseas and working them to death without paying overtime.
I worked in the US on temporary visas for up to three years at a time (annual renewals), spending over 12 years in the US in total. Was I ever sponsored for residency? Of course not -- then I'd have had some rights and freedoms. The money was good, and I don't regret the time I spent there, but I'm firmly on the side of the anti-H1-B crowd -- it's all a scam to benefit the bottom line of big business, not a legitimate shortage of skilled workers.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's a tough problem to fix. If we come down too hard on companies for hiring guest workers, they'll often open off shore offices. If I had a choice between competing with a guest worker and competing with someone working in a country that has a cost of living that is a fraction of mine, I guess I'd rather have the guest worker. At least he's paid marginally more an will pay US taxes. Either way I'm out of a job though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
(And without the advantages of being part of the Borg Collective.)
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01...
Pay particular attention to the chart showing -layoffs- across the IT sector!
and the republicans start supporting labor issues.
in other news, the brimstone in hell is now cold enough to be superconductive and satan has been hit by a snowball, full of ice ix
Hire enough H1-B's and it becomes more likely you'll just outsource the entire project to some contracting company overseas. And those companies also have their own management structure possibly eliminating your own boss' position.
"My position on the subject has evolved."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The corps have been stupid to present this as a skills shortage issue. They are in competition for skilled staff and so the shortage they feel is just a property of the system, not a property of how many skilled people there are.
What it is is about gaining access to skilled staff from abroad. By making it easy for people with the right skills to come to the US, they provide those companies with easier access to the world's population of skilled staff, rather than just the US population.
This should be presented as competing internationally by hanging onto all the best people.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
... The "do nothing" Congress is flipping from a tie (House vs Senate) to mostly one side.
These appointments are meaningless if nothing gets done.
Politics is the only reality show that's better than Survivor®.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
...you failed, and people are seeing right through your misleading headline.
LOL Fix H1B and scrap Obama Care ? The program who's architect said "It went through because the American people are stupid"
Sounds like win win to me.
Hell while we are at it we might get some regulations and liability laws scrapped so you can manufacture in this country again.
The upside of doing nothing is that it doesn't make things worse
... The "do nothing" Congress is flipping from a tie (House vs Senate) to mostly one side.
These appointments are meaningless if nothing gets done.
So actually, event nothing sounds like pretty good news to me.
How would things work out if Senator Orrin "The STEM sky is falling!" Hatch was heading that up?
I predict that this senator will be swimming in campaign contributions from the tech industry in the future. And of course he'll see the light afterwards and understand how misguided he was as he was lacking crucial information about the desolate state of the US STEM sector and increased allotment of H1B visas is the only short-term solution to the industry's plight... But of course, long term solutions will be found. Certain industries have already shown that with depressed wages it is indeed cheaper to manufacture certain items in the US again. I am sure a similar solution can be found for the IT industry...
While there is no shortage, it's just business wanting cheaper labor, that isn't why they're taking this position, it's because they just want to halt ANY immigration. So much so that they'll do it even when it's against something they care as much about as business.
Or maybe they realize that H1B workers don't vote, but the out-of-work STEM workers they displaced do. And has been complaining to all and sundry that they lost their last job and can't get another one because of H1B workers.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The problem with the current system is that it has a static cap that doesn't adjust to meet the actual requirements. In theory, an H-1B worker is someone who has specialized knowledge not available among US citizens. Ok, if that's true then they're exactly the kind of people we need as citizens. I propose the following adaptive system:
1) Every H-1B worker automatically gets a green card at the end of a year of employment. Additionally they get entry to a fast track citizenship application system. Finally, the H-1B cap is raised by one going forward, keep those great talented people coming!
2) If an H-1B worker is employed for less than a year then the H-1B cap is permanently reduced by one and the company is fined an amount equal to the gross wages they've already paid.
3) Henceforth changing the H-1B cap outside of the two provisions above will require a super-majority (2/3rds vote) of both houses.
I've been trying to hire a Senior-level EE for over a year. I have interviewed 2 candidates every week during that time, so basically 100 people.
These are people with 8-12 years experience as design engineers.
These are also people who can't tell me what the current in an inductor does when you put a DC voltage across it. It's one of my standard lead-in interview questions - some basic principles of EE that everyone working as an EE should know. I am shocked at how many people don't know it.
Usually, my interviews only go downhill from there. I will draw, for example, a very basic DC-DC or AC-DC converter and ask things like "what happens when this FET is turned on?" "What happens when it is turned off?" "What do the phase dots on this transformer symbol mean?" "What must you do to ensure this top-side FET is fully turned-on?"
These people can't figure it out. They can't reason their way through it. Most of them just end up guessing, and proving the point that there is, in fact, a dire shortage of QUALIFIED engineers in this country. These are all very simple questions that anyone working as a senior-level EE should know off the top of their head.
I think people are getting way too accustomed to having Google do their jobs for them, to be honest. "I don't have to know anything, I just have to know how to find a how-to online."
I'd like to propose a solution to that. With my proposal, ordinary people like you and I could get benefits currently reserved for people who own big businesses and things like that. With my proposal for common ownership of businesses, someone currently making $30,000-$50,000 per year can become a millionaire.
It takes money to make money, they say. Right now, someone who has five million dollars to build a new factory might make another three million from it. If you don't have five million, you can't build a factory. I have a way to make that more fair.
So say it takes $5 million expand a business. Maybe Starbucks wants to build a new distribution center and open a few more stores for $5 million. I propose that ordinary people should be able to sign up for the following program:
Instead of spending $5 per week buying a Starbucks coffee, they sign up to put that $5 per week into the "pot" to be combined with other peoples contributions, which is then used for the $5 million expansion. Over the course of a year, you or I might put $2,000 into the pot.
The "pot" now owns x% of Starbucks.
Everybody who put in a their $2,000 / year or whatever gets a share of the profits that Starbuck's made that year.
In this way, ordinary people like you and I become the owners of big companies.
Your share of the profit is based on how much of the needed money you put it. Suppose I skip buying one Starbuck's coffee and put in $5 / week, while you skip a coffee, a restaurant meal, a smart watch, and the ESPN super sports package so you can put in $100 per week. You put it 20 times as much as I did, so your share of the profit is 20 times as much as mine. We could call each unit of pot a "share".
What I just described is exactly how most millionaires got to be millionaires. The majority of millionaires today made less than $50,000 per year and became millionaires by putting aside $800 or less each month, which they used to buy shares in a corporation.
Your choice - you can whine about me skipping the super deluxe cable package in order to slowly become a millionaire, or you can join me and be a millionaire too. I don't care too much which you choose. If you decide to be a millionaire, I'd be glad to help you get started.
The carrot works best when the donkey doesn't eat it, just as it held in front of it's muzzle and this in conjunction with the fear of the stick keeps the donkey ie the masses in check.
If you don't let the donkey have some real carrot now and then it will just sit there and tell you to go to hell, no matter how much you dangle.
It's simple (not the same as easy) to fix. (1) Raise trade barriers. (2) If you're in the US, you bank in the US, you invest in the US, you use US materials, you hire US workers, you buy US manufacturing equipment and tooling, and you sell to the US market. (3) If you're not in the US, you don't get to sell to the US market. Period. So if company A moves out of the US, company B will simply take over the market company A abandoned.
We have the resources, we have the workers, and we have the market. What we have to stop doing is bleeding work into other economies, while expecting our standard of living, which was based on our economy, to be retained. We cannot do that while economic systems we have no control over are low-balling the cost of our consumables.
So we either lower our standard of living so we can become employable (doubtful); or go without (that's happening... many of us are unemployable at practical wages); or we develop our job market in the same economic context as we develop our consumables market.
That last is what I'm suggesting. If we do not do that, then until other country's standards of living rise to the standards of ours, we will continue to bleed jobs and prosperity in their direction. Equalization can occur in two ways: Our standard of living can drop to rice+hovel, or their standard of living can rise to house+car+retirement. Presently we are 100% engaged in the former, with no sign whatsoever of being able to get free of the fall. There's little to no sign of the latter.
If we do do that, then we can keep the barriers one way until our economy stabilizes again, and then when it does, drop them just far enough that foreign countries have access to our markets at our prices for items we also sell (only those. If we don't make the item, they can't sell it here. That way, if our market wants it, we get a fair crack at manufacturing it.) In this way, they can compete on quality and style, instead of the economic leverage a piss-poor underclass gives them.
They also have the option to take the higher earnings for their products back and spin up their economies. They probably won't, and frankly, it shouldn't matter to us if they do -- but the opportunity would be there. Give the peasants something to revolt over.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So is the quality of life. We'd like to avoid that.
There are two paths: We degrade our QoL opportunities to rice/noodles/curry+hovel, or they increase their QoL to steaks+home+car+retirement. Either path can be taken, or both with a meeting somewhere in between.
Right now, though, because they have access to our economy for marketing -- selling skill and product -- but they are not operating in our economy for cost of manufacture/labor, we simply cannot compete. Either we break the cycle or this will destroy the rest of our economy just as it has already eviscerated various high profile sectors: rare earths, copper mining, electronics, cars, engineering work, monitors/televisions/displays, pretty much anything China makes, etc.
At this point, the best -- as in, most effective and sure to work -- option is to completely deny foreign access to our economy so we can rebuild. But in order to do that, all those free-market idealists will have to admit they were wrong. And like most things of every class of issue, people really don't like to do that. So probably what you're witnessing here is a complete economic collapse in the making, one that can only be diverted by a major paradigm shift, such as full conversion to an economy of plenty. Robots everywhere, money no longer used to represent work because work doesn't matter, AI, etc. Unfortunately, that looks far enough off, and we're already far enough down the path of economic collapse, that we're not likely to catch such a shift before we shit ourselves and fall in it, economically speaking. At which point, about 1% of the US will move elsewhere, and the rest of us will fight -- most likely literally -- over whatever remains.
Free trade was a nice idea. But it wasn't a good idea.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A few more years of tech people being unemployable, no one will prepare for tech work here (Why study for an unemployable specialty? Why hire instructors for a course with no students? For that matter, see any courses on buggy whip manufacture?), and the above will go from theory to actuality. If we're going to fix it, we're going to have to fix it now. Otherwise... catastrophe.
And I'm pretty sure that actually means "catastrophe."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is deliberate pandering for donations from tech companies, essentially broadcasting to industry "Let the money flow".
I want to be wrong ... I know I'm not.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Visa's should be awarded based on nation need first. Iow, we should increase yearly visa ( say 15% more ), and then make 50% of all visa's dependent on nations need and candidates education. The rest can remain as it is.
however, they need to resolve the current group of illegals as well as change what is citizen, along with who can run for president/VP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's a tough problem to fix. If we come down too hard on companies for hiring guest workers, they'll often open off shore offices.
When it comes to software and research a lot of companies try that out. They tend not to be getting positive ROI's on doing so, so it's kept as a minimal footprint of their company.
Pay for the tech worker is 90th percentile of industry standard or 90th percentile at the company, which ever is higher.
Quick, simple, and will truly take into account the company's "needs".
Eh, not really, if you wanted someone with no idea about anything, you voted for Bush Jr, then for Obama.
John McCain did have some ideas, but he forgot what they were. Fortunately, WE knew what they were based on his 26 years of votes in the Senate. Then someone in his campaign had the idea to pick Palin, but apparently forgot to talk to her first and find out if she had a clue.
Ron Paul had some ideas of how things should be done. Some of his ideas might involve UFOs, and certainly they involved gold coins, but he had some ideas, right or wrong.
> Once I'm a millionaire, can I drink coffee again? =)
Until you retire, you can drink coffee made at home for 27 cents per cup, a saving of 96% or so.
Once I'm a millionaire, my plan is $1 million to live off, $1 million to give away, and $1 million to enjoy. Lately I've been thinking I might retire earlier and do half a million for each.
but but but ... that's Wall Street. What I want is for the people to own the means of production. You know, real communism.
You aren't telling me that I CAN own the means of production by putting 15% of my income into a no-load mutual fund, are you? :)
immigration and multiculturalism are the two biggest weapons of the mega-corporations in their wars on american citizens.... These two senators are fighting for us...they should run for president
I just love it how this older crowd on slashdot is so aware of the mass immigration scam. See, I think a lot of the posters here got into IT maybe 20 years ago or so. And so they have started to wise up and they know what is really going on. You go over to reddit or hacker news or something, and most of the posters are younger and are therefore still in the grip of multiculturalist propaganda and white guilt. As you get older the propaganda wears off, and you start to see the real truth. Multiculturalism and mass immigration are weapons used by the mega-corporations in their war against us. The media is not liberal. They are pro-business because business funds them. Academia is bought and paid for, as is the government. It is us against all the powerful institutions in america. And there are so few politicians on our side.
I disagree with the Republicans on almost everything, but this actually makes sense.
That's cool, dude. I'm on track to retire with $1.3 million dollars, so I'm good. Enjoy your whining.
Besides getting re-elected, politicians care about have tax income to allocate to their pork projects. To that end, H1B is preferable to the alternatives. Alternative 1. American Labor. It's expensive enough where certain projects & businesses won't even start up. Outcome: less taxes for the government compared to the #2 and #3 below. Alternative 2. Cheap Off-Shore Labor. Cheap thus a lot of businesses will take up on that. Downside: No income-tax from those employees. Alternative 3. Cheap H1B. Almost same as #2 but the H1-Bs pay income tax. So, as you can see, politicians try to maximize their income. They couldn't care less about the American worker. Thank you.
We don't have to stop having inflation. We need a lower exchange rate.
Yes these tech worker visas are corrupt nonsense and we should limit the importation of skilled workers more than we do. But what we must not do is fail to import the cream of the crop of Asian engineers and scientists as well as the same from Europe or anywhere else for that matter. It would have been so easy to deny Einstein admission to the US as well as Goddard and many others. Some of the programmers coming out of places like Taiwan and Hong Kong are miraculously gifted and we would be fools not to ease the path for them to come here permanently. There may be many geniuses born but very few of those geniuses are trained in skilled areas that a nation must have to prosper and those people must be treasured if we are to survive as a nation. Yet I have seen immense prejudice against foreign workers who were highly skilled. One advanced engineer that I knew was working in a labor position and a school board thought he was some sort of lite weight with degrees from Romania. His boss was shocked when i told him that the man was a certifeied engineer with the American Association of Engineers. He got a much higher paying job in another branch of government as an engineer. A liberal arts degree from Romania might not mean much but a Ph.D. in a science or engineering means a person is quite skilled. One fellow told me he was a genius in France but every time his foot crossed our border he was instantly an idiot.
Nice gesture, but they need to be able to sustain their "no" even in the presence of K Street.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Is that why Democrats have cut food stamps, killed a public option and have been trying to figure out a way to cut Social Security for 6 years, all the while deporting immigrants at a rate faster than Bush?
... from people that are just mad it was a republican.
We need to get beyond this tribal shit, chaps. There are a lot of people on both sides of the line that are complete fucking assholes. And there are a lot on both sides that are honestly trying to do good things.
Fuck the line. And saying "if you disagree on even one thing I believe in then I hate you" or other intolerant shit. People are going to have some differences of opinion.
Focus on what is important. Ignore the stuff that isn't... nearly all the things people bitch about are not important. Abortion for example doesn't matter because republicans aren't going to repeal it. Same thing for gun control... democrats aren't going to take your guns away. Neither side can do that. Focus on something that might actually happen and focus on the issues that actually matter.
We need to come together and solve common problems with solutions that most of us can accept. Anyone that says otherwise is literally the problem. Those guys thrive on the conflict and don't care if anything ever works. They just want to fight and start fires.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
That is a good book. One day I might get few cases of it at wholesale price and hand them out to people who would benefit. I've been to give out copies Man's Search for Meaning.
"Hey, Silicon Valley: we need paid-off with massive contributions or we'll grandstand on this (while not really giving a shit, other than having red meat to throw to our racist base)." -- GOP
Viktor Frankl? Man, we have the same libraries. =)
Yes there is no "shortage" of tech workers, however, a more open immigration policy would be more fair and lead to even more technological progress for American than would occur without STEM immigrants. The economy isn't zero sum and a slight reduction in wages for some, if it means many more people in the pool, would lead to greater economic results overall.
What we should do is simple - let anyone and EVERYONE in that wants a short 6 month work visa. Charge them a fee, around $1,000 for the visa. Also, don't let pregnant women purchase the visa. Require any business hiring them to pay all standard US taxes plus an additional 20% foreign worker tax. Finally, have the foreign workers list all jobs they took during the period, offering them a sizable bounty if the employer turns out not to have paid the tax.
Businesses can now get the people they really truly need - but have to pay the same amount of money.
Foreigners that are desperate can enter and work here - without the US having to worry about work visas being used to obtain citizenship for kids.
The government gets a boost of information and far fewer criminals would bother trying to sneak into the US just for work. Lets us concentrate on the terrorists and drug smugglers instead.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Good. Now there are more jobs for me.
You guys need a better library...
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/review-rich-dad-poor-dad/
I saw through that guys schtick on my first read, but I've never fully analyzed why it made me uncomfortable. If you've read it more then once and not seen through it, I am saddened.
Cheap storage VM.
Kiyosaki is a huckster and fraud. He has nothing to do with either book mentioned above (one of which isn't even about making money). So what are you talking about?!
H1-B workers are a corporate dream. They are basically indentured servants, who are often brought over on a 'contract', for which they sign and are expected to take an subaverage pay rate for a duration in exchange for H1-B sponsorship. This is a huge boon to the employer because the worker is in a compromised position and is bound to maintain the position or lose sponsorship and opportunity for further sponsorship.
Without appearing too radical in my position, this really was quite literally the foundation behind indentured servitude in this country in the late 1700s. Individuals would agree to a contract and buy passage to the new world on their contract labor.
Conditions have changed, but this is what business will always seek - leverage. I could not accurately recount the number of times I have seen h1-b postings that were fraudulent. Postings that claimed that there was 'no available talent.' If they would be honest and say "no available talent willing to work for 60% market rate", then at least it would be honest.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
I have been calling the Senator's office for the past couple of weeks when I heard that my Senator was sponsoring the bill to double the amount of H1B Visa's. I have sent letters and I have done my level best to harras the office. I'm pretty much ready to be swatted by them. You walk into any of the Insurance companies in Hartford as an American and you will be a lonely person amidst the sea of South Asian / Sub Continent Workers. The visa's are not going to "Brain Trust" workers they are going to server admins, network admins, storage and backup storage admins, DBA's and rank and file developers / coders. You would think that the H1B visa program would be looking for people with unique skill sets not skill sets that are displacing American workers. I"m not alone in this either from being a mid tier administrator. I have friends how are electrical engineers, mechanical engineers who are being displaced. I have friends who are PM's being replaced. US companies are finding out that outsourcing their IT to overseas concerns has not worked out for them that well. So now they are just getting visas for those same people to come here and ruin the type of jobs we went to school to do. So we have Mexican and Latin American's flooding our borders taking menial labor jobs and we have Asians flooding our embassies betting H1B's and that leaves the rest of us out of work. Hell I would grow marijuana just to make ends meet but everyone else in town is dong the same. Sen Bluementhal's office is saying that he supports this because there is language that is supposed to stop all the past abuses of the program. Yeah right. Time to get in the soup line folks...
Paul E. Bahre
The average who put in $4,000 twenty years ago has watched it grow to about $16,000 today. The average investor (Dow) is up 75% in the last ten years and the last ten years are considered really bad.
So again, you can whine, or you can start putting away $400 / month and in 32 years you'll be a millionaire.
It just so happens that Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet) ALSO made right about 75% in the last ten years - exactly the SAME as your typical IRA invested in a plain old index fund. Imagine that, Warren Buffet, me, and granny all made the same return.
Whine, or do something to improve your situation - your choice, bub.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if in the large overlap between the "H1Bs are Bad" and "Hate All Corporate Shill Republicans" groups on /. there are a lot of heads exploding.
The average savings rate of people who become millionaires is indeed 20%. That's a number I remember precisely. The others I could have been slightly off, but we can double-check them right now. Obviously that 20% is higher than the general population, as expected. (Saving money _should_ result in having money.)
You can do the math for exact numbers if you wish, but off the top of my head you need to save about $400 / month to end up with a million in 30-35 years, given the long-term average returns in the stock market. $400 is 20% of $2,000/month, which is just $24,000 / year for the low end. You WOULD end up a millionaire by savings 20% of $24,000, but that's hard to do. It's easier to live off of $40,000 while earning $50,000.
Protip: it wasn't Reagan or either one of the Bush's.
You need to Google the words Reagan and Amnesty, fucker of dumbs, which went far beyond anything Obama has proposed. Furthermore, if you weren't tripping on the shreds of your 10-pounds-of-bullshit-in-a-five-pound-sack, you'd be asking why Obama didn't do this in his first two years if he wanted to "pander", rather than deporting them at a faster rate than Bush, a fact you conveniently skipped over. This is obviously nothing more than setting up the Obamabot base into voting for Hillary "totally obliterate Iran" Clinton, along with his Very Sincere Proposals for paid leave and free-to-use community college.
You wingers should really move to an island with the Obamabots who think Obama ended the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and fight it out so the problem resolves itself and we're left with a lot less stupidity in this world.
>. Realistically, it's frippin' hard to save a lot of money with a below-average income. It's real easy to get sideswiped by a substantial unexpected expense that I'd just deal with without affecting my retirement savings plan.
It's not easy. Mindset makes a huge difference though; it doesn't have to be that hard. In the 1950s, the average income was what we'd call $24,000. (That is, $24,000 in current dollars). Average families bought homes of around 1,000 square feet or so. They cooked. Making coffee at home costs 27 CENTS. Buying Starbucks is what, $6? They played a board game versus spending $35 taking the family out to a movie.
If you play board games and make coffee, if you have a lifestyle like June and Ward Cleaver, you can save all income beyond $20,000. It's a different mindset than most Americans today, certainly. And it's entirely doable. The big thing, I think, is to pay yourself first. The FIRST $xxx dollars goes to savings, then you decide how to spend the rest, rather than trying to save whatever is left over after you're done spending.
I've rarely seen a substantial expense that's actually unexpected. The roof needs to be replaced - yeah we've been expecting that for 20 years. We knew in 1995 that the roof would last about 20 years before needing replacement. The car died? Been expecting that since the warranty ran out. I can't predict WHICH month the car will die, but I know one of the cars will probably need major repairs between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, so each month we set aside $100 for car repairs and maintenance. Medical expenses can be unexpected, which is why we have insurance, to cover unexpected high expenses. We expect to pay the deductible each year, or close to it. We actually don't know which it will be this year - the house, the car, or medical, but we can certainly expect that one of three will have a $x,000 expense each year. That is, we expect an average $x,000 / year expense from those three combined.
So we have three types of savings. One is for expected significant expenses, like replacing the roof or air conditioner. Figure each year this fund needs to cover 1/4th of the cost of your car. (Fixing a new Porsche costs more than fixing an old Chevy pickup). The next is for retirement - a special case of expected expenses. The third is the emergency fund, $1,000-$5,000 for unexpected expenses. Unlikely expenses over $5,000 get insured. Neither an expected expense nor an unexpected expense will touch your retirement if you've put a bit into each of these three accounts each month.
I should have said right up front, I'm part of modern American culture too, so saving doesn't come natural to me either. I want a 3D TV, because I really like 3D. I have to be shown, and repeatedly reminded, how to live in a way that finances aren't stressful. For instance I listen to Dave Ramsey sometimes - not to learn new information, but because I have to be reminded. It's not easy and natural for me. It's worth it, though. First I have the peace of mind of knowing we're financially secure in the present, with no bill collectors calling* . Secondly, I know we'll have all that we need later in life too.
* we have two items from the past we're still cleaning up.