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Bernie Sanders, Presidential Candidate and H-1B Skeptic
Presto Vivace writes: The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.
Does Sanders have any chance to become president? Bush and Clinton... been there, done that, both long term disasters.
If you'd like to focus on Bernie Sanders' view on H-1B Visas, that's fine. But let's not forget that his remarks and avowed beliefs of Socialism are what really make him an interesting candidate for the Democratic Party, contrasted with the free-market, capitalist beliefs of his opponents.
Just a personal opinion, so take it for whatever you think it's worth. But IMO, Sanders is more of a campaign disruptor than a serious contender for the next presidential election.
He's known as a political "Independent" but as others have already noted, he's more of a Socialist really. I see some value in him wanting to bring up the H1-B VISA issue, but primarily so it encourages the other candidates to debate it.
I also hear quite a few comments from those supposedly disillusioned with "free market capitalism", so some of these people will surely find Sanders an interesting alternative. I find that quite unfortunate though. Personally, I'm still pretty firmly convinced that free market concepts really never got a fair shake in the U.S. in the first place. So often, we're sold that label while reality is quite different. Heck, I was just debating the whole issue with a friend of mine last week about the deregulation of the power companies and the disaster that created for California. He used it as a prime example of why free markets aren't really viable or desirable. I countered that actually, that was FAR more an example of fraud than anything else -- a problem that transcends politics or the type of marketplace you're working with. In fact, much of the scamming going on with all of that was only made possible because GOVERNMENT was still expected to make payments towards keeping the infrastructure working! (They had legislation in place where government would start paying out money whenever the utilization of the power lines went above a certain percentage of their maximum capabilities. Therefore, crooked businesses like Enron would create false entries, reserving utilization that was never really happening to fake capacity limits being hit and profit from the govt. funding that was theoretically going to upgrading that infrastructure.)
Time and time again, this is what I really see happening.... People get frustrated or disgusted at something that supposedly happens because of a lack of governmental controls. But a closer look makes you realize it was only due to government interference or control in the FIRST place that the scenario was set up. The net neutrality debates would probably be another example of this. Sure, we need government to step in and tell Comcast, "No! You can't merge with Time Warner!" now. BUT that scenario was QUITE unlikely to have ever happened in the first place if broadband internet service was handled in the private sector in the first place, minus govt. regulated monopolies getting preferential treatment when the services were first getting built out.
but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
Examples?
I looked him up to see what was so crazy, and all I found was:
None of that seems all that crazy or dangerous to me
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Such as? He strikes me as a moderate on the world political spectrum: free education, universal healthcare, strong privacy protections, support for unions, regulating financial markets and banks: all things that are considered 'normal' in the developed world. I haven't heard him ask for gulags or socializing private enterprise, although personally I would be in favor of socializing the infrastructure utilities use and allowing private enterprise to all have equal opportunity at providing services over said infrastructure (phone lines, power lines, cable lines, water lines). Should drastically reduce monopolies, increase competition, and improve the end users experience.
Unfortunately he is a candidate in name only. He can't raise the kind of money that Hillary or any other candidate running for the democratic nomination can raise, and hence has no chance of getting the nomination. He would be better off running as a third party candidate than trying to get the democratic nomination; it will be interesting to see him eventually reveal his plan for what to do when he has fallen too far behind in the party race.
The funny thing is, he is the liberal democrat that the conservative majority in this country always try to paint every other democrat to be. I would love to see what they would do if he actually gained power beyond his seat in the Senate.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
supporting the concepts, and understanding the economics on how to give everyone everything for free are 2 different things. I support them all as well in theory, in practice* not so much
by in practice, i simply mean the methods that he himself want to try
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Obama has cut the budget deficit in half since 2008. (Bush left it at $1.5 trillion per year, and now it's about $750 billion). Since $750 billion is still greater than zero, the national debt continues to rise, at about half the rate that it did during the Bush administration- when, if you recall, no one seemed to be complaining about it at all.
the current zeigeist is unlike any in my lifetime. Voters are deeply troubled by our current system, which stacks the deck against ordinary people. I think they are ready for someone like Sanders.
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
You think we can't afford to pay for health care? We're paying for it now through a combination of taxes and premiums, just in a less efficient system than what Sanders wants.
What other thing is it you think we can't afford that Sanders wants?
Within 400 yards of my front door is a hydro power plant owned by a paper mill. That power plant is one of the main reasons the paper mill is one of the few remaining mills in New England. Big value added to my town. Private power companies are continuing to be created these days, offering cheaper or "greener" power than existing companies, fueled by the sun, natural gas, water, biomass, wood chips, etc..
Complete non sequitur and contrary to fact. Everyone needs food, you want to buy it at GUM? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUM_(department_store). Most people want cars, do you want to have to buy a Trabant? Everyone needs shelter, do you want to live in a "project"? Everyone needs clothes, do you want to be limited to what the government supplies? (Good luck if you need orthopedic shoes.)
Government control allows the appointment of political hacks to jobs that they're not competent to perform. Fortunately, they often don't bother to show up. There's no pressure to control costs; there's no pressure to perform maintenance, there's no financial motive to hire competent or productive people. Why be safe? Are your customers going to sue a government power company in government court? Even if they do, even if they win, who in the government cares?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
No, he calls himself a democratic socialist. That isn't socialist. It's more-or-less the mainstream "left" party in most countries in Western Europe. And he'd fit well in those parties.
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
That's a brave thing for a wealthy person like yourself to say and I commend it. Wait, what? You aren't actually wealthy, and instead you just think that somebody who is "not you" should pay for it? Oh, that seems a little more convenient.
While marginal tax rates in the US are not nearly as high as those in many parts of Europe, our income tax system is progressive (i.e. rich pay more) and the lower tax burden is disporportionately structured to benefit the less wealthy. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, "taxpayers with income over $100,000 a year earn 60 percent of the nation's income and pay 95.2 percent of the income taxes in the United States." Additionally, according to that same source, "Those making over $200,000 comprise just over 5 percent of the nation's taxpayers, earn 32.3 percent of the income, but pay 46.7 percent of total federal taxes and 70 percent of federal income taxes." European systems are actually more "fair" in the sense that larger portions of their incomes are collected in regressive taxes (i.e. everyone pays the same so poor feel it more) like the VAT.
Let's be grown-ups and admit that where we stand depends on where we sit. You probably are not "wealthy," whatever that means to you, and taxing those smug bastards sure sounds good to you, right? Conversely, I am not a "one percenter" (at least not in my state or region), but am part of a family with two working spouses with tech management jobs, and my family's Federal tax bill this year before adjustments and deductions closely approached six figures, or just slightly less than double the median income of the United States.
To someone who is certainly comfortable but by no means rolling in it - child care is ludicrously expensive, and we save as much as is feasible for retirement, taking a lot off our topline income - "oh let's just throw more taxes on people with money" does not sound nearly as good to me as it apparently does to you.
"95% of all Slashdot
Top marginal tax rates in the US on the wealthy were 95%.. but that was back when we had a thriving middle class, almost free education, unions that ensured a 40 hour work week, safe working environments and a political class that gave us Social Security and took the concerns of the many into consideration.
Now we have tuition that leaves students in debt for years after graduation, a miniscule middle class, no unions, cheap imported labor, a political class that passes laws only for the few...
I wonder what changed.
plenty of those wealthy only get their wealth by warping the laws of the land to bring more wealth in their direction. we're not talking about hard working small business owners here, we're talking about parasites
additionally, i am not sure why we should worry about these "patriotic americans" fleeing the country being that doing so would give us more leverage to seize the means of their ill gotten gains, which is the real problem
so good fucking riddance should they flee
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who would say we're worse off today than in the 1930s?
You are welcome on my lawn.
life isnt fair, if one works harder than another and makes better decisions with their lives, they deserve more.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
[LBGT] are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them out in any way.
Nope, there are hundreds, if not thousands of laws that single them out, whether by name or omission. There are piles of laws on housing and other things that state you can't discriminate on race, gender, age, family status, religion, and/or other factors, but very few of them extend anti-discrimination laws to LBGT. This is singling them out as one of the non-protected classes is singling them out.
Learn to love Alaska
This year's deficit is about $750 billion. I think you're emboldened quote is a little out of date.
Well, I don't really think rich people should pay for it ALL. Just a lot of it.
But let's look at that math. According to http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...
the top 1% average in 2012 was $717,000 per household and there are roughly 1.2 million such households. Their income was therefore about $880 billion. Figures aren't in for last year but it's safe to say they're considerably higher.
The deficit last year was $564 billion. So yes, they could pay the deficit and have money to spare.
If you recognize that nobody's proposing that they do it without help from the moderately well-off, it starts looking not at all out of reach.
But paying the deficit wasn't even my point. If you want to nationalize health care, you do it with taxes. INSTEAD of the health-insurance premiums and all the nickel and your-whole-bank-account charges we pay now. Not in addition, INSTEAD.
It's very, VERY important to pay attention to the terms when someone starts flashing around statistics. For one, it's very easy to talk about something else entirely, but make it seem like you're offering a contrast rather than comparing apples and oranges.
For instance, "top 5% of earners pay 60% of income tax" is true, but entirely misleading, because we're only talking about INCOME tax. That's the people who get paychecks. We're not talking about the truly rich, who don't have to work for a living, they make their money in investments - that is, capital gains. Now, capital gains is taxed, but at a much lower rate. This is why Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. There are also other taxes that people pay, but income and capital gains are the biggest chunks when we're talking about an individual (depending on where you live at least, some states don't have an income tax and use sales/etc tax instead, so YMMV).
This is an outright lie. You probably don't even realize it's a lie because you've bought into the propaganda. Every person who hold a job pays taxes including those on income. Social security and medicare taxes are NOT exempt-able and they ARE income taxes. The only way to not pay social security and medicare/medicaid taxes is to not have income, something the wealthy are remarkably good at not paying for. On top of this they pay their state taxes, including income, cigarette, alcohol, gas, sales and property along with all the other miscellaneous taxes and fees. In fact as a percentage of their income the poorest among us pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes than anyone else.
The nugget of truth that makes your lie so insidious is that the poorest among us don't pay FEDERAL income tax but they still pay taxes and they still pay income taxes. This little lie and deception allows you to paint entire segments of our society as non-contributing freeloaders and it's NOT TRUE.
All your bullshit numbers are based solely on federal income tax. They disregard all the other taxes entirely as if they don't exist and it's complete and utter horseshit. The most important fact, the one you completely ignore is that the poorest among us pay something like 50% of their income in various federal, state and local taxes. As a percentage of income they are the highest taxed individuals in this country.
Personally I'm a big believer that those people who have benefited the most from the system and have the means to support it should be the ones that have the highest burden in paying for it. That is NOT asking a lot.
To add, the fixation on income tax is because it's the main tax that most people are familiar with, but it's also a major distraction from the fact that the tax the truly rich mostly pay, Capital Gains, is far, far lower - 20% for long term at the top bracket (and the people rich enough to pay that have accountants to make sure their income falls in that category, rather than short term, among other things).
"To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work."
That's your response to the US spending more per capita than the UK? You're incoherent. The UK has a much more socialized system that makes them much less sensitive to cost of services than US consumers.
If you want it to cost like the UK system, design it like the UK system. THAT is at least coherent thinking.
we're not.
specifically because of the programs we created since the 1930s.
without those programs the 2008 shitstorm would have made the 1930s look like a damp fart.
but the programs did their job: they arrested the fall and kept money moving in the system and reduced the severity of the crash.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
where your friends lied their asses of to get their little war and insulted the patriotism of anyone that dared to point out that the entire thing was bullshit.
Therefore, in my opinion, he just guaranteed he will not get elected.
The One Percent will not support it.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
That's twice. The first was telling the press that he was busy, he had work to do. Now he questions H1B's. He's 2 and 0. Bernie, just may go Obama on Hilary,(again), if she can't get in front of this contrived enforced resession.
The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
I think this is the core question. The answer is that these problems happen all the time. For example, there's a large category of perceived problems which aren't actual problems. For example, your claim that power companies don't "add value" when in the next sentence you state exactly the value they provide - power that _everyone_ wants. Since they are actually adding considerable value, the difficult problem of the valueless power companies is easily adverted by not having existed in the first place.
Second, there are the very difficult problems that aren't your problems. I find letting people work their difficult problems out on their own is the best solution here. Among other things, it's an educational experience that allows people to solve other difficult problems they face over the course of their lives.
`Then there's the difficult problem that one makes works by messing with it. For example:
Socialists basically say: Hey, the world is _fsckin'_ complex and it takes real hard work to make things run smoothly, and then a Socialist will start blathering on about all the things you need to do to make a system work.
In other words, the Socialist takes their one tool in the box and whacks on the problem happily. Then when the problem results in more problems (such as your DMV example where the supposed "anti-gov't types" fail to behave according to script), there's more targets to whack on. The top-down strategy common to socialism results in all sorts of problems due to both the ignorance and venality of the policy makers as well as the crude nature of the tools.
There is a standard destructive spiral that socialism gets in. First, they create a public good. Then when the rest of the world behaves in a way as to overconsume the public good, the standard tragedy of the commons phenomenon, then a bureaucracy is set up to regulate the consumption of the public good and starts doing its own thing. Then the cycle repeats, this time with a sliver of the society trapped in this bit of waste. This is exactly a place where relatively free markets excel.
Finally, there is the continued contradiction of growing an ever more complex, opaque, powerful, and unaccountable government while saying "Sure, you have to keep an eye on things". No, you aren't keeping an eye on things. You are growing one of the largest problems of societies, known since we first had civilizations. You don't have to "keep an eye" on markets like you do on bureaucracies, whether government-based or otherwise, who have little stake in doing their job.
how much do they pay you to write this shit for them?
That's a very insightful way to address the substance of the matter. Obviously you're not willing to say the actual numbers or description of the situation is incorrect ... you're just mad at someone for pointing it out? I get that. But you're not really making any sort of lucid point.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.