Slashdot Mirror
Laid-Off Disney IT Workers Decry Offshoring At Trump Rally (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: Two former Disney IT workers spoke at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Sunday, telling about the shock of having to train their foreign replacements. Speaking at the large rally in Madison, Ala. was Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker who trained her foreign replacement, and said tech workers are reluctant to talk about the problem. IT workers "are afraid, they're in shock," she told the cheering crowd. "They're not coming forward because we have been taught all our lives to make do and keep going on. But you know what? This little old grandma is going to stand up for what's right. "The fact is that Americans are losing their jobs to foreigners," said Moore. "I believe Mr. Trump is for Americans first."
Hah, Trump vs. H-1B/Offshoring.
Whether that means offshoring jobs, or speaking against offshoring jobs as a means to the presidency, or hiring foreign workers to work on his construction projects ... Mr Trump will always do what's best for Mr Trump. If your interests align with his great, and if they don't he'll try to convince you that they do for as long as he needs your cooperation. The only reason Mr Trump is running for president is because he thinks he can use the position to advance his business concerns and make him richer than he already is. Why waste money buying off politicians when if you can get yourself into office it's free?
Actually the reason IT workers aren't talking about this is because they usually sign comprehensive covenants to get the severance payout.
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
Trump is the end result of lots of people feeling disenfranchised and angry over many, many years. To be fair, there's a lot to be angry about, but I don't think that Trump's supporters are really thinking this one through. People who are angry rarely do. They just want "something" to be done.
Welcome to the second wave of "Hope and Change" as a political platform.
Love sees no species.
Heed this: If Sanders is the nominee, I'll vote libertarian as always. If that witch is the nominee, I'll be voting for trump. I'm not alone, by far.
I suspect that these starry-eyed optimists wouldn't be entirely pleased with Trump's cost reduction strategies during his years in real estate, which have included trying to go cheap on the pesky human resources; but they are correct that he is basically the only option on the republican side who is even interested in pretending to care about the filthy peons who aren't good enough to realize their income in capital gains rather than 'wages'.
It's almost as though people can't be made to vote against their economic interests by promising to keep the scary gays away from school prayer forever. Crazy stuff.
Do these Americans seriously think Trump gives a fuppenny tuck about American workers? I have absolutely no doubt that Trump employs in his companies whomsoever is (a) cheapest and (b) causes the least trouble. If he is now trying to get elected on an 'American jobs for real Americans' ticket then that represents a level of hypocrisy in him that even I thought impossible in a human being.
The "shortage" of US citizen IT workers in America is a myth. Importation of "guest workers" through various means are simply companies on the buy AND sell side of the equation gaming the US immigration system to distort the price of labor. The same could be said in other industries such as farm labor. Adequate supply of labor exists, but the industry is chafing at paying market labor rates.
The beneficiaries of this cozy relationship between politicians and offshore companies who broker IT consultants by the pound are the politicians taking $$$ and the brokers taking huge skims off the top of the rates paid for the guest workers. Meanwhile, both the US citizen workers and the guest workers are faced with lower wages, with the guest workers taking the brunt of the abuse. (Imagine paying half or more of your salary to some broker who's only "value" is to pay off politicians to get you a visa into another country).
Want to start a technology company and don't want to pay the prevailing wages? Then by all means open up shop in China, Eastern Europe, Brasil, India....wherever. I'm sure those countries would be delighted.
Isn't Hilary winning? Admittedly details get lost in the reporting over on this side of the Atlantic, but I thought she was likely to win?
...you think he'd have kept you from losing your Disney job (despite the fact that he doesn't actually give a sh** about blue collar Americans once they're done casting votes) - your job is more important that the clear indications that he's a misogynistic racist hot head liar who has bankrupted FOUR TIMES.
This country really has become all about "me." Sure, I'll give up the fourth amendment, and start traipsing on the first - just to make sure some brown skinned guy doesn't crash an airplane with me in it. People who think like that don't deserve the sacrifices of our armed forces - Men and women who who lived through Bastogne, the horrors of Peleliu, through the years to the battle of Wanat (look it up.) They died so you could BE AMERICANS. EARN IT.
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When it comes to the average Joe, America is quickly becoming a vast empty container for other nations values.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Trump is a Republican that is smart enough to know if he placates the people now he can gain infinite profit once in power.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If slashdotters' "all about me" attitude is any representation of the attitude in the US, America is screwed. A country has to be able to make some sacrifices and work together. A nation of people who just look out for themselves is a nation that is headed for civil war.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Sad aspect of human nature. The protectionist measures suggested by Trump will harm everyone including the ones supposedly being helped.
That's what the economists say.
One of the things that brought the Roman empire down was all the poor barbarians who wanted in on her wealth. So, they flooded over the boarders and sucked them dry.
Let's look at this as a supply and demand problem. There are billions of poor smart people in the World. If I took the 90th percentile of intelligent people in the World, I can populate the US more than twice over with just geniuses.
Meaning, you can be replaced easily - and I don't care how smart you think you are.
Now, with wages being pushed down, our cost of living won't go anywhere. The bank isn't going to say, "Awe, your job prospects have been decimated by H1-bs. Here, we'll discount that mortgage because we're such nice people."
Food prices are going up.
Our standard of living is declining.
Our economy has changed dramatically in the last 20 or so years. Globalization is proving to be a bust for us little people. The benefits go to the top while we get the crumbs. We never had to deal with a business just picking everything up and going to some third world country, setting up shop and then importing what they make over there. Please, that cheap big screen TV is worthless to me when important things are increasing in cost. We never had to deal before with a company closing an entire department down and sending it all to India or Eastern Europe.
My father-in-law who graduated with his BSME from a public university in the early 60s walked into a job and never had to look for a job in 55 years. Today, he'd have a hard time getting that first job because he didn't go to a top school.
Things have changed and are changing for the worst for us little people.
What can be done? Don't know exactly. But the first step is to eliminate the H1-b program. It is not needed.
Trump supporters shoudl check out stories like this:
http://fortune.com/2015/08/03/...
Mr. Trump is for Americans first.
I believe that is true for one American only: Mr. Trump himself.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
should be evidence enough that the employer is lying when they say they can't fill a position with an american and they should lose ***ALL*** of their h1bs, those here should be sent back home - not allowed to find a different employer to sponsor them, AND the employer should be prohibited from applying for more for at least five years.
Apparently you have trouble comprehending what's written. I didn't say anything about there being value in killing, I'm saying there's value in sacrifice for the greater good.
I have no reason to want that woman to lose her job, but her casting a vote for some total asshat is simpler her responding to a feeling of helplessness. It's a selfish vote. It's not illegal. and she's free to vote for whomsoever she chooses.
I'm also free to point out that this makes her an angry, selfish, and more worried about herself than America as a whole.
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Did you know that America would rank #3 in the world for Math if blacks weren't included in the statistics?
Fuck off! When 120 BILLION in remittence are sent overseas from immigrants and H1Bs inside the US, the lower and middle class aren't just losing opportunities to the lowest bidder, but all that wealth is leaving the country as well. Pay now or pay later, but they will demand to be paid. I'd prefer our fellow citizens be producing something rather then collect more "befits" which is nothing but crumbs from the federal government in comparison to being gainfully employed.
Life is not for the lazy.
Trump does not like NAFTA 2 / TPTA that may cut the mini wage and other stuff for works down to the level of Viet Nam
Isn't Hilary winning? Admittedly details get lost in the reporting over on this side of the Atlantic, but I thought she was likely to win?
Nobody's winning yet; the primaries are still going. The parties have not chosen their candidates, and polls are not very meaningful this far out from the election.
Today is "Super Tuesday", when a bunch of states have their primary elections. Hillary is ahead in polling vs. Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and Trump is ahead of everyone else on the Republican side. But primary polls are notoriously unreliable due to the low turnout. If the polls are correct, Hillary and Trump will win decisive victories today and almost certainly win the nomination.
Visit the
Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?
Every country in history has protected its borders and controlled immigration to some extent. Only in this weird modern era is that somehow viewed as a BAD thing.
And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we had tons of unsettled land available and plenty of jobs to spare, when infrastructure wasn't much needed, when there was no "social safety-net" to speak of, and when anyone who could handle a plow and work hard could make a go of it as a farmer.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Each party is stuck with a toxic candidate in part due to its own rules:
On the Republican side, they really want a way to get rid of Trump, but they chose to select most of their delegates by a reasonably democratic process.
On the Democrat side, they are stuck with Hillary because they decided to create enough superdelegates that they could override the democratic process.
If the parties had switched nominee selection processess, other than not being Trump I'm not sure who they would have picked, but for the Democrats we'd probably be seeing Sanders- or a lot of folks who didn't enter the race because of the superdelegates would have been there to consider.
Anyway, the whole thing leaves me looking at the third party candidates to decide who to vote for instead of Kang and Kodos
Sure, no one owes me a job.. but what is the point of having countries if the way of life in that country is going to be drastically altered every time it doesn't suit a few powerful elite.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'll let the 1% go first in BEING AMERICANS who need to EARN IT, instead of finding tax dodges and subverting democracy with their money. Let them be patriotic for a while.
That is all.
I agree! It is crazy that when we as a country try to protect our borders to keep the population under control, and keep our own people employed we get accused of beinhttp://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/03/01/0545211/laid-off-disney-it-workers-decry-offshoring-at-trump-rally#g racist. It is ridiculous, left wing, fascist thinking, and it is going to be a hard road to beat it.
WTF, I didn't paste that link in the middle of my post so please ignore it.
IT workers long has a culture of welcoming competitions, even if it's coming from oversea. Speaking against it show ones weakness and is not politically correct... There's highly skilled IT jobs and and those that can be written into processes and handed to offshore team. Trump may say a lot of wrong things and liars, But is it still liars if everyone can spot them? He just want attentions and will not do worst than any other candidates. I don't think he could got us into Iraq war like Bush or brought in ISIS by supporting Arab spring like Obama
This may ultimately take a new party, one that forms out of the wreckage that Sanders and Trump will leave behind them. Meanwhile, let's use our scanning electron microscopes to find evidence of pro-science sentiment in the existing political field.
Republicans: Isn't science/tech as worthy of investment as war?
Democrats: When science bestows on us such things as dense carbon-free energy and fine control over how the genome of any desired species can develop, just for once try embracing innovation instead of fearing it. This is where new jobs - those good American jobs in your platform rhetoric - come from.
Did you realize that Disney makes most of it's money from a global audience? So you're objecting to letting foreigners work to support films that are going to be sold in mass in their country, saying instead America has an imperative of protecting the economic interests of middle class US employees at the expense of much poorer, more desperate foreign employees.
That's not just racism, that's colonialism dude.
Hillary has a shameful history of corruption that goes back to the 1970s. Even Micheal Moore shamed Hillary for taking bribes from the health care industry.
The Clintons have been influence peddlers for decades.
The ex-Disney IT workers are foolishly backing the wrong horse. Donald Trump does not hesitate to outsource and does so with his own clothing line which is manufactured in Mexico. Donald Trump is only saying what these ex-Disney IT workers want to hear so that he can get support in the primaries. Has it even occurred to these ex-Disney employees that Trump is being disingenuous? Simply because someone tells you something that you want to hear, does not mean that their motives are pure.
Protectionism isn't good for the economy and won't create more jobs; this is simple radicalized middle-class politics. The ideal is to deceive people via their lack of knowledge, making them poorer and convincing them to worship you for it.
People don't realize *consumers* pay wages, not businesses. If it takes a sum total, through all levels of production, of $350 of paid wages to make a product, then that product costs no less than $350. That's why a cell phone in 1985 cost over $1,000, but in 2015 you can get a smart phone with a quad core processor and 64GB of storage for $300: there were over a thousand dollars of wages funneled into those old, enormous bricks, between mining raw materials and manufacturing silicone wafers and assembling the cases and all. Even if they slapped no profit margin on top at all, the phone would have been over a thousand dollars.
When you reduce the amount of per-unit labor costs to make a product, you eliminate some employment. Eliminate too much in a short time and you get the Industrial Revolution: 80% unemployment and a collapsed economy. Otherwise, you just get a few thousand unemployed and several hundred million (or, globally, several billion) consumers with a few unspent dollars left in their pockets that they didn't have before. Those unspent dollars are a market opportunity to sell a new product or bring a niche product (rich people toys) to the masses; but expanding that production capacity requires labor, so you create new jobs.
In domestic economics, you actually create more local jobs by aggressively outsourcing, so long as your labor balance slides more slowly than your wealth. That is: If 50% of your employment is domestic and you save enough money outsourcing to create 10% more jobs, you have the *same* number of domestic employees if you end with 45.45% of your employment domestic and the rest outsourced. You start with 50 Chinese and 50 American workers, you eliminate 10 American jobs in favor of 10 Chinese jobs, and you get 40 and 60; along the way you find you can sell 10% more stuff, so you employ 10% more workers, and end up with 50 and 60--10 new Chinese jobs overall, more stuff being made for the same amount of money, and the 50 American workers are living a higher standard-of-living because they can buy more stuff since it's all cheaper.
Obviously, if you start shoveling jobs out to China like crazy without creating new American jobs, this doesn't work. Historically, that's not how it's worked; it's not even how it works today. People cry because they say "that person's job was lost to that foreigner!", but they don't ask what happened next. They conveniently ignore that our GDP per capita has gone up by 6.3% in the past two years while expenses have gone up by 4.2%, and ignore that all this mass outsourcing has resulted in unemployment dropping to 5.5% from 8.5% (from a 4 year peak of 10%, even). They ignore that there are more jobs and more *income per person*, and engage in the trade of platitudes about someone losing their job once.
You may as well say that a doctor lost a patient in OR, so we should ban all surgery.
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Have you ever considered what it takes to "make your own job" even at, say, a consistent minimum wage level? It's not just that you have to afford the risks associated with competing in a crowded market, but you have an increasingly uphill battle against regulation and having enough to stay alive. It's even worse if you already have fixed costs based on a job that has suddenly gone away - I think you may be severely underestimating the personal financial risk to most people.
The current state of the world economy is such that it is actually very difficult to make your own job and have it be a going concern. Part of it is that we live in such an advanced economy already (close to saturation on most things, unless you get lucky) and are also under a fairly heavy regulatory environment (tax law, ACA, business licenses, inspections, etc.).
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The American people are sick to death of hearing bullshit about labor shortages.
We Want The Truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHLcrfhwPtc
A country has to be able to make some sacrifices and work together.
This made me laugh. The internal party debates for leadership clearly show your politicians can't work together even when they're on the same team. But if you vote in Trump you're more likely to have other wars to deal with before civil war becomes a problem.
She has also allowed top secrets to be leaked - secrets so sensitive that the FBI has said that most of her emails can NEVER be released to the public, due to their contents. The people investigating her had to get THEIR security clearances UPGRADED to even LOOK at her emails. Never mind the fact that our enemies may well have it.
He has stated in the past that H1-Bs should have a prevailing wage associated with them.
Donald Trump Turned Down 94.4 Percent of American Job Applicants, Applied for Hundreds of ‘H’ Visas Instead http://www.nationalreview.com/...
To say your logic is idealistic and challenged would be an understatement. Firstly, you assume all profits are fed back into the local economy. Dream on. As well, the reduction in unemployment you refer to are people settling for (two or three) jobs as unskilled labor.
Corporations these days don't feel the need to go out of their way to attract employees. They hold out their hands with whatever amount of money they choose and if no one flocks to it they throw up their hands and lobby to the government. They don't see people who are bound to areas because of families, because of financial restrictions, because of life.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
No, colonialism is when you strip-mine the resources of a foreign nation at far below market value, because the foreign citizens lack either the knowledge or power to resist your exploitation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The real reason to vote for Trump? The political establishment is, for the first time in decades, genuinely frightened. They didn't really mind Bush because he was one of their own. Bush was in Skull and Bones at Yale. You think good ol' boys from Texas get into Yale, much less Skull and Bones? No the Bushes were Yankee bluebloods. But Trump? Nope. He can't be counted on to do the right thing for the establishment and they are really scared for the first time in their lives. You have to understand, these people have been wrongdoing for decades and now they have the very real consequence of going to prison for their crimes. They are going to scream and fight like a 3 year old who has just had her marshmallow taken away. All the doomsayers? LOL like the USA isn't strong enough to withstand a populist one termer. We just had 8 years of a Marxist racist divider who despises the American people, and we're still here. 16 if you include Bu$hitler. The hysteria emanating from the corridors of power is like what happened when Chavez and Evo Morales were in real danger of being elected. And guess what: things turned out fine for the people of those nations. Less well for their elites, many of whom are now in prison for their crimes.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What I find interesting about Trump's campaign is that he's managed to prevent other people from defining him and thereby generalizing him. He's both embraced and pissed off different groups of voters on all sides of the political landscape. In this particular case, if you believe that all Republicans are only looking out for evil rich corporations that will do anything for their bottom line such as offshoring, this case takes away that generalization.
As a matter of interest, Tim Cook is on the Arizona Republican Primary ballot this year.
If slashdotters' "all about me" attitude is any representation of the attitude in the US, America is screwed.
Any political discussion always brings a mass of Randian libertarians out of the woodwork, they don't post in any other discussions but they show up for these. It's almost like someone brings them in on a bus.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm a 20 year IT veteran, and have been through the offshoring thing a few times. Companies are starting to get that there are some tasks that can be scripted and handed off and some that require intelligence, but it's a slow process. I hope the trend stabilizes before all of the upside is sucked out of an IT career.
I've mentioned my support for a professional organization for IT and software dev, complete with apprenticeships, real barriers to entry, and consequences for screwing up. Rather than throwing support behind a politician, people should be supporting ideas like this. All the money and time spent propping up a candidate is better spent buying a way out of the current H-1B cycle. It's way more effective to send your team of lobbyists to Congress with brown paper bags full of money, in exchange for the chance to write legislation favorable to your group. Businesses do it all the time, and so do other professions' organizations.
I think the blatant abuse of the H-1B program has to stop. The program itself is a good stopgap for _real_ shortages of skilled workers. What I don't like is Cognizant, Infosys, IBM, HP, Accenture, Xerox, and all the other outsourcers swapping in H-1Bs in an arms-length transaction to the target company. This allows the Disneys and Southern California Edisons of the world to pull a "Pontius Pilate" and wash their hands of the IT department -- "It wasn't us! It was our offshore business partners!"
"Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?"
Simple: When it became solely about Mexicans. When illegal immigration is talked about, nobody is talking about the Scotsman, the English, the French, the Spanish, the Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, or any other Eurpoean nation. 99% of the time they aren't talking about the Chinese, the Russians, or any other Asian nation either. It's about Mexico and Mexicans.
"Every country in history has protected its borders and controlled immigration to some extent. Only in this weird modern era is that somehow viewed as a BAD thing."
It's not what you do but how you do it. The ideas being floated around are ideas like breaking up families, a freedom-killing national ID program, building ineffective walls at huge taxpayer expense, militarizing the boarder, granting blanket amnesty, letting vigilantes patrol the boarder, erecting more barriers to citizenship, etc etc. Politicians are playing to the base and won't get serious with real pragmatic solutions such as: do away with corn subsidies to make American corn actual market value. This disincentivizes boarder crossing because would-be immigrants can afford to work on their own farms instead of being driven from the market by our farms and their artificially cheap produce.
"And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we had tons of unsettled land available and plenty of jobs to spare, when infrastructure wasn't much needed, when there was no "social safety-net" to speak of, and when anyone who could handle a plow and work hard could make a go of it as a farmer."
We have TONS of unsettled land available. I would also argue that large immigrations to the US do not deplete available jobs. There isn't a magical fixed number of jobs. Transport 10,000 people via high speed teleportation into Kansas and suddenly there will be a need for more things in Kansas. There will need to be more barbers, laundromats, plumbers, grocers, etc etc etc. There's also still plenty of land if you want to "have a go" at being a farmer. You're not going to be rich, but farming hasn't been a traditional means of becoming rich.
This anger is what happens when policies are ignored. Of course the immigration officers, politicians and policy makers are going "Doh!". We did blatantly allow a major corporation replace domestic workers with cheap foreign ones without even pretence of lack of available local skill sets. we'll see more of this as more IT workers speak out against importing cheap replacements and offshoring. They should have tried near-shoring instead, or at least tempt IT workers from Kansas or low living cost area to telecommute and phase the employees out in stages and series of "failed at impossible tasks" (A strategy that Microsoft developed and other companies adapted awhile ago to phase out undesired workers, with some success...at least those without money to sue). this is going to be fun to watch. Also a result of lack of social responsibility. Sanders might be able to help there...Trump certainly won't. He'll pander to interests groups as much as the Obama (to a lessor extent) and Clinton (to a greater extent). There is a track record with strong indications on both these candidates.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I don't think Hilary is electable, but she'll probably be the Democratic nominee. I didn't think Trump was electable but he'll probably be the Republican nominee. I don't think our election has been this choiseless since Nixon vs. McGovern in 1972.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Fixing the H1B fiasco is simply an Executive Order away and I believe he will do it.
Good point, and especially in a climate where entrenched corporations that already have the advantage of massive boatloads of cash and protected by the government. An entity that is supposed to at least be impartial, but IMHO should be actively protecting citizens' way of life.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It would seem that, apparently, you did.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
In domestic economics, you actually create more local jobs by aggressively outsourcing, so long as your labor balance slides more slowly than your wealth. That is: If 50% of your employment is domestic and you save enough money outsourcing to create 10% more jobs, you have the *same* number of domestic employees if you end with 45.45% of your employment domestic and the rest outsourced. You start with 50 Chinese and 50 American workers, you eliminate 10 American jobs in favor of 10 Chinese jobs, and you get 40 and 60; along the way you find you can sell 10% more stuff, so you employ 10% more workers, and end up with 50 and 60--10 new Chinese jobs overall, more stuff being made for the same amount of money, and the 50 American workers are living a higher standard-of-living because they can buy more stuff since it's all cheaper.
I see you drank the koolaid.
So I take 10 high paying american jobs, outsource them for 50% cost overseas. Optimistically those 10 high paying american jobs become a combination of 10 mid to low-paying jobs. They're still employed! Yay! Because unless you can prove concretely that outsourcing any high paying job results in a new higher paying job being created, what you're doing is lowering the pool. Your own logic states this unequivocally in that products are cheaper because of lowered labor costs. That only worked while we were over-employed. That is no longer the case, with the total labor force shrinking every year since 2006. It's actually worse than that, if you go further back. Then you look at what an individual makes, and that has shrunk if you clip the top couple of percent. Yes, they make so much it skews the entire result set, but take the median 90 or so percent, and you'll see that real earning power has shrunk. The reason this hasn't had the major negative impact you'd assume is because the family unit has gone from 1 to 2 workers supporting the family in many cases, or people are co-habiting more and sharing costs. It's not the rosy picture you're painting for sure.
Obviously, if you start shoveling jobs out to China like crazy without creating new American jobs, this doesn't work. Historically, that's not how it's worked; it's not even how it works today.
It's the only way it's worked. Initially we shipped labor intensive work like textiles out. Then more expensive jobs that included things like EPA restrictions. As the manufacturing base overseas ramped up, it wasn't long before more and more of those higher paying middle class jobs all left, if they could. There were some initial jobs created to build up the infrastructure to support the imports, but once done that number shrank again and now there are fewer total jobs. And lets not forget that the imports don't pay into the federal tax pool, leaving that burden more heavily weighed on the populace, as the production base which used to pay taxes now doesn't.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I assume only long-term economic behaviors which have operated as such since hunter-gatherer man.
the reduction in unemployment you refer to are people settling for (two or three) jobs as unskilled labor
The reduction in unemployment is per-capita, and you don't get -3 unemployment for 1 person getting 3 jobs. Employment is a function of job availability, not a function of how job-ready the populous is; and job availability is a function of what the populous can buy.
My logic successfully and correctly predicts all gross economic behaviors throughout human history. Your arguments are idealistic platitudes. Particularly of note:
you assume all profits are fed back into the local economy
That's not what happens. Various economic factors drive prices down. Let's explore some.
Competition is the biggest one: either direct (food producers are *common*, so you can't overcharge on food without losing customers) or indirect (smartphones are more popular than Crocs, so you can't have that huge mark-up on Crocs and expect people to buy your product when they won't have money left over after buying a smartphone). Goods with bigger markets--more demand--are more ripe for competition; low-demand and low-flexibility goods and services (rental housing is a notable one; diamonds are another) aren't, and tend to hold bigger margins and drive off price competition more readily.
A special case of competition is supply-chain competition. When GM wants to build cars, they find a contract for, say, 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 5 years. There are a dozen steel mills with that kind of output. Say they each charge $500/tonne for steel. A steel mill makes that steel at a cost of $430/tonne. When approached, the steel mill goes back to the steel ore mine and the coal mine (you need coal to make steel) and negotiates for a contract for massive amounts of ore and coal to ensure it won't breach contract. The same process occurs: the costs of these things drop from $200 of coal per steel-tonne and $150 of ore per steel-tonne to something closer to the *labor cost* of those products. In the end, the steel producer gets his costs down to $230/tonne, and sells steel to GM for $232/tonne, netting a $200 million per-year profit (thanks to the coal miners and steel ore miners also cutting their margins razor-thin to capture a $200 million per-year contract for 5 years--a billion dollar sale they'd otherwise miss out on).
That kind of supply-chain contracting drives prices for things like cars and buildings down toward labor costs.
Market saturation is another factor. 1TB SSDs cost about $200 to make last year, but had a price of $700; now they carry a price of $330. All the early adopters have thrown in their money, buying up drives with huge margins; it's no longer **profitable** to charge those big margins, so Samsung et al have backed down pricing to capture the next rung of the market. The prices will eventually settle closer to labor cost.
Consumer resistance to inflation is another factor. Each year, the amount of income per production increases, causing a rise in prices; consumers dislike rising prices, and so will slow their purchasing. This causes downward price pressure. Manufacturers have attempted downsizing on goods they can't adequately cut prices on.
Let's take some real data.
The Consumer Price Index shows a general increase in prices per unit good of 0.8% across 2014 and 0.7% across 2015; the CPI for food shows food has inflated much faster than general inflation, at 2.4% and 1.9%, with home-cooked meals experiencing a 2.4% and 1.2% price increase (eating out became a lot more expensive in 2014--2.9% over the year).
The GDP per capita in 2013 was $52,607.9
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Did you realize that Disney makes most of it's money from a global audience? So you're objecting to letting foreigners work to support films that are going to be sold in mass in their country, saying instead America has an imperative of protecting the economic interests of middle class US employees at the expense of much poorer, more desperate foreign employees.
That's not just racism, that's colonialism dude.
I don't think anyone is saying disney can't hire foreign workers, what they are saying is it's downright shady to sack your domestic workers and replace them with cheaper foreign labour that you've shipped in for the express purpose of replacing your current workers to save some dollars (also asking the sacked workers to train the new ones). Not even save money that they need for something, just to increase profits. It might not be illegal but it certainly isn't right and to be pissed off about it isn't racism.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Wow...you do realize what immigrant labor was used for back than don't you...but it's a rather bizarre argument you are making. So since the US is settled we should ban immigration?? Wild. At issue here is not immigration. At issue is the abuse of the H1B Visa program. It is meant to supplement the US work force, NOT replace it. It's meant to give *small* companies access to individuals with expertise that is not readily available here. It is not meant to be used by contracting companies to hire hundreds of individuals from India or China or elsewhere to replace US workers.
I like Sanders. He probably won't win the nomination. I would rather "waste" my vote on a 3rd party in protest than vote for Trump or Clinton. This years election has really opened my eyes as to how "rigged" everything is. I can't even vote in my own primary because I missed the cutoff date weeks ago to switch from independent to democrat. Not that it will even matter because of our state-by-state system which pretty much guarantees the nomination before my state even gets to vote.
Which is why, given the opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to the American worker, Trump employed only American citizens in his hotels and casinos, right?
Yeah, I'm sure the Workers leav[ing] the site of the future Trump International Hotel here are the two white persons in the background, not the brown people posing in safety gear. And he already didn't know 25 years ago He Employed Illegal Aliens
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I believe they will, they are just waiting for when it is in the home stretch of the presidential elections with Hillary as the Democratic runner. Spring that sucker and *poof* there goes the 10% lead she had with Trump. Even if the charges don't stick and she is eventual found in the clear. Add to that her finally cracking with her tied in the polls and the legal battle... she'll say something nasty and presto... the deal will be sealed with Trump for President. She doesn't need to be found guilty... just enough FUD to confirm in most people's mind that she's not to be trusted.
Optimistically those 10 high paying american jobs become a combination of 10 mid to low-paying jobs. They're still employed! Yay!
Actually, it's not that simple.
When you outsource those 10 jobs to China, the products they make become cheaper. For example: manufacturing a shirt used to require 479 labor-hours pre-industrial-revolution, a cost of about $4,000 at $8.25/hr (my state minimum); today, such a shirt costs $15, or 6.67 hours at $2.25/hr Chinese labor.
Take it in reverse: a cheap t-shirt would cost $55 at local minimum wage. Clothing currently equates to 2.8% of annual household budgets; if, instead, it equated to 10.3%, what would happen to the 7.5% of products each household could no longer afford? What would happen to those jobs?
The answer is not that people would work more. We're not going back to an economy where we used a different technique; we're going to an economy where we've cut back working hours by a high-tech technique, but didn't cut back costs. This prevents consumers from purchasing new products, and that means labor to produce those products doesn't get paid because those products aren't bought, so we just don't hire those people.
This is well-understood economics. I wasn't the first to come up with it; I found out this was called Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage after I designed my models, although my own models are more complete and more reliable than modern economic theory. I focus on macroeconomic form: most economists are bean counters trying to predict the stock market and commodities market, explaining what the so-called value of a particular good should be and what its correct price is; I focus on the broad movement of economics throughout history and the repeating patterns, identifying how wealth grows and what impacts the long-term changes in that respect. I don't care to say how rich we're going to be by doing X; just that X will occur and it will cause some effect to increase or decrease total wealth, employment, individual buying power, or the like.
That is no longer the case, with the total labor force shrinking every year since 2006 [bls.gov]. It's actually worse than that, if you go further back.
We've been in a labor force bubble since 1970. Housewives gave way to working couples and middle-class families living at an extended standard-of-living (two people work, draw more income, and buy more stuff, living like rich people--we've normalized this, so they're just middle-class). We didn't replace those housewives with maids and servants in every household; on the other hand, we *did* get nice dishwashers, washing machines, and other tools to dramatically reduce the domestic working hour load. Housewives don't have to slave over the kitchen sink for eight hours each week and then spend 12 more hours handling laundry; they spend an hour on these tasks combined and still take care of our domestic affairs. I won't paint a picture where women are now enslaved to two careers, because they're not.
It's the only way it's worked. Initially we shipped labor intensive work like textiles out. Then more expensive jobs that included things like EPA restrictions. As the manufacturing base overseas ramped up, it wasn't long before more and more of those higher paying middle class jobs all left, if they could. There were some initial jobs created to build up the infrastructure to support the imports, but once done that number shrank again and now there are fewer total jobs.
Yet a labor participation rate of about 60% is normal across all of human history, and unemployment rates of 4%-8% in healthy economies span back as far as the Roman Empire. Labor participation rates are higher in poorer societies, yet even serfs had women keeping house and raising children in
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"Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?" - since Globalism and being selfish became the thing, e.g. everyone was quite happy for all the IT hardware to be built with cheap labour in china thereby doing US citizens out of an industry and a job because they could buy computers cheaper. How would you feel about country borders on the internet?
"And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we had tons of unsettled land available " - err... when did the US run out of land?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Which is why none of his companies employ any non-Americans!
Oh, wait...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Horse-stuff! Let's try this again:
It was NOT illegal to use one's personal email server at the time*, AND the "office" server she would have been using if not for the home server was NOT designed for classified materials EITHER. The EXACT SAME PROBLEM would exist if classified material was sent to that office server also. "Home-ness" is NOT the issue. The office server was a generic server with generic setups. H's server outlived that junk-box, even.
* Some experts suggest there is a finalization procedure that she should have done when her term was complete, but was skipped. I don't have the details on this alleged violation. My interpretation is that this law is vague, not specifying what technically constitutes a "copy", since most emails were already "copied" in the sender's system, because that's what email systems do. But the office server died, complicating matters and verification.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe we need to implement work laws like Thailand. That if a job can be filled by a US Citizen then a foreigner can not take that job.
When all else fails, hire me!
That brings up a question. If Hilary is unelectable, Trump is unelectable, and they're running against each other, what happens? Is it like the irresistible force vs the immovable object?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I believe Mr. Trump is for Trump first.
Much more accurate.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
> a mass of Randian libertarians
Thank you for differentiating.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?
So one is self-centered when pointing out that other people is painted out as the problem in obviously racist language? Good double-think there.
Every country in history has protected its borders and controlled immigration to some extent. Only in this weird modern era is that somehow viewed as a BAD thing.
Strawman. We aren't talking about "some extent" of border protection here. Well the rest of the world isn't, you may be.
And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we had tons of unsettled land available and plenty of jobs to spare, when infrastructure wasn't much needed, when there was no "social safety-net" to speak of, and when anyone who could handle a plow and work hard could make a go of it as a farmer.
The US have enough space for doubling or quadrupling the population without problem. Thinking otherwise is delusional. The problem is one of distributing the population to avoid hard resource bottlenecks in large cities. That problem would still be a problem with no immigration BTW.
Actually, it's not that simple.
This is still an overly simplistic view of economics, which itself is a pseudo science evolved from a bunch of hand-waving and unproven assumptions. If it weren't, there would never be any surprises on Wall St.
What's happening now is that that the overall household budget has shrunken, so originally they were paying $10/yr for clothing, and now they're paying $2/yr, but they're making $80/yr instead of $100/yr. So, the net effect is that their real spending power has shrunken. (numbers chosen for simplicity of understanding, real numbers do follow those representative trends)
So in the vacuum of economics, what you say is true. Reality, however, isn't so kind. The current outsourcing trends are akin to cutting your own throat. You can only bleed wealth for so long, before you're no longer wealthy.
The answer is not that people would work more. We're not going back to an economy where we used a different technique; we're going to an economy where we've cut back working hours by a high-tech technique, but didn't cut back costs.
Where we are going is an economy where productivity keeps increasing compared to labor hours spent. Let's take that to an absurd level: 1 person works full time, and grows all the food necessary for the country. What do the rest of the people do? This isn't actually a hypothetical question as robotics are already in play in agriculture and will only increase in the next decade. As robots get better and are able to build other robots, you see the effect spread. This scenario replaces "outsourcing" with "replacement labor" to remove workers from the pool.
This is well-understood economics. ...my model....
Yep, just reinforces my statement above - economics has yet to become an actual science. We're still in the studying phases because we cannot model it accurately. It's much like trying to model brownian motion, weather, or solar flares, because individual human actions cannot be predicted and do have effects as they aggregate. Everything beyond that is an assumption based on historical activity. The mouse turned right the last 3 times, it'll turn right this time again... oops, left turn.
That is no longer the case, with the total labor force shrinking every year since 2006 [bls.gov]. It's actually worse than that, if you go further back.
We've been in a labor force bubble since 1970. Housewives gave way to working couples and middle-class families living at an extended standard-of-living (two people work, draw more income, and buy more stuff, living like rich people--we've normalized this, so they're just middle-class). We didn't replace those housewives with maids and servants in every household; on the other hand, we *did* get nice dishwashers, washing machines, and other tools to dramatically reduce the domestic working hour load.
You'll note that dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and those other nice tools all arrived *prior* to the dual income family becoming standard. Why? Because the income from a single job has been degraded since the 70s as more and more of those middle class jobs exited via outsourcing, to be replaced by lower wage jobs, if at all. (something you have yet to discount)
It's the only way it's worked. Initially we shipped labor intensive work like textiles out. Then more expensive jobs that included things like EPA restrictions. As the manufacturing base overseas ram
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
is a relatively simple one.
He is hated by both Democrat and Republicans alike. That alone should tell you all you need to know.
( beware any candidate that is championed by either the Red or Blue teams )
I'll vote for Trump just to get away from the status quo of the past few decades. I'll vote for Trump to help
ensure " You owe me " and " The rules don't apply to me " Clinton doesn't get elected. This country can
use a serious shake-up of its leadership.
Do I believe everything Trump says ? Of course not, only a fool would. Then again, the same can be said
for ANY of the candidates. Delusions of Grandeur and / or telling you what you want to hear is all it is. It's
how every single President in memory has been elected. They can use all the flowery language they want,
but the message is the same:
"I promise to fix all the problems the recent administration(s) have caused. "
It's either an outright lie or the candidate being naive about what they can accomplish without Congressional support.
All talk and no follow through.
So again, I'm going with Trump only to keep Hillary out, but have no more expectations from him than I would
with any other candidate. He gets the nod from me because if you're hated by both the Democrats and the
Republican elites, then you must be doing something right.
The is a very simple rule that pretty much always is true. The more resources per capita, the better off a population is. There are plenty of examples of poorly run countries that mismanage their wealth, but even they are better off than poorly run countries with no wealth. By limiting population from all sources, immigration and internal growth, the populace of a country will be better off. I wish people could live where they feel like, but until we get a zero population growth problems will continue. Our jobs may be outsourced, but so long as we have high natural resources per capita, we will be better off.
You really need to read up on Negative Advertisements which have been a thing since I was a kid. The only difference I see between Trump and GW Bush (as one example) is who is the liar, who throws the insults, and who silences other voices.
The "media" and "news" did this for decades with pretty good success. For example, ask almost anyone what they know about Ron Paul around the time he was running and they will say "he's crazy" and yet they know nothing about him or his politics. The "News" pulled sound bites and said "That crazy Ron Paul" over and over and over again. The ad hominem was still paid for by the same people who paid for Bush to get into office. Ron Paul's positions and speeches were not shown or heard unless people went out and found them. We got to hear all the negative crap about him, and of course the media mocking people who slipped up in a speech or debate. Bush was made to look better than the other candidates no matter what.
Look at Perot and what happened to him, etc.. etc... Once you start learning what to look for the game is pretty obvious. The hard part is beating the cognitive dissonance.
Trump has been doing all his own without the front man. He does not need the media to introduce "Cruz is a Liar", he did it himself and the media just replays the sound bite.
I have to agree with the top post. Trump and Sanders are both the product of a pissed off populace and wanting something to be done. Most people see "anything" as better than what we have now. Sadly the uneducated fall for the socialist traps too easy, but, that is a different matter.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
CPI has not been a reliable figure since TIPs were issued. When you have an economic actor who gets to price what they sell based on a calculation they make, it's unreasonable to expect that they will keep that calculation honest.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?
Every country in history has protected its borders and controlled immigration to some extent. Only in this weird modern era is that somehow viewed as a BAD thing.
And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we had tons of unsettled land available and plenty of jobs to spare, when infrastructure wasn't much needed, when there was no "social safety-net" to speak of, and when anyone who could handle a plow and work hard could make a go of it as a farmer.
It's perhaps referring to one kind of immigrant over the other.
H1B is synonymous with Indian workers. Even though H1B is open to any nationality, 85% of H1B is taken by Indian nationals. Indian nationals are also on H1B status longer (for a decade or longer) because of diversity quotas (only 10% of the total yearly immigrant can be from one country).
Do we have complaints about the British actors in Hollywood movies and TV? They are also technically taking jobs from American actors.
The jobs do not belong to whomever currently fills them. They are not property. There is no reason in a global economy they must be filled with US talent. Some people seem to be confused about the employer employee relationship The employee is selling services on a time basis that the employer needs at a mutually agreed upon price. The employer is no more obligated, nor should they be, to continue an employment agreement where the received benefits are at a greater price than they can find elsewhere than they are obligated to "buy American" in computers and other things that they need to run their business regardless of whether as good or better at a better price is available. Whether you think it is "nice" or not is irrelevant.
What she did there was ignore 600 requests for extra security
The requests never reached her desk. Once again the accusation and the actual facts never quite align. What else is news?
You're operating on a vacuum assumption in your own head without looking at the world around you. You go, "Oh, that doesn't make sense to me, so I'll make up bullshit and claim everything based on solid analysis and understanding is made-up bullshit." It's familiar to me: it's called a cargo-cult. Basically, anything that's not simple is obviously suspect, and anyone who knows wtf they're talking about must have an agenda and is thus lying.
You are reveling in your ignorance and wielding stupidity as a weapon.
You'll note that dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and those other nice tools all arrived *prior* to the dual income family becoming standard
Yes. They removed the strain on household labor, thus freeing up that labor resource and making way for a labor bubble. I *just* explained that.
Where we are going is an economy where productivity keeps increasing compared to labor hours spent.
Are going? That's where wealth comes from. I've been writing about this for a while. The toxic component is time: if you eliminate 2% of labor in a year and create 2% more jobs, you have stable unemployment; if you eliminate 20% of labor in a year and create 7% more jobs, you have growing unemployment (you just moved from 4% to 16.5% unemployment).
In the Industrial Revolution, they moved from manual weaving to the power loom, immediately cutting that 479 labor-hours of shirt-making back to near 100 labor-hours; they got 80% unemployment for nearly 100 years. Since then, we've steadily progressed to an economy where it takes not even 7 labor-hours per single shirt to grow the cotton, harvest the cotton, dye the cotton, spin the thread, weave the thread, construct the shirt, package the shirt, ship the shirt, and retail the shirt on store shelves.
What do you think GMO crops, advanced fertilizers, pesticides, harvesting machines, planting machines, and refrigeration did to the farming economy? In 1970, India was growing 2 tonnes of rice per hectare of land, and selling it for a price of $550/tonne; by 2000, inflation raises that $550/tonne to over $3,000. By the year 2000, India was growing 6 tonnes of rice per hectare of land area, and selling it for under $200/tonne. In 30 years, they decreased the costs of manufacturing rice by around 93%, which means a sum total reduction of labor in aggregate when accounting for all levels of the supply chain in the business of producing rice. 93% of the humans involved in making 1 tonne of rice are no longer employed in making that tonne of rice; they might produce a larger population in response and thus make more rice to feed said population, and so not actually unemploy 93% of their farmers, but the proportion did drop.
the income from a single job has been degraded since the 70s as more and more of those middle class jobs exited via outsourcing, to be replaced by lower wage jobs, if at all
So back in the 70s we had cars with 6 CD changers, satellite radio, air conditioning standard, anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control, airbags, 4 wheel independent suspension, On-Star, and a $2,000 satellite navigation system option? Air conditioning in cars did become standard in 1968; by 1969, about half of all cars had air conditioning units. 2/3 had car radios in 1970--it was still common to see cars with no radio in the 70s. Never mind satellite systems, multi-CD changers, and the like.
What about cell phones? We had the color TFT in 1998, and the Compaq iPaq had a wireless radio option to operate as a cellular phone; yet people barely got on with a $600 Motorola V3 Razr. The cellular phones of 1973 weighed 5 pounds; in 1983, they became commercially available at a cost of $4,000 (over $9,000 2014), with a service cost of $50/month plus 40 cents per minute. For $60/month on a $350 phone, I have data service and can stream Spotify to and f
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Almost everyone I've known who has been fired or laid off has been walked to the door straight after being told - possibly there was a side trip to pick up anything personal - and the idea that they'd be training their replacement seems absurd. The only time I can see it working is when someone leaves a company for external reasons, such as changing location.
Agreed. I have major issues with CPI and GDP; I consider them rough calculations with *serious* flaws. For this purpose, they're close enough. I don't make a habit of making large economic decisions from precise computations; the numbers generally fall in line, and I assume that line isn't exactly straight but is going in the same direction most of the time.
They're useful when debating economic behaviors, since nobody wants to rely on the backing behaviors. Nobody wants to say, "Gee, we invented all these techniques for producing more with less, and laid off all these people ... maybe it costs less to make the same stuff!" Nobody wants to accept that businesses are always looking to cut costs and increase net revenue; they'll accept competition, but only when it works for them--I've had people argue in one statement that businesses will just take profits and not lower prices, and then argue in the next that businesses would *never* raise prices if you gave consumers *tons* of money because a competitor would undercut their prices. I like mechanics, but people want numbers.
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Not when he staffed Trump Casino with foreign and / or undocumented workers.
Come on, white bread, what is WRONG with you?
Vote republican, vote for the party of MORE H1-B
Simple: When it became solely about Mexicans.
No one reads TFA, but can we at least read TFS? Clearly this isn't solely about Mexicans, unless I missed the part where Disney was outsourcing IT jobs to H1-Bs from Mexico (technically possible, I guess).
People are upset about losing their jobs, in many fields, and about an increase in crime where they live. Mainstream politicians telling the voters that they're just racists is why Trump is winning. Talk about being disconnected from the voter!
The ideas being floated around are ideas like ...
Trump understands that you begin a negotiation by staking out the maximal position - you don't start by compromising. Cruz's plan is to use eVerify for both employment (required but not enforced today) and for government benefits. This is "self deportation", where you just remove the incentive to come here illegally, no stormtroopers required.
I would also argue that large immigrations to the US do not deplete available jobs. There isn't a magical fixed number of jobs.
Very true indeed. Immigration is wholly good long term but the rate of immigration matters! I want the US to control it's borders. To set and enforce some allowed rate of immigration, decided through democracy. We can take more people in good times than in bad, for example. But if we have open borders we cease to be a nation.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When you call immigrants rapists. when you have a history of bringing up their race, even when they are american, when you say americans of a certain belief shouldn't be allowed back into the country.
That's why it's racism.
Trump has nothing to do with protecting the borders. You might ant to look at his history.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"welcome to the party, pal."
Although this isn't about racism, it's about exploitation, and its about finding someone cheaper no matter what. Ii's about not being loyal the the country that allowed you to become a billion dollar empire, it's about lies, and it's about the removal of empowerment from the people.
Didn't would have been just as happy to replace you with cheaper Americans.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Its actually either the consumers fault for wanting things cheaper (so they must go offshore), or the companies fault for wanting more profit.
Free market in the US is usually a race to the bottom. Party A makes product cheaper, while Party B even more so, until Party A and B stand to lose all profit, then they look to global opportunities (usually China says hello, or Ireland says I'm not taxing you), and viola market leaves the country. A parallel scenario is that Party A and B make a pact, set a fixed minimum price and stay in the US, while people start buying knock offs, again from China. So the real solution here is to set a human resources standard globally, but that's going to require the world to cooperate, for a nice cause... Nobody has the foresight to see how it would benefit everyone in a 100 years.
Sane discourse died during Bill Clinton. In 1995, when the GOP was implementing the 'Contract w/ America', the Democrats - from Clinton to David Bonior to Barbara Boxer were all accusing Republicans of wanting to starve kids, throwing grandma to the streets and making her choose b/w prescription meds & dog food. The GOP answer to that was wusses like Dole, McCain and Bush. Trump is someone we should have had in 1996: too bad he was in bed w/ the Clintons at the time
Wouldn't you say that depends on the industry? You are absolutely right for example that if I'm trying to be the next Intel or Microsoft, I'm going to have a hard time. But if I want to be the next Angry Birds developer, the market isn't all that bad. Currently all the craze is in collecting and graphing data, weight loss app, gas saver app, you name it. That would be making your own job. 3D printers are coming down on the price where you could assemble 1000 units in your garage. There are always eBay stores of course. It's really not that bad in the US.
"When 120 BILLION in remittence (sic) are sent overseas from immigrants and H1Bs inside the US"
Source?
How dumb people can go? Trump resort in Palm Beach also "can't find" local workers no matter how many crowds of locals try to apply. They just import them from Romania.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opi...
You're sitting on the moist, dark hole that lie came out of.
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The single income family is an anomaly of post WWII America, and it is collapsing with higher expectations and government-imposed inefficiencies. Do you think that farmer's wives didn't work in 1850?
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Before 1965's immigration act there was much less immigration. There have been periods of fierce opposition to Italian immigrants and oriental immigrants.
Historically, English and Scottish immigrants have exhibited high levels of industry and low levels of crime. Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have generally been quite good. The same cannot be said of immigrants from south of the border, who often come from corrupt and drug-laden countries and bring those problems with them. The desire to send them away and keep them away is based on the simple observation that they're causing lots of trouble.
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Not taking care to secure classified documents has always been illegal, and that laws clarifying that in relation to computers are recent would not give Clinton a legal loophole.
The pity is that Obama and the Clintons will escape the justice that reached the Rosenbergs for committing treason.
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I like mechanics, but people want numbers.
Savings rate is much more indicative of economic activity trends (efficiency gains and how much they actually increase economic activity rather than shut down inefficient activity). CPI is calculated on a basket of goods and if more spending goes into goods outside of that basket, then CPI doesn't appear to go up. But savings rate would go up and down regardless of where consumers actually spend their money. So savings rate is a better indicator of CPI than the calculated CPI.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If the party overrides the voters with Superdelegates, you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye, as it will join the Whigs in the shitter. So, naturally, some people are hoping that happens, as the party pissed away it's chance to reform itself after the election of Obama. Now it's just another right wing mess like the GOP.
Your reply makes no sense to me, and as far as I can tell, fails to address my points.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps your analysis applies on a global scale and for the boogie man. I merely work with the reality I see on the ground in the US, and the soulless misers left behind in a consumerist society.
You sound like the cocky investor know-it-alls who told me in 2007 how stupid Europeans were for not investing in a more risky fashion. I'm sure they, too, had all the numbers worked out, so go back to cranking out your analysis and whitewashing the truth for your corporate master.
Stop repeating what you hear the pro-Bernie camp spouting off, then, too.
A "Social Democrat" is a nonsense term, really. It's a name they coined for someone who believes the lie that you can mix socialism into a Democratic Republic and somehow not dilute it in the process.
People were perfectly content to label themselves Democrats while attempting to do this, and it's done nothing but weaken the principles the nation was founded on, in favor of a slow conversion to European style governance.
You're operating on a vacuum assumption in your own head without looking at the world around you. You go, "Oh, that doesn't make sense to me, so I'll make up bullshit and claim everything based on solid analysis and understanding is made-up bullshit."
Put up or shut up time: predict the next major recession. Right now. Can't? Hmmm.... So, with that out the way, you've made some other major assertions that many just don't agree with:
No, the cost-of-living hasn't gone down; the standard-of-living has gone up. ... That means, yes, the *buying* *power* income from a single job has increased (median).
I'd say inflation has done a number on the median income and reduced disposable income to lower levels. So I suppose it's a good thing those toys cost less, because there is less to spend on them.
I already demonstrated that we're in a labor force participation rate bubble,
TBBA (Truth by Blatant Assertion) Merely pointing at a graph or mentioning various cherry picked statistics doesn't prove a bubble.
Let's not argue so much over *why* labor force participation suddenly grew. Let's ask another question: Why was it so low in 1970? Well, I can find as far back as 1947 at a glance, and the answer is it's always been that low.
Actually, let's do discuss it, because it's quite relevant. You see, in the late 60s, with women's lib and societal upheavel in the US and the rejection of the June Cleaver role, women actually demanded that they be treated as equals in society. Because of the aforementioned appliances etc, they had more free time and they not only went to work but stayed at work, developing careers as a normal activity. That increased the labor pool, it was not a bubble, but a raising of the available level. Now you can dispute that the pool got bigger or address the drop off since the peak, but you can't say the increase was a bubble as several fundamental shifts in society occurred to drive that effect. That would be like saying an asteroid only caused some minor temporary damage 65 million years ago.
Globalization started in the 19th century--some economists want to take this back further--with the reduction of shipping costs. That whole shipping textiles and spices and liquor around? That's outsource labor, pushing manufacture to cheaper labor markets.
Really? Try the 70s for when textiles really started losing business fast. You're seriously stretching there with ancient trade. That trade was for goods unique to production areas, not a move to replace domestic production with cheaper foreign production. It's a simple test really, was whatever was being brought in made domestically as well? No? Then it wasn't outsourcing.
At the same time, income per household has increased even as labor force participation decreased, which suggests the jobs we're gaining are higher-paying jobs.
You might want to check your numbers as it is obvious that real median income has dropped since the 70s, with the exception of the last report, which still indicates that median income has dropped since 2000. Add to that that actual cost of living has increased....
First, we don't have a lowered median income.
TBBA - Several links from authoritative sources a
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
you say no country has done it, then you acknowlege that many european countries and several other wealthy countries have managed to combine a democratic government and a strong safety net. say what you will about the barely-contained chaos of the british parliamentary system, with bare knuckle politics and sometimes literal fights, the system is nominally functional (similar to ours) and is democratic.
if you're on this site often then you're likely a data driven realist (a nerd), not an ideologue. So wouldn't you want to compare two democratic countries to see which economic plans result in better outcomes? With regard to health care specifically, most european countries have:
* longer lifespans
* better quality of life
* lower per-capita health care costs
wouldn't you want to move our country's policies towards a system that has demonstrated better outcomes in other democractic ountries? at least explore such a system and see how it can be incorporated with our constitution and values? That seems like a common sense data-driven decision to me.
Neither farmers nor farmers wives "worked" in the context of a labor census. You cannot be fired from your farm, for instance. They were self-employed and and self-supporting generally providing for themselves, with a little extra left over for trade. If they were lucky, they had enough to have some luxury. Labor and employment as we discuss it today is working for someone else, and did not apply to the general masses prior to the effects of the industrial revolution kicking up productivity and freeing enough people from subsistence farming to make a difference.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
If you meet anybody from India ask him, What Is Your Caste? You're doomed, if he answers it;
Caste system is quite simple to understand; If you're not from my caste, you're non-human to me; I can abuse/exploit/rape/kill you; Caste is present where ever Brahmin is there; We have petitioned US/UK to Expel Brahmin;
http://wh.gov/iyhMK
Casteism
I have had to train a replacement and been laid off 3 times over the last 10 years - it happens mainly at startups where once the company decides that it is either time to sell or go public and the books need to look more solvent. Truth is that it doesn't make a difference if you stop the visas or the offshoring - companies will adapt by vending or subcontracting -
You're bringing up only one aspect of what constitutes "quality of life" when you compare healthcare situations.
As I've repeatedly told people though? In the U.S. right now, a HUGE part of our health-care dilemma has simply not been addressed yet. The "Affordable Care Act" constituted a complex way to redistribute costs instead of finding solutions to actually reduce them. There are SO many improvements that could be made to the system that aren't being looked into.
Just off the top of my head, here are a few:
1. Allow the insurance companies to sell polices in all 50 states. There's no reason to complicate everything by limiting them to only operating in individual states.
2. Cut down on fraud! I can guarantee there's a massive amount of Medicare/Medicaid fraud going on, along with other misc. health insurance fraud, and not nearly enough being done about it. It's raising the rates on insuring all of us. (My wife worked for a firm, for a while, tasked with following up with people on Medicare to determine eligibility for renewal of services they were receiving. The state we lived in was backlogged 8 YEARS in these follow-ups! And they were regularly finding situations where people had died, but other family members continued to receive services under the dead person's name, like in-home assistance.)
3. Relax restrictions on ability to buy drugs from sources with the best prices, no matter where they're originally manufactured and sold. As soon as a drug becomes generic, it typically gets produced out of countries like India, and we have no problem with that. Yet if it's not a generic yet, the law grants a monopoly to the U.S. based pharmaceutical firm that created it and we get gouged on pricing for it (ostensibly because we can't trust the quality of what comes from other countries like India). I'd rather see the drug companies be free to license the manufacture of what they invent to any facility able to mass produce it, and introduce some real competition there.
4. Hospitals need to reconsider how they do business too. Not sure how much of this you can really do by "force of law" -- but it's good business practice for them to open lines of honest communication with patients. If a surgeon screws up a procedure, quit trying to protect him/her from litigation. Instead, call the patient ASAP and TELL them exactly what went wrong and why. Offer to refund all of their money for whatever was botched and offer a do-over or fix at no cost. The vast majority of people get that these procedures have certain levels of risk and would find that an acceptable compromise, vs. having to drag them into court and try to get big damage claims. This, in turn, would drive down costs for everyone involved.
OK, it sounds like we agree on looking at what works in other countries and seeing how to borrow it for us in a way that makes sense. Cool!
Regarding Obamacare waste, I would agree on some, but puush back on the following:
> Yet if it's not a generic yet, the law grants a monopoly to the U.S. based pharmaceutical firm that created it and we get gouged on pricing for it (ostensibly because we can't trust the quality of what comes from other countries like India). I'd rather see the drug companies be free to license the manufacture of what they invent to any facility able to mass produce it, and introduce some real competition there.
The monopoly exists so the drug companies can make some $$$! Has nothing to do with where the drug is manufactured. They have no interest in "introducing competition".
> If a surgeon screws up a procedure, quit trying to protect him/her from litigation. Instead, call the patient ASAP and TELL them exactly what went wrong and why. Offer to refund all of their money for whatever was botched and offer a do-over or fix at no cost. The vast majority of people get that these procedures have certain levels of risk and would find that an acceptable compromise, vs. having to drag them into court and try to get big damage claims.
what? surgery isn't an auto repair. If a surgery goes bad and you nearly die, the solution is not to re-do the surgery. that doesn't make everything better. The costs and pain of a botched surgery vastly exceed the cost of the surgery itself.
Put up or shut up time: predict the next major recession. Right now. Can't? Hmmm
Oh, hmm. You know about computers, right? Predict the next time your hard disk is going to fill up. Can't? Hmmmm! I guess you're too stupid to understand hard drives have infinite space and don't fill up just because you put a lot of files on them!
Do you really think knowing the mechanics of something tells you its future history? Engines wear; I can't tell you the next time an engine in a car is going to fail.
Absolutely not. Corporate income tax should be replaced by a flat consumption (sales) tax. Why? It removes an entire layer of tax evasion and ensures that corporations pay their fair share.
Sales taxes target the consumer, reducing purchasing powers and eliminating jobs. When you levy a 10% sales tax, you're levying a 10% reduction in consumer purchasing power, and a corresponding 10% reduction in jobs. It's inefficient, and it leads to lower tax revenue thanks to lower productivity.
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You haven't suggested any reason I might be wrong; you've only suggested that you've known some loons and that you don't understand anything.
I work from the reality I see on the ground, too; the difference is I don't see homeless people and hard times, but the mechanism behind them. You see the bullet and the gun; I see the gunpowder, the firing mechanism, the conflict, the political machine that brought the war, the economic machine that fuels it, and the evolution of warfare from rocks to pikes to swords to bows and arrows and finally to explosives and firearms.
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You could also look at how consumers spend their money and see trends of less and less on food and clothing; slightly more on housing, but houses are more than twice as big; and more on healthcare and luxuries.
It stands to reason spending less of the average income on the same good means that good has gotten cheaper.
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