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Trump Gives Displaced IT Workers Attention, and He's Not Alone (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: The H-1B visa issue is getting more attention than it has ever received before. Donald Trump has invited laid-off Disney workers to speak at his rallies, and has posed in photos with them. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), held a press conference this week to complain that visa workers are being hired instead of U.S. workers. Legislation to reform the visa program has been introduced, and discrimination complaints are being filed with federal agencies and in the courts. But these efforts may have little impact. If visa restrictions arrive, IT services firms may increase reliance on web-based "knowledge transfer" to avoid having visa workers at an employer's site. There have also been reports of U.S. workers traveling overseas to train replacements on foreign soil. [Even with all the political and legal efforts,] there's no certainty any action will derail the forces moving IT jobs overseas.
he leads?
It turns out that lowering barriers to commerce increases competition.
This helps the guy who is buying the goods and services. Which mostly means whoever owns the company that uses or re-sells those services. It helps the 1% because they own the companies which profit by, for example, employing IT workers. It occasionally helps normal people, if the companies that are reselling or using the services are in tight competition, but mostly it helps the 1%--or in this case, the owners of Disney stock.
It hurts the guy who is selling the goods and services, at least in the markets with strong demand. That's why American Industry and the remaining small farms mostly disappeared--you could buy the stuff cheaper elsewhere, so people did. On the other hand, you can probably buy cheaper random-thing-X, so long as there is still competition among foreigners after the American producer went out of business.
Hell yes!
Trump creeps me out a bit. I generally agree with him philosophically but I think his demeanor is a bit to harsh for the lilly livered pansies the american people have become. After this however, I will be hard for me to support anybody else. This H1B program is bullshit and is the stuff of robber barons.
If visa restrictions arrive, IT services firms may increase reliance on web-based "knowledge transfer" to avoid having visa workers at an employer's site.
If a computer need to be re-image, the user will have to FedEx the computer to India, wait three months for the computer to return, and find their PST file missing from Outlook. That should save a lot of money.
I'm originally from France but currently reside in the US. Although taxes are less, the cost of living is still quite high. I currently live in Fairfax, Virginia but have lived in Miami and Atlanta. All were rather expensive. The price of petrol is nice, though!
It's not so much to stem the tide, but (horror!) to make certain employers are following the damn law!
I full expect expect any company to take advantages of lower labor costs just as long as they don't externalize the problems with a workforce 1,000 miles away by abusing the visa program.
I mean fuck, companies get their panties in a bind when you import products sold for a lower cost overseas, but then get all free market when it comes to labor. I am sick of the double-dealing and just want equal consideration before the law.
There are plenty of knowledge workers available. They're just not available at the wage slave mirage prices that corporate bean counters think they're getting.
If you cut off the supply of low cost imported labor, the market will adjust. Sure, some firms will just move offshore. That's cool. Some firms will pay more to fill spots from the legally available pool. That's cool too. And other firms will look for loopholes to fit somewhere in between. Those loopholes will vary in size between a needle and the Lincoln Tunnel depending on how aggressive the graft money flows into Congress.
Cut off the supply and let the chips fall where they may. The end result may be a boom in tech businesses that choose to do business where these cheap labor pools are available. Who knows....
I wonder what all those currently hysterical people screaming about Trump being a Nazi and how all of tech is a sexist, bigoted, cesspit of male nerd privilege will do if Trump is actually elected on the back of the massive surge of US voter discontentment?
My guess is that the Hipsters will have their beards shaved off within 8 months and the 3 piece suit (and Trumplocked hair) will make a comeback likes it's nineteen-eighty-yuppie all over again. A word to the wise gentlement, the geeks, techies, and especially the gamers to have been on the receiving end of your bullshit all have memories like fucking elephants, so don't expect a medal for a change of heart.
If Hillary becomes president, I think our next election will end up being between Hilter and Mao.
Sanders and Trump are the only ones actually listening to the American public. That's why these two are the only candidates getting huge crowds and generating big enthusiasm.
Unlimited free trade and open borders helps some Americans (stockholders and business owners) while hurting others (blue collar workers and offshorable white collar workers). As you can guess, the latter category is much larger than the former. Unfortunately those in power (doesn't matter which party) work exclusively for the benefit of the former and does not give a rat's ass about the latter.
I am praying, pleading with everyone. PLEASE vote for Bernie (if you're a Dem) or Trump (if you're an R).
There isn't an easy solution to this. H1B is abused frequently (see Hertz putting 75% of their IT staff, outsourcing to IBM, then IBM using H1B), and raising those wages will stop H1B abuse. However, this will just lead to sending jobs overseas. The solution then is to drive up the cost of labor overseas, perhaps by encouraging more competition for labor. Sweat shops and cheap overseas labor exist because it's better than the alternatives for many people. The governments allow it because it's good for their economies. Of course, the end result of driving up those wages is an increase in the cost of goods. A weak dollar might be helpful, though that introduces other issues. I don't trust regulatory ideas because those will be circumvented and abused, just like H1B. There's no good solution except to create new jobs that can't immediately outsourced to other countries.
Just in the last month.
As unsophisticated people who have dealt with him in the past have concluded, with Trump, you need to read the fine print.
Having Donald J Trump, his wife and business executives raving that great things will happen if you throw in your lot with him; sorry, that isn't the fine print. You're gonna go down.
The end result may be a boom in tech businesses that choose to do business where these cheap labor pools are available.
Like manufacturing jobs returning the US because China is getting too expensive?
But despite what the rhetoric would have us believe, global manufacturing is trending in a positive direction for the U.S. Factory jobs are on the rise here, and many of these new jobs are coming back to North America from China, which is struggling to maintain its manufacturing capacity. Since March, 2010, when manufacturing employment in the U.S. hit a trough of 11.45 million jobs, nearly a million new factory positions have been created, most of them in the Southern states, particularly North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Better still, the jobs are typically good ones: across that same five-year period, average hourly manufacturing wages have increased over ten per cent, to more than twenty dollars. On the whole, U.S. manufacturing, as measured by the Purchasing Managers' Index, has steadily expanded.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-donald-trump-is-wrong-about-manufacturing-jobs-and-china
The votes from people and their families who lost their jobs to outsourcing overseas or to H1B labor is more than enough for Trump to win in the largest landslide since Reagan's second term.
Just go to Mexico and walk across the border.
North Carolina is pretty sweet too. There's a reason Cary (a huge Raleigh, NC suburb) is jokingly called "Centralized Area for Relocated Yankees." Our legislature is politically schizophrenic but overall it's a FAR better place to be than most of the northeast and the west coast.
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back
It's not just factory jobs
Trump - Moneybags
Cruz - Grandpa from The Munsters
Kasich - Background holy roller
Hillary - Most likely to lie to your face
Bernie - Most likely to turn the US of A into ?
As usual, all the best candidates are where? How is it this is it? I'll tell you. All can be owned by $. Except Trump. He's ALREADY owned!
....so don't make it hard for me.
Of course, I'm white, and Western, so therefore highly competent (probably even more so than the Americans), so it will be ok.
...
BWWWAHHHH HAAA HAAA!!!!
You think THAT will help you get into today's USA?
That's adorbs.
You need to be brown, uneducated, and hate the US.
And sneak across the border illegally to get here.
Then the Democrats will want to give you a driver's license and let you vote.
Good thoughts.. the key is that the firms that move offshore should not get free access to the American market. If I make an iPhone app, I have to pay Apple for the right to sell it in their app store. The same should be for companies moving offshore. They can still do business in the US but they have to pay generous taxes for the right to do so. Otherwise they can just give unfair competition to businesses that would otherwise start in the US and sell in the US.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
... through his modeling agency (Trump Model Management). From CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/10/news/trump-model-visas/)-
"Government data analyzed by Howard University professor Ron Hira shows that since 2008, Trump's agency has successfully brought over around 30 foreign models -- from countries like Brazil, Latvia and China -- using the H-1B program."
Seems a bit disingenuous to be courting the disgruntled in one industry while creating them in another.
I'm married to an American, so getting permanent resident status in the US is a mere formality.
The issue is, would I WANT to ?
What's the point if I'm in competition with a million Indians who will accept 1/10th my income expectation ?
I'm just saying we're all in the same boat here. You guys are getting shafted by the cheap imports, and stopping that would benefit you and me both.
Like I said, win/win.
As someone from the NE how is Cary better than the NE? Curious as to your reasoning.
Well...yes manufacturing is slowly coming back...but the jobs really aren't. It's mostly new automated factories with few workers. I wish that weren't the case though. It's not nothing, but it sure isn't everything.
Sanders: Corporations are sending your jobs to China and Mexico!
Trump: China and Mexico took away your jobs!
Competition hurts good. The back bench of the whites-only-basketball-team shit their pants when the NBA integrated. Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals probably "disemployed" some back up pitcher.
The theory is that 300M Americans who buy $18 jeans are better off than 300M Americans buying $65 blue jeans. Because if unemployment now is 5% despite losing the USA 65$-jeans-making-jobs loss, that if the jeans jobs were STILL here we'd be screwed. The noise from the people on the pitchers bench who lost their pitching jobs has been exaggerated via WWE.
I grew up in a fine big house where all my neighbors lived in fucking cardboard boxes. Now my neighbors have decent houses. Whaddya know, my home valuation went up!!
Gently reply
Tell 'em what they wanna hear, Trumpy.
Tell 'em you will wave your magic wand and make it all better.
Look in their eyes and smile like an angel.
Then show your true colors after you're elected. You already said we're not seeing the real you during your campaign.
You're just like the rest of them, Trumpy. You're a rotten liar, and you will ALWAYS follow the money. These people will be kicked to the curb and thrown under the bus on day 1.
It's mostly new automated factories with few workers.
Obviously, workers are needed to fix the machines.
The theory is that 300M Americans who buy $18 jeans are better off than 300M Americans buying $65 blue jeans. Because if unemployment now is 5% despite losing the USA 65$-jeans-making-jobs loss, that if the jeans jobs were STILL here we'd be screwed.
Yeah, the way I look at it, we're either going to have them making the things in Mexico, or importing the workers to America to work here. Better to let them stay home with their families.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Let's go with the assumption posited so frequently by the press that Donald Trump called women Bimbos and Pigs. He never said 'All women are bimbos and pigs'. He said 'Rosie O'Donnel is a pig' and 'Megyn Kelly is a bimbo'. By this same logic, it could be said that Bill Clinton thinks all women want a cigar up their coochie, which explains a lot really.
Same thing with illegal immigrants. Trump never said 'All illegal immigrants are murderers, rapists and drug dealers'. Maybe that is what you heard, but in reality that is what he said Mexico is sending us. Along with some good people. There were good Nazis and good Communists and good Anarchists, Chumbawamba and Noam Chomsky I guess, but none of that matters. Being a nation of immigrants doesn't mean we have no system of immigration. We have had varying levels of control through out our history. Until now, where there is a system that is being completely ignored and subverted by Presidential decree.
The H1B stuff is more of the same. There is direct evidence of companies violating key provisions and except for social media and the press, not much is being done.
If nothing else, Trump running means the Democrats and about 1/2 the Republicans will never again be able to offer amnesty for a promise to build the wall. That ship has sailed.
Well...yes manufacturing is slowly coming back...but the jobs really aren't. It's mostly new automated factories with few workers. I wish that weren't the case though. It's not nothing, but it sure isn't everything.
Because the era of production lines with lots of factory workers is ending all over the world. Smarter, cheaper, more flexible robots are taking over just like the huge, simple industrial robots did some decades ago. Nobody's going to turn the clock back on that one, besides that's progress - making much more with fewer people. And to all that think we're running short of jobs, remember that most of the first world is struggling with a rapidly aging population, we need to support a larger population with a smaller workforce for the next ~30 years or so. Particularly in healthcare and care for the elderly there's a huge project increase in demand that can't easily be replaced by robots.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Very few manufactures of complex products take a raw material and produce a finished item. Many rely on parts made from other manufacturers, preferably locally so that rapid feedback can occur during the design and early production stages. If you lose a lot of parts of the local manufacturing "ecosystem" then the "apex manufacturers" are not viable and would cope better elsewhere.
So once you lose the manufacturing capability that has built up over decades it is very hard to get it back. Extra expense overseas looks bad until you see the alternative is a lot of capital outlay to start things up locally - so unless it's something new like Elon Musks batteries and electric cars it's not likely to happen. If it's lost it's very difficult to bring it back.
As a "manufacturing engineer" that had to move just keeping very old plant running then IT I'm painfully aware of that.
Fairfax, VA, has the second highest median income of all counties in the US. The cost of living is high because you choose to live in expensive places.
If they can. It's not cheap to employ an h1-b. There's a reason they want the worker in the country. Underemployment is a huge (yuge?) problem here with lots of Americans stuck in dead end temp work. If you want the benefits of doing business in America then you hire Americans. Seems reasonable to me.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They are called tariffs and lots of people think they are bad.
Yeah, but instead of 500 workers you now have 100 machines and 10 people doing maintenance.
OK, I'll bite. If there are plenty of knowledge workers available, what are they doing instead? Twiddling their thumbs? If they are working on the same field, either for themselves or a different employer, they are not really available. Supply is still less than demand. Now, if programming paid like flipping burgers, and people somehow preferred to flip burgers to code, then sure, you could say that a call for H1Bs makes no sense.
In the middle of the US, I made over $200k last year. This year, I am making quite a bit more. Is this terrible wage slavery? Absolutely average developers with some experience make over $100k, in places where a 4 bedroom house costs under $200K.
You could claim that we'd get better salaries without H1Bs (which is not really a given, as, with labor, sometimes supply CREATES demand), but wage slaves? Really? You just can't be serious.
That makes those women sexiest, but they will never admit it ...
Don't you ever forget that no matter what the Blacks do or say, they can never be racist
Same thing applies to the women --- no matter what they do or say, no woman can ever be accused as a sexist
Same thing with the Democrats --- no matter how much ideology they share with the fascists --- no way, the Democrats can never be known as fascists
That is the world we are living in, folks, deal with it !!
He's famous for stiffing the subcontractors he hires to do his construction projects.
because the language gap leads to some pretty spectacular fails
For one, it's not freezing cold right now.
I wish America would invest in it's son's and daughters for their education instead of other things, that would prevent the need for external dependency.
So what are good security guys making in your neck of the woods?
Not the grunts, I'm talking policy/strategy/consulting board room level guys. CISO etc ?
I'm curious.
I'm going to vote for any candidate who will clamp down on or preferably eliminate H1-B visas. If Trump promises to do that then I will vote for Trump. Anyone from the Trump campaign listening? You want to win IT worker votes, especially in California and New York? Promise IT workers that you will end H1-B visas and don't pay attention to what Silicon Valley poobahs at FWD.US say, they aren't the rank and file IT workers who maintain the servers, write the software and design the IT systems.
Of course, I'm white, and Western, so therefore highly competent (probably even more so than the Americans), so it will be ok.
So, change those incredibly lax laws you have there so guys like me are ok but you stop the race to the bottom using the cheap Indians and so on ...
I am from China, actually, I was from China, came to America several decades back, studied, worked, and now I run several businesses in America, as well as others in Africa, Asia and yes, Europe
As one who is in the business of earning money (else how am I going to pay my co-workers?) I can assure you that NOT all businesses are racing to the bottom
True, my businesses in America could have used H1B people to save money, plenty of it, but my style is this --- America has been very good to me, and it's time I am paying back
In the businesses I run inside America you can find only Americans - and legal permanent residents working
True, it cost me more $$ but hey, I am serving my customers and I need to have the best I can find to serve my customer
I do not need to have the 'do the needful' people to talk to my American customers - as they are paying me top dollar for whatever we are doing for them
Don't get me wrong, I am not discriminating against the Indians --- I do hire them, to serve, guess what? The customers from the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Sri Lanka markets
A note about Europe --- Europe is so fucked up that I have a lot of difficulties in operating businesses there !
At first I tried to duplicate what I did in America in Europe but it turned out to be totally impossible --- the damn laws are so insane that as an employer I don't get to choose who I hire, and it's next to impossible to fire someone too, without having to cough up my arms/legs/internal organs in the process
That's why right now, all I have in Europe are offices - not full fledge branches, but front offices mainly with sales people and field technicians
The Europeans I hire, I hire them either on contract basis, or they go work in my branches elsewhere
... but I digress
Anyway, not all American businesses race to the bottom. There are still plenty of American businesses who are hiring real talents, and who are not afraid to pay real wages reflecting the worth of the real talents
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A lot of hay has been made about Trump's support from uneducated voters, largely from this poll, page 36, which puts percent of supporters with "college degree" at 46%.
The press, of course, is quick to point out that 46% is less than half, so they proclaim far and wide that his supporters are "mostly uneducated".
What the press doesn't note, however, is that 70 % of Americans don't have a degree.
Trumps supporters are more educated than the population average.
(A copy of my earlier post, but it seems appropriate here.)
But if it infuriates whack jobs like you to think he might, that's a good thing.
Why, exactly, is that a good thing? Please go into detail.
When people get emotionally involved, their higher thought processes shut off and their lizard brain takes over. This is the "systemic heuristic model" of thought processing.
This makes it *much* more likely that they'll make a stupid mistake, and be unable to rationally and intelligently respond to changing situations.
Infuriated people have poor judgment. When you are all stupid and uncoordinated, it's more likely we will prevail.
And just for reference, I've personally TRIED to get people on this forum to engage in intelligent debate about the issues in this election. We're supposed to be the smart people in the room
Can anyone tell me why temporarily banning Muslim immigration from conflict areas is a bad idea? Seems like a common-sense approach to me.
drumpf is entertainment. low quality at that.
So you are an experienced IT professional who has been displaced by an H1-B workforce. Do you continue to hold out for a return to the glory days when your talent reigned supreme or beat them at their own game? Fresh graduates come out of school every year with just as much talent and aspirations as any H1-B candidate, yet they don't get hired as they are perceived as entitled. Form yourselves a union with apprenticeship programs to put domestically produced talent to work at rates competitive to H1-B candidates and ingrain in them that to become successful they will have to outperform said H1-B candidates by a wide margin. Will many fail, wash out and be stuck with enormous student loan debt? Of course, but right now that is happening anyway. Right now the only failure of the H1-B program is that domestically produced talent is not motivated to compete on a level playing field. Staffing companies providing H1-B candidates are the only ones taking advantage of this situation and will continue to do so until domestically produced talent is able to flip the script.
- Republicans care only for the rich people and companies owned by them. If an employee gets sick, there is no reason to help him at all.
- Democrats care only about people. All money and wealth should be divided equally to everyone. Individual skills and effort does not matter making everyone lazy as there is no point in doing anything.
I don't understand why Trump cares for the employees. Companies should be able to get work the way they want it. Markets will take care of everything, that is the idea republicans favour.
There are two options:
1. Trump is actually a Democrat. This would explain the war between other republicans which favours democrats.
2. Trump is a traditional republican who lies to stupid poor people who would benefit more for voting democrats, but who vote for the republicans because they believe in the old "if companies are doing well, people are doing well" (which might be true for a while, but not once you get sick or once the robots or cheaper labour replaces you).
I don't live in the USA and I don't really care does Trump or Hillary win. Either way I'm going take my popcorn and enjoy this episode.
With you, there will only be "wars of liberation", conducted by your Riad paymasters and their ISIS-type actors.
Trump is sooo bad !!!
We know your tactics: lies, deception, demoralization and a boatload of other techniques straight from Devil Worshippers.
She is only in the pay of Riad, a nation of global sponsors of terror and devilish ideology. Financiers of ISIS and Erdogan.
That is why she and her friends want more Mohammedic immigration. Her paymasters want Mohammedism to rule the entire globe and they have found the chink in the armour of the euro peoples: MONEY. You can buy everything for money, especially when the target is a lefty.
Trump does not play by these corrupt rules so the lefties and their Mohammedist paymasters run an Information Operation against him. Too bad there are other powerful forces with global reach and capabilities.
America clearly has the capability to make 100% American computers. But that would hurt Boeing foreign sales and Intel foreign sales, because other countries would also raise trade barriers.
So Intel and Boeing will pay nice bribes in Washington to ensure rules which benefit them.
Also, the government of China is intellectually simply one level above Ameirca and two levels above the Euros. For example, they force foreign car companies to assemble locally, but China enjoys the privilege to simply dump their ready-made mobile phones into Europe and the U.S.
I really don't know what happened, I can only guess that China Inc. does nice bribing behind the scenes, too.
Patriotic politicians would work against this kind of nonsense, but the mainstream lefty media and the finance sector poo-poos Patriotism. They are all for "creative destruction" (Friedman, one of the finance philosophers). Well, they are for destruction. Forget "creative". That word is a ruse.
In other news:
Criminals do not like Police.
Drinkers upset about not allowed to drive.
Pope suspected of Catholicism.
Folks, NY is a major part of the problem. They need to be reigned in, not the least because they benefit from destructive economic practices. What is good for NY is not necessarily good for America.
Trump IS the establishment and has been in it since birth so I really don't get why people think he's an "outsider". He used his party connections four times to escape from consequences of bankruptcy. Also this is not his first tilt at President so he's got a very firm grip on the party machinery.
Because I didn't say something about Trump being a saint I'm sure some loser will irrelevantly bring up Hillary. Personally I think Trump is about the only choice from the last fifty years of Republican history that would make Hillary look good in comparison (even Nixon and Ford look better, and I'm still pissed off with Ford taking a bribe from Indonesia in 1975).
I think money is definitely part of it, but working conditions are also a major factor. Working in a >50% visa worker environment gets pretty rough. When the guy to your left and the chick to your right feel like they have no leverage to push back, the citizen-worker voice is always a minority. Feels like it must be about more than just money, but also control on the part of the, ah, overlords. Surely one of the great benefits of foreign labor is that they aren't so burdened with delusions like "choice" or "rights" like us spoiled Americans with our pesky concepts of personal freedom and dignity. This is of course because we are governed by two very different sets of rules at the job, even though we work together shoulder-to-shoulder. How could there not be an erosion of liberty, even if difficult to quantify?
I know the reason I had to keep pushing for salary increases/company changes was because I just wouldn't subject myself to the absurd demands without making absurd demands myself in the only medium the big corpse seem to receive. The willingness to go as high as they do is a sickening indication at just how much they are screwing American Technology workers.
So I quit middle of last year. No more big corporate technology, no more big corporate anything if I can help it. Not even making them pay through the nose as a consultant. They will not get my labor, not at any price. I don't think they'll notice, but I don't feel like an accessory to some kind of evil anymore. Well, except for being a citizen of the latest evil empire hegemon and all that stuff about extorting the rest of the planet.
So yeah, let them offshore or onshore or smuggle child-slaves to live under the perf boards of the NOC. They'll have to give the devil his due eventually. Or pay the piper, or reap the whirlwind. Long-term mistakes have been made is what I'm saying, and the consequences will feel unexpected to all those fools. All sympathy or concern for wrongs being done has been burned out of me in this sphere. The collective bed is made and we will collectively lie in it. Though some will get the pillow and some the lumps. Same as it ever was.
I work for a company with sites in two European countries, Chicago, and UK. If the US government abolishes immigrant visas, I don't necessarily think that it will make a difference to job prospects for US workers. My own experience, is that it is nearly impossible to hire quality development staff in the Chicago area. We have been effectively running down that site as people leave or retire, over ten years, since there don't seem to be many sufficiently skilled applicants to replace leavers. There is also a shortage of good candidates in the UK, making recruiting slower, but there is not so much of a problem for the EU sites. I think it reflects the poor quality of the US education system. It shows in engineering approach and code quality. I know a lot of workers in the US coming in on H1B visas are not really high quality staff, so I think that work will just be offshored completely, since the kind of organisations that hire low skill/low wage employees aren't prioritising quality anyway. If you are trying to develop high end software, then it really isn't the best country to do it.
As for Donald Trump, as a European, I'm totally appalled that such a vile and stupid man can have ascended to the role of presidential candidate, but I think he'd be less destructive in terms of foreign policy disasters than Hillary Clinton, who seems to exhibit sociopathic tendencies, and appears completely unhinged. I'm pretty sure both of the likely candidates are essentially committed to the same 'free market' ideology, of making labour as cheap and disposable as possible, so from an IT workers viewpoint, it makes no difference who becomes the figure head of the US corporate regime. It's a real shame that someone with more moderate views, and an interest in improving the economic situation for ordinary people is impossible to elect in America. Extremists like Clinton and Trump and the symptom of a crumbling regime in its last throws, where massive government deficit spends will continue to run out of control, and sooner or later run up against the buffers, leading to a collapse in GDP, the dollar, and the ability to behave as a rogue authoritarian state in the world. I feed sorry for ordinary Americans having to live with these people. How can anything change, when the corporate narrative is dominant?
Not to vote for Trump. I don't care about the pathetic weenie IT losers. If their jobs are outsourced it's because anybody can do them. It makes economic sense to lay them computer nerds off and hire cheaper workforce that is just as effective, or simply outsource it. We're not in the '90s anymore, if IT is not your core business it's better to outsource it so you won't have a couple of smelly neckbeards doing nothing all day but bilge coffee-drinking and then claim they're oh-so-important because they spend 5 minutes per month fixing a mess they mostly caused themselves. There's nothing like getting rid of those obnoxious pieces of shit. We were all cheering the day our IT staff was escorted out by security.
If so, then WELCOME! Glad to have you here playing by the rules and contributing to making the place better.
It's a dirty trick of the globalists (who want quasi-slave labor to trim their lawns, nanny their kids, and drive-up the profit margins of their businesses) to claim that any American who is opposed to ILLEGAL immigration, or to the middle-class-destroying outsourcing of labor and insourcing of cheap workers, is a RACIST (which due to the nation's history with Slavery is a particularly nasty label to slap on somebody).
your political horizon only goes back to Bill Clinton or maybe Bush41. The US never used to have political correctness, and Americans used to not be terrified of somebody speaking his mind - now we have kids IN COLLEGE who need grief counseling because somebody wrote "Trump 2016" in chalk on their campus. People looking to understand Trump could do worse than to read-up on Teddy Roosevelt - he's the closest analog I can think of to Trump (both for good and for bad)
In the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan was portrayed as a stupid cowboy, a failed "B-actor", unpredictable, whacky, insane, dangerous, and people insisted he would start a nuclear war. Large numbers of establishment Republicans were making those attacks. The Bush family (Bush41, NOT the democrats, hung the name "voodoo economics" on Reagan, just as Hillary lobbed the initial birther attacks on Obama), and the George Romney (Mitt's dad) did everything they could to stop Reagan from getting the nomination and they insisted they'd never support him. At the convention, the GOP establishment was so freaked-out by Reagan that they insisted he put former president Ford on the ticket, and owing to the fact that Ford was an ex-president they insisted the title "vice president" would be beneath him so they wanted him to be a "co-president". Reagan took the nomination and stitched the party together by putting the obnxious establishment tool Bush on the ticket as VP.......... and then he went on to dig the country out of Jimmy Carter's double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, and double digit unemployment rates, re-built the military to make it again respected internationally so that he did not need to actually USE it, and then along with Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, won the Cold War without firing a shot (thus freeing more people than any other person in human history). I was in the Navy at the time. We went from having a lack of ordnance (half the fleet was unarmed at any time and we shuffled missiles back and forth between ships heading out on deployments) heavy drug use (I routinely encountered stoned sailors) bad morale (every sailor seemed to be counting the DAYS until his enlistment was up) and lots of enlisted men who were high school dropouts, to a Navy that was well-manned, well armed, well trained, and had high morale. All the guys who wanted to stay in had to get GEDs if they lacked highschool diplomas, and get off drugs if they were on them. We started carrying highschool teachers on ships to help fix things, I got aquainted with one who had taken the job cycling back and forth between ships transiting between Sand Diego and Pearl Harbor teaching classes for sailors who'd dropped out of high school but who wanted to work to get their GEDs. The guy seemed to genuinely care about the guys he was helping and he probably had a huge impact on their lives. All the vile stuff that was hurled at Reagan in the 1980 campaign aside, the 1980s ended up being an amazing time in America with the economy growing something like 6 times faster than under Obama and people in ALL brackets rising.
If history is any guide, it's POSSIBLE Trump could get into office and become a giant of the 21st century. He's actually a pretty smart guy so while none of us can know for certain what ANYBODY will do with that much power, he has the potential. It's also interesting to me that he puts so much weight on his image and name and reputation - he may not want to tarnish that with a bad presidency after spending a lifetime creating it.
Sanders is a bit of a mystery here, as somebody with a hard-left bent but who has been quite content to be a do-nothing back-bencher in congress for decades...bit of a professor sort.
Cruz is a bit of a mystery - a preacher's kid with the bit of a wild streak that often goes along with that. He seems super-ideological and hard-core until you really dig into what he has done in congress... he stood firmly on some things as expected but oddly went full-on in support of several items that were anathema to conservativ
I think you give a lot of them too much credit. Many of these black voters live in areas that have been dominated by Democrats for the last several generations and still are terrified of what would happen if they elected a Republican for once. Nevermind the fact that the people who've been dominating the local governments and impoverishing them and setting police culture that kills blacks left and right are Democrats. Despite the fact that the "red states" tend to have cleaner government, lower police brutality, etc. a Republican is unthinkable.
OK, I'll bite. If there are plenty of knowledge workers available, what are they doing instead? Twiddling their thumbs?
A lot of us are just working random contracts.
If they are working on the same field, either for themselves or a different employer, they are not really available.
Nah, I'm readily available for the right job.
Supply is still less than demand. Now, if programming paid like flipping burgers, and people somehow preferred to flip burgers to code, then sure, you could say that a call for H1Bs makes no sense.
But it does! And in order to pay like flipping burgers, they get H1Bs and then underpay them, and the H1Bs don't complain because they just go back on the boat if they do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cut our corporate tax from 35% to 20% with the promise of 15% in five years.
Give tax incentives for hiring American workers
Penalize (taxes) the use of H1B visa workers and non American workers
Eliminate US taxation of corporate income over seas (only the US does this)
Start some media campaign to point out the Apples and IBM's of the world for whom the majority of their work force is foreign. A little nationalism in the corporate world could do a us a lot of good. This competition between American workers and slave labor overseas is ridiculous and uncalled for. The Mark Fuckerburgs of the world need to be exposed for the opportunistic assholes they are and put in the hall of shame for those that have taken advantage of the US with no regard for giving back.
Not a fervent Trump supporter but my hope would be he could do well for American workers in this regard.
As far as I can tell, anybody who does not support the liberal agenda is a "racist"
Here in the real world:
Islam is no more a race than Catholicism is a race. Islam is an ideology. And from what I can see, Islam is a strange, and dangerous ideology. If Islam is a religion of peace, then shouldn't the mid-east be the most peaceful place on earth.
Mexican is not a race either. Mexico is a nation, not a race. Mexico is a nation that is serious about protecting it's borders, and is right to do so. Yet, for the US to protect it's borders against Mexico, in the same manner that Mexico protects Mexican borders, is somehow "racist" on the part of the US.
A ten minute video which puts a very different perspective on Trump.
According to the officer, it is the protesters who are obnoxious, offensive, and violent. Trump, and his supporters, try to be as civil as they can be.
Tucson Police Officer Brandon Tatum talks about his experience at Saturday's Trump rally in Tucson, AZ (3/19/2016).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjyxZ7HO7aY
He's addressing a genuine, serious issue in the US, regardless of some of the dumb shit he says or how he presents himself, the raging loony SJW types can point fingers at racism this, sexism that (heck they might be right) they need to acknowledge that serious issues like this exist.
Bernie is similar (despite being entirely different) in that he doesn't seem to mince words and he seems to be on point on key important issues to the common man, not bullshit fluff which sounds important but is meaningless drivel.
I still have a bit of schadenfreude though for a Trump win, just for the total comedy of it all, the regressive left will lose their fucking minds. (However a shame ultimately as I do lean more left than right)
All that being said, my opinion is dog shit useless on this, I'm just a foreigner who just picks up things here and there thanks to the US-centric internet. I just want Turnbull to fuck off with his negative gearing housing bubble bullshit (this won't mean much, to most of you)
Back on topic, H1B is a legit complaint from what I've read online, they fucking force you guys to train your replacements, then fly the bastards in for 60/90/180 (??) days at a time and it still works out cheaper. It's fucking disgusting. Globalisation has been good and AWFUL for the middle class and lower, y'all (me included) getting royally ass fucked (but hey, at least toasters are now $11 a pop instead of $41!!! yay?)
Get it right.
The Visas were for not 'available' positions but clearly that is a lie and there is a racket going on. Worse the companies who do it have a shitty attitude. What you do is reform and choke supply, and let the market 'bid' for limited visas. Go Trump.
As for they will shift offshore - is rubbish. The bean counters want warm bodies with a pulse to yell and scream at. Half those managers will loose their jobs if they can't manage offshore contacts directly. The price of flying people back and forth will not work - unless those people a genuinely skilled.
Reform here will get rid of ordinary doers and hire Americans who can do 'Inspirational work'.
Clinton is a square shooter. Clinton 2016!
The problem with cutting off labor trade is the market will adjust by reducing the total number of American jobs. Unemployment will go up, but a certain poster child will appear protected.
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H-1B visas were intended to give STEM companies a way to recruit the absolute best and brightest in high-end fields - when those skills are not available locally.
This was intended for research and engineering positions - PhD stuff.
Instead the program was abused to artificially increase the labor supply of half-price IT admins and code monkeys. If these visa holders are the best and the brightest, why do these visa holders end up on the low-end of the pay scale?
http://www.cis.org/PayScale-H1...
The easiest way to fix the H1B1 is to ensure that it is used for its intended purpose. Make the MINIMUM salary for an H-1B holder $150,000/yr and adjust it up annually with the CPI.
This would fix the H-1B visa abuses overnight.
What most people miss is 300M Americans buying $65M blue jeans represent $14.1 billion less money in the consumer market. That's 850,000 minimum-wage jobs; it's 260,000 median-income jobs.
What happens when that's a large swath of products? What happens when we have to pay twice as much for all that stuff we have made in China now? Then, on top of it, you have to find the labor in a market with 4.9% unemployment and so much prosperity that the labor force is shrinking while the proportion of income spent on basic-needs goods continues to go down. That means we don't have the labor to make both Netflix and American-made manufactured goods.
By cost and by manpower, we can't provide the same goods to everyone. If you increase the population, you have to supply at least the same proportion of workers in that population to provide them (scarcity happens when a good requires a *larger* proportion to scale, becoming more expensive and reducing the amount of labor available to produce some luxury for the new population, making people poorer).
People don't understand economics. I whine about this a lot; but my own economic theories DON'T DISCUSS VALUE, so I shouldn't be surprised. A lot of modern theories are strikingly close, and they'll be dead on when they stop turning down blind alleys because they're still operating on the childish logic that goods are actually worth something. Goods are produced and sold--mechanical--and cost, price, and labor factor into that process; the supposed value of a good is an imaginary property that no economist in history has ever clearly defined. They recognize a perception (valuation: what someone believes something is worth) and assume it's tied to a physical property (value: what something *is* worth, even if nobody will or can pay it), and then decide that property is the single main driver of an economy.
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Since the majority of H-1B abuse comes from IT services, there's one very easy way to keep that from happening: change the law to specifically disallow IT workers from being eligible for the H-1B. Maybe make a new visa class for IT workers with all kinds of extra restrictions on it too, but since the abuse is just about all coming from one industry, that's how you fix it.
The H-1B is a very broadly applicable visa, there are many, many people making use of it who aren't doing so fraudulently. Modifying the entire H-1B program, and increasing the difficulty for everyone, in an effort to fix the abuse from one specific industry is just stupid.
There is a fantastic argument in FAVOR of Trump here.
He KNOWS how to scam the system, he has done it himself.
If anyone could actually change the rigged system, Trump could do it, he knows how to do it. He would know what it would really take to stop someone LIKE him from being able to scam the system and get around any loopholes.
You're a fucking liar.
What happens when that's a large swath of products? What happens when we have to pay twice as much for all that stuff we have made in China now?
Americans go from buying three new pairs of jeans every year to buying a new pair of jeans every two years. Boo hoo.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Does slashdot knee jerk cover political campaigns just because they say IT workers now?
Because campaigns are all about the free advertising.
It takes the same amount of American labor as Chinese labor to make that one pair of jeans. That means Americans don't pay someone to have a job: an American loses his job because Americans are buying one less pair of jeans.
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It's better for Americans to have a job making one pair of jeans every two years then it is for the Chinese to have a job making three pears a year.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
156,000,000 Americans with jobs and Chinese making jeans.
123,000,000 Americans with jobs and Americans making jeans.
IF AMERICANS ARE MAKING THE JEANS
THEN THERE WILL BE FEWER AMERICAN JOBS.
The problem is Americans will spend additional money on jeans, which means there will be less money to spend on other things. That translates to fewer jobs created here in America, and thus fewer Americans with jobs.
Bringing the manufacture jobs to America WILL PUT AMERICANS OUT OF WORK.
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The problem is Americans will spend additional money on jeans
But at least that is something that we have control over. Sure, maybe when jeans go up to $150 a pear people will continue to buy the same amount. But if they choose to rack up their credit cards and go into debt, or spend their food and rent money on jeans then that is their prerogative. The argument that we should continue to sell out this country so that we can have cheap jeans is getting very tired. It comes down to making some sacrifices now so that our kids can have food and shelter and not starve on the streets later.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
the supposed value of a good is an imaginary property that no economist in history has ever clearly defined.
I like the rest of your post, but wanted to point out here that Marx made a pretty thorough attempt at this by defining value in terms of labor.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The no-brainer solution to the abuse is simply to prohibit the outsourcing firms from using the H1B program, and to prosecute the firms that have violated the law.
It comes down to making some sacrifices now so that our kids can have food and shelter and not starve on the streets later.
Making Jeans in China means more American kids have food and shelter because more American workers have jobs.
Making Jeans in America means fewer American workers have jobs.
We will have a reduced ability to pay American wages. Consumers pay wages: the people making the jeans make $36 per pair of jeans and the jeans sell for $38. The jeans can't sell for $14 or the workers don't get paid. With the products being more expensive, YOU CAN'T BUY AS MANY PRODUCTS, meaning fewer workers.
You aren't going to make more American jobs by bringing factory work from China to America; you're going to ELIMINATE A BUNCH OF AMERICAN JOBS, then CREATE A SMALLER NUMBER OF AMERICAN FACTORY JOBS.
Bringing work back from China will first put 57,000,000 Americans out of a job.
It will then put 39,000,000 Americans into new factory jobs.
That leaves 18,000,000 Americans newly and permanently unemployed.
You will DESTROY AMERICAN JOBS if you move factory work to the United States.
You will DESTROY AMERICAN JOBS if you move factory work to the United States.
Making jeans in China CREATES MORE AMERICAN JOBS.
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The problem is Marx generated a premise by which 1,000 worker-hours went into a truck, and so a truck has the value of 1,000 worker-hours. If you make a new truck with 500 worker-hours, then the first truck is still worth 1,000 worker-hours, even though it's the same kind of truck made a different way.
That's patently stupid.
What you have is a competing method for making a truck in which the amount of wage-labor required is reduced. You have the ability to produce trucks for a broader consumer market with lower remaining unspent income, as they don't have to pay as many wages to have the truck made; and you have laborers free to do other jobs.
In practice, the market will adjust by trying to recapture the cost of making those already-built trucks; heavy competition will mean companies take losses, while not-so-heavy competition will mean companies slowly lower the prices. The newly-unemployed truck makers will wander around without jobs until prices come down and consumer spending moves into a new area (most probably an existing luxury they couldn't previously afford--possibly trucks, which would actually reduce the number of people made unemployed by this new development), and so you get unemployment and need welfare.
Notice these are mechanics. The truck doesn't have value; it has a cost, and it has a price that's necessarily higher than that cost. Even razor-and-blade models have a combined model: the razor and the blade cost less to make than the price they sell for, and we sell the razor below-cost and the blade at a high margin. If competitors undercut your blades, you have to raise the price on your razor to match costs; the long-term razor-and-blade combined running sales price must exceed the combined running wage-labor cost.
We know markets behave in certain ways. People see a $1,000 truck and see the same truck for $500, they buy the $500 one. So much for value; people decide if the truck is worth the price based on their need, their want, the amount of free income they have (yeah, if you have thousands of unspent dollars, you might be willing to pay more for the same goods), and how easily they can get the same thing cheaper. Valuation? Yes, there's an attribute of the interaction between a consumer and a product by which a consumer values (verb) a product. Value? No, there's not a property of a product by which it contains, within itself, a correct sale price.
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I've already explained that Americans don't have to buy as many products, yet you respond with the same old rhetoric.
America has gone far too long with the attitude that everything is disposable and should be replaced once it ceases to amuse us. Remove the gluttony and greed that goes on and quickly we can have jobs back in America again.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This has nothing to do with H1B, this has everything to do with outsourcing.
H1B employees Infosys placed at Disney were temporary workers placed with the intention to absorb knowledge and processes and outsource to India. That is the business model of Infosys. There are lots of hardworking H1Bs who graduate from US universities, and choose to settle down in the US permanently and fend for themselves in a market which is biased against them. The actions of Infosys hurt American workers and hurts H1Bs equally.
The resolution is simple enough if any politician truly cared:
1. Limit sponsoring H1Bs to 2000 per organization. This will make it tough for Infosys and others to hog the annual 65000 quote and limit these outsourcing companies from abusing the H1B program. Facebook, Google, Apple hire lots of H1Bs and are not the employees who pay lesser than prevailing wages.
2. Make it easy for H1Bs to change employers. H1Bs are currently bound to employers. This artificial constraint goes against the free market and increases abuse by employers who can pay lower than prevailing wages to a bound H1B employee. Let the market prevail, and wages will automatically balance themselves.
That's patently stupid.
Yes, it is, but it's also a method for defining value.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, you're trying to explain Americans don't need to *consume* as many products--which is a good position. The ideal of less consumer waste is a wealth-creating one: overconsumption means employing more labor to make things we could avoid a need for. If we could avoid those needs, we would CREATE UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE PRODUCTION OF THOSE THINGS; and we would retain the unspent consumer buying power, allowing us to CREATE EMPLOYMENT IN THE PRODUCTION OF OTHER THINGS, thus making ourselves wealthier.
I've explained that Americans need to create jobs as consumers. An optimal consumer purchasing strategy, as above, would still produce more jobs when outsourcing manufacture to a lower-labor-cost locale (China) than when using local labor.
There is no way to escape the loss of American jobs when bringing manufacture jobs back to America. YOU WOULD PAY FEWER PEOPLE THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY TO PRODUCE THE SAME NUMBER OF THINGS.
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True. I forgot about Marx's backwardization because it's never really caught on.
The crux of Marx's theory as such is that we don't want to improve technology because we'll all get poor. If 10,000,000 people can make more stuff by investing less time in each unit good, then the goods are worth less, and we are poor.
Wealth theory--my own macroeconomic theory--suggests that this reduction of labor time is the defining feature of technology: we study (-ology) new techniques (techn-) to produce goods with less labor. Often we find a process requiring more labor to set up and operate, yet reducing labor applied to another problem; in those cases, we stay on high-labor strategies because they're cheaper (it takes 1,000 more people to maintain the machines, but 500 fewer people to operate those machines; therefor it takes 500 fewer people to use the current, low-tech method). Once we find a labor-reducing technology for implementing the new technology, we switch (we can now make the machine with 100 laborers, replacing 1,000 laborers with 500 operators, thus a net savings of 400 laborers when you include the labor to make the machines).
Reducing labor as such means each unit of population can produce proportionally more quantity goods as technology increases. Because laborers have basic needs (food, shelter) and societal basic needs (a minimum standard of living above the theoretical minimal subsistence), the minimum cost of a laborer (in terms of labor-hours to support) reduces as technology to make things like food, clothing, and shelter improves. In other words: if you need 50% of your population making food to feed everyone, then you'll be spending 50% of your income on food; if you need 5% of your population making food to feed everyone, then you can spend as low as 5% of your income on food.
This leads to things like income inequality (labor becomes cheaper, even if the labor's buying power increases; rich people's buying power increases more), increasing standards of living, and an increase in general access to luxuries (we have cars and running water now; 500 years ago, steel was too expensive for railroads, much less personal vehicles). In other words: technology creates wealth.
I explain scarcity as the limits of production. If you run out of arable land, you suddenly need to bring fertilizer and irrigation to grow more food to support a larger population; that means more labor invested in making the same amount of food. Food becomes more expensive per unit, and the availability of labor decreases: people who might have made cars now are making food, and we have fewer cars to go around. Somebody must go with less; and more people must be paid for the goods we're trying to buy which have become scarce, so our buying power is redirected that way. The demand for luxuries decreases because the affordability of basic needs or other luxuries decreases, and buying power is diverted away from buying things we don't have the labor to make anyway. Recessions set in and population growth slows.
Then we inject a gene from Barley into Wheat, and now Wheat grows 50% more yield per land area, and so we can both feed more people without hitting production limits *and* feed them at 2/3 the base cost. Food becomes cheaper, more cheap food becomes available, and population is able to expand further.
This explanation actually suggests a secondary effect approximately identical to modern supply-and-demand economics. I've just explained where supply comes from and, in part (incomplete), where demand comes from. I have some other complex market economics e.g. when you have low-demand goods (high risk for new market competitors) and thus the markets don't behave as optimized, competitive markets; the classic way to handle that is to default to Subjective Theory of Value ("people pay a lot for things like diamonds because they perceive them as valuable", with no thought as to why we can't just raise the supply and how that would affect the price of diamonds).
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Congress blocked him from doing anything. It's all their fault.
Ok well, I guess America is screwed then. *shrug*
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Trump has offshored loads of work and then hired loads of illegals and H1Bs himself. And now, he is here saying that he will help out.
This is the typical politician that continues to lie, cheat, and steal. The only good thing about him, is that he is rich enough to avoid being owned by other billionaires, which is why they have the GOP in such an uproar.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not really.
America currently has 4.9% unemployment and 9 million more jobs than in 2010. The labor force participation rate has dropped by a small percentage, enough to account for 1.2 to 1.6 million of the current population; and, in the same time, population has risen by 9 million: for every single person born between 2010 and now, there has been 1 new job.
The thing you're missing is where jobs come from. If you set up a lemonade stand in your living room selling lemonade for $1,000,000/cup, you would have no income. Nobody would come to pay for your lemonade, both because you're not visible and because nobody can afford that much. That's hyper-illustrative: you having the physical ability to perform some work doesn't mean you get paid, and you need to get paid to buy things (e.g. food).
American jobs come from Americans doing work that draws wages. Wages come from consumer spending. When you buy something, the basis of that price is the wage-labor cost of everyone working to get that product to you, from the factories to the retail cashier.
That, in turn, means the purchase of more things translates directly to the creation of more jobs. Our ability to buy more is what allows us to have a bigger population: America has 170 million more Americans now because we can produce and purchase more stuff per person. More to the point, we can do it without starting to inflate the amount of total wages per good produced: things scale up until they don't, then it gets more expensive per unit to produce further units. Think like running out of good land, so you have to employ not only farmers, but chemists (fertilizers) and engineers (irrigation), and so you have to pay more people more time.
So you end up with comparative advantage: if some other population can produce good X cheaper than we can (i.e. less labor, lower wages, whatnot), including moving it here, then we can all obtain a good X and have purchasing power left over. When we do so, we keep all the logistics, retail, shipping, marketing, advertising, and other localized support infrastructure (because driving a truck and operating a shop in America requires using people physically present here); and we increase the demand on that infrastructure, creating new jobs within. So long as that infrastructure scales, we end up with a pile of money left over.
That pile of money goes into buying other stuff, like Spotify or new goods. Tesla cars?
So think about this: Cheaper clothing. Cheaper building materials. Cheaper machines. Cheaper support infrastructure maintenance supplies. All the things American jobs are founded around are cheaper, and so the cost to buy the things we *need* lowers.
In other words: it takes 1/2 as much of the total income to buy a decent living.
Now all these people can afford to buy more stuff, creating more jobs, and expanding the population.
Then you bring it all back to the US, and everything is suddenly expensive. All these people can't afford food, clothing, and shelter. Because they can't afford it (or the other cheap things we bought), the infrastructure movers lose their jobs. Demand for goods we're now producing right here in America drops, further eroding jobs. It settles around 10%-25% loss.
How does that resolve?
Well, America's population is unsustainable in a local production model. You just need to exterminate most of the poor people--about 10%-25% of the American population.
That's what globalization did: it made America wealthy enough for the poor to live better, and made America wealthy enough to have a bigger population. The American worker stopped making clothes and started making Netflix and Tesla cars. Close that off to bring jobs back and you bring *those* jobs back at the expense of other jobs, making all Americans poorer and shoving millions of Americans into unemployment and absolute poverty.
The solution is more free trade.
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Those job numbers don't tell the whole story. Most of those jobs are for lower pay and/or are less secure than they were in the previous generation. If you think one job from 1950 provides the same quality of life as one job from 2016 then you're dreaming. Politicians like the very statistics you have quoted because they can talk about them and make the economy sound rosy while actually stepping around the fact that it is all about quality of life provided by employment, not employment itself. But you keep thinking the Netflixes, Teslas, Ubers, and Air BnBs of the world are the answer to America's quality of life problems. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Most of those jobs are for lower pay and/or are less secure than they were in the previous generation.
Not precisely. It depends on your definition of pay, and on time scales. The jobs consistently pay a lower percentage of total income (otherwise population couldn't grow); however, they also consistently pay a higher amount of absolute buying power. That is to say: Our ability to produce doubles, our income doubles, and the amount of money you get for the same job is less than twice as much. Your money still buys more than before, but not proportionally more; if it did, then we wouldn't have money left to pay new workers as population expands. (Rich people are also getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer, hence the growing income gap.)
If you think one job from 1950 provides the same quality of life as one job from 2016 then you're dreaming
It didn't. In 1950, the median American spent more than twice as much of their income (proportionally) on food and three times as much on clothing. Today, the median American spends more on healthcare than in 1950, and buys more healthcare; he spends slightly more on housing, but buys three times as much housing: 28% of income bought 984sqft in 1950, and 33% bought 2,300sqft.
In other words: Americans spend less than half as much of their paycheck on food, less than a third as much of their paycheck on clothing, and a bit more than a third as much of their paycheck per square foot of housing in 2013 as they did in 1950. They spent more on medical care because they now have the money to get medical services a 1950s family was unable to afford.
you keep thinking the Netflixes, Teslas, Ubers, and Air BnBs of the world are the answer to America's quality of life problems
These things are only available because Americans are able to spend less on food, shelter, clothing, utilities, and so forth. In case you haven't caught on: there's a giant hole in consumer spending from all those things people *need* getting cheaper.
That means a man in 1950 may have brought home $6,000/year and spent $3,600 on food, shelter, clothing, and utilities; a man in 2010 brought home $50,000 and spent $17,000 on food, shelter, clothing, and utilities. That leaves some $13,000 a 2010 household would have spent ... not being spent. That's what's buying Netflix, Uber, and all kinds of other shit--including better health care.
That number is also deceptive: our population is bigger, and that means that $50,000 is a smaller share of the total income than the $6,000 represents. In other words: if we divided all the money today by all the working Americans in 1950, they'd all get $100,000; instead, we have twice as many people, and we each get $50,000. We *still* spent a smaller portion of that $50,000 on living, and more on having a higher quality of life.
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In 1950, only one parent was working versus two parents, so right there your numbers don't take that into account. When calculating quality of life, I don't really care about 'stuff'. The only stuff that people really need is a house to give them shelter, food, and possibly a vehicle. Already housing has gone up by your numbers. The other things that matter to me in determining quality of life are: proximity to home, proximity to family, available health care, salary, job security, and being in an area where there are things for kids to do in their extra curricular time. People may be spending more on health care but they aren't getting much more for it, as the inefficiency of the system is well known. It also seems like people generally live further away from work and work longer hours, which gives them less time to be with their families and eats into their total compensation. They work these longer hours because they are afraid of losing their jobs. You also don't factor into your salary figures the fact that people spend more time these days looking for a job because jobs are more temporary. If a person has a job for $50k and they get laid off and spend a month looking for another job and then make $50K again, the stats will show $50k a year but they are only making $45k a year. Likewise, if a consultant makes $250/hour but they have to spend another 10 hours a week networking to keep that going then they are really only making $200/hour. Also, how do you calculate the stress that a constantly changing life brings to families? At one time you went to work every day at a factory and you could depend on that job. These days, who knows... the mental cost for families to deal with that through divorce and conflict must be astronomical.
So, so sum it up, you may be happy that you can buy all kinds of stuff for cheap but to me quality of life has more of a human factor that isn't seen in these numbers.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
America has a ruling class, we just don't like to talk about it. Trump is part of that ruling class. Looking back in American history you'll see the only time the working class makes gains is when one of the ruling class breaks ranks and fights for the working class. FDR's the most famous example. JFK might have been but didn't get a chance. Trump May out may not be the next one. We'll only find out if he's elected.
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How many black inmates are Muslim after going to prison? How many black Muslims are walking around? Is it the dark skin and scruffy chin we don't want.
Through demagoguery, rally enough votes from the fractured Republican party to get the nomination. Then he loses to his friend Hillary. If he unfortunately wins, he'd just have to do the job for 4 years, but that's unlikely, because most of the Republican-leaning electorate knows he's an asshole and won't vote for him.
Yeah, but instead of 500 workers you now have 100 machines and 10 people doing maintenance.
and 10 more people cleaning the toilets for the 10 people. Some jobs just will not be offshored or automated.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Trump is just as part of the establishment as any of the other candidates. He wouldn't have benefited financially if it weren't for the policies of the established politicians. His solutions that he claims to do won't actually solve problems. For example, how will a wall along the US-Mexico border stop illegal immigration when illegal immigrants can simply sneak into the US on a boat, or pay someone to smuggle them over the border? As long as there is a demand for exploited illegal immigrant labor there will be ways to get them into the US even if there is a wall. In sections where there is a wall along the US-Mexico border there are networks of tunnels that are used to sneak across the border. He is opposed to outsourcing but his political T-shirts are not made in America. I wouldn't be surprised if his website is maintained by a bunch of H1B applicants. He is opposed to illegal immigration but most likely hires illegal immigrants at his casino's for tasks such as cleaning hotel rooms. Take a look at his many failed business ventures as well as him convincing the USFL president to compete with the NFL which ultimately resulted in the USFL failing. Like any politician, he will make promises to get elected that he will be unable to keep. How many times has a politician said that he will not raise taxes or will cut your taxes? You could decide to cut taxes but the national debt will skyrocket even more if government spending isn't cut to address the lower tax revenues from lowering taxes.
In 1950, only one parent was working versus two parents, so right there your numbers don't take that into account.
Categorically false. With a labor participation rate of 59% in 1950 and 63% in 2014, only 4% more of the population could possibly be working. The increase peaked in 2000 at 67%, an increase of 8%. That means 1 in 12 American families could account as two-income families.
That analysis ignores the rate of marriage. In 2004, 67% of Americans aged 30-39 were married; in 2014, only 56% were married. 7% were unmarried and living with their partner in 2004, and 13% in 2014. That means 9% fewer married, 6% more living together unmarried, and a decline of 3% in cohabitation of couples.
However, all of that is unimportant, because my numbers center around median income levels; and the median is a single-salary $54,400/year. Dual-income households are largely poor people. (I actually work from the mean, which is slightly lower--around $53,000--but close enough).
If a person has a job for $50k and they get laid off and spend a month looking for another job and then make $50K again, the stats will show $50k a year but they are only making $45k a year.
Nope, they use IRS-reported income. You're just making up bullshit now.
When calculating quality of life, I don't really care about 'stuff'. The only stuff that people really need is a house to give them shelter, food, and possibly a vehicle.
If your ability to buy 'stuff' is low, you spend 60% of your income on food, shelter, clothing, and so forth; meanwhile a lot of people who are poorer than you scratch and claw their way to survival.
If your ability to buy 'stuff' is high, you spend 30% of your income on food, shelter, clothing, and so forth; meanwhile a lot of people who are poorer than you feel the pressure, but manage.
Already housing has gone up by your numbers.
People spent 15.8% on shelter in 1950 and 17.7% in 2003, on average, sure. The average house was 983sqft in 1950, and 2,300sqft in 2003. In other words: They spent 16% on 1,000sqft of housing in 1950, and 8.6% per 1,000sqft in 2003. Housing has nudged up to as high as 9.41% per 1,000sqft in 2010, and come down to 9.13% per 1,000sqft in 2011; it continues to fall as we exit the 2004-2007 housing bubble originally created by falling mortgage rates an an excitement to buy.
The other things that matter to me in determining quality of life are: proximity to home, proximity to family
You have more disposable income, so you can buy a house in a nicer area closer to where you want to live. In practice, people spend that extra money buying a house 3 times as big.
available health care
People spend more on health care today than they did in 1950; this is because they are buying more and better care. We've lost a lot of manufacture jobs to China, and have created a *lot* of service jobs to replace them--thanks to the low cost of goods from China and the high amount of remaining consumer buying power after those prices fell. We've taken the money we've saved by buying from China and used it to create a labor shortage in medical care: we have ten times the medical care jobs today compared to 1939. That means instead of 1 doctor per 100,000 people, we have 1 doctor per 10,000 people.
salary
There is only one meaningful measure of income: buying power. How much stuff can your money buy? It doesn't help to have a $90,000/year income if it costs you $6,000/week to feed your family poor-quality grain rice.
job security
Never going to happen. We eliminate jobs when we find a cheaper way to do things.
Karl Marx proposed that the valu
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The Donald will do any and everything to get the attention of the media. He's nothing more than a Kardashian clone having a bad hair life.
If it would win him votes, I'm sure he would undergo a sex change and change his name to Caitlyn Trump.
Another dirty job Americans won't do - marry Donald Trump. His wife entered the US on an H1-B visa as a MODEL. Yes, a model, because apparently the US can't field enough beautiful women for Trump's needs. Cheap models and wives.
Trump's take on women: if they aren't beautiful they don't deserve to work (or live for that matter). If they are beautiful he should be allowed to make money off them in some way (models on H1-B visas depress wages for Americans...he likes that) - or marry them. He even said he'd marry his daughter if she wasn't...his daughter. He's a creep.
Finally, he says (now) that women should not be allowed to control their own bodies - abortion should result in punishment for women and their docs. Not being allowed to obtain an abortion when one is unable to bear/care for a child IS punishment. I guarantee that no republican congressman's wife or daughter would be forced to continue a pregnancy were she to contract the Zika virus while pregnant. Only poor woman will have to...
Bah humbug to anyone that takes that fool Trump seriously...you'll all deserve what you get. The problem is I don't deserve what you'll get.