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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.
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
Just go to Mexico and walk across the border.
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.
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.
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/
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.
He's famous for stiffing the subcontractors he hires to do his construction projects.
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.
- 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.
The problem for me isn't the H1-B workforce itself, but the terms of the H1-B visa that make it impossible for the employee (who is not the visa holder) to participate in the workforce. Since the visa is held by the employer and the terms don't give anywhere near enough time between the candidate accepting an offer and his would-be new employer being able to obtain their own H1-B visa for him, he's going to be forced to leave the country and won't be eligible to return to go to work. That essentially locks an employee into one single employer and prevents him from accepting a better offer for his services even if one's made to him. This smacks an awful lot of a form of slavery. It's almost like those companies don't want to compete in the marketplace for the services of their employees.
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).
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.'"
We should eliminate the corporate and personal income tax entirely in favor of the "fair tax"(fairtax.org). It's time that we realized the idiocy of punishing production and rewarding consumption. It is impossible to build a sustainable economy based on "consumer spending". The whole consumer spending economy has been a 30 year fraud enabled by continuous debt accumulation.
Next, we establish some sane, non-protectionist tariffs. Just high enough so that wage and environmental arbitrage are not by themselves a compelling economic advantage to move operations outside the USA.
Then allow a one time, tax free repatriation of any offshore financial assets.
Investment capital would start flowing back to the USA and spark a genuine economic recovery.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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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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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For me the quality issue seems to be not so much a question of "H1-B or not" as of "contractor or not". Almost all of the H1-Bs I've seen have been brought over from one of the big Indian contracting/outsourcing companies, and the attitude of those companies is very much "get it done as fast as we can and still pass the acceptance tests, don't worry about quality or maintainability because we won't be the ones who have to clean up the mess" (or if they are, it's another contract billed by the hour so the worse the mess the better for them). The large American contracting and consulting firms aren't much if any better in that regard either, which is why I hated it when the contractors or consultants got their fingers into the code.
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.
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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