Hmmmm. I'm not quite sure I understand your point. Firstly, the US government is not in the business of auctioning off permission to work, nor should it be. And we're talking about permissions here, not rights; and we're talking about temporary foreign workers, not immigrants.
The federal government already auctions off spectrum in some cases-it used to just give it away. I see no reason why my taxes or yours should be higher so some fatcat can get cheap spectrum. Likewise, I see no reason why companies shouldn't pay the fair market value for the guest worker visas they want(and assume whatever risks are associated with having those workers in the US).
Secondly, there are no subsidies involved.
I suggest you take that up with Nobel prize winner economist Milton Friedman. Who told you it wasn't a subsidy?
According to the Labor Department, a company hiring an H1B is required to 1) determine the prevailing wage for the position, based on collective bargaining agreeements, government statistics, independent audit, etc; 2) determine the actual wage for the position, based on what the company pays people in the same or similar capacities with similar qualifications and experience; and 3) pay the H1B the higher of the two rates.
If you believe those regulations are enforcable-and that H-1b presence hasn't affected labor markets in the US, you are an absolute fool.
These foreign workers are already putting more tax money into the system than they're taking out.
Actually, recent immigration is associated with long term economic deterioration.
As for your last point, H1Bs are not immigrants -- they are temporary workers.
The big reason for obtaining the H-1b visa is that it confers a 50% chance at a green card. If it weren't for that, the pool of workers interested in these programs would be much different-and smaller-and they would require fundamentally different compensation.
Once here they can pursue immigration, but that is not a given. Even if they do immigrate, we are talking about people who are highly educated, highly skilled, gainfully employed, productive and law-abiding members of our society -- exactly what every country in the world would like its citizens to be.
When I was at HP, a coworker that was attempting to get funding for a project was told by someone purporting to represent upper management that he could get him funding for his project on the condition that he agree only to hire H-1b workers from India. That simply isn't an example of "law abiding" citizens with whom I want to share a country.
I don't think that "dilutes the value" of anyone's citizenship. Quite the contrary, I think it enriches our culture and makes all of us a little better off.
If you highly value local diversity, you may be better off. However, over 82 percent of the American public opposed expansion of that program. It took hundreds of missions of corporate donations to buy congress and override popular will. You are welcome to identify with that kind of process if you wish-but you should be aware of what you are doing here. I _can_ believe that 18% of the American public do have a value system by which they benefited here-but I'm clearly not in the 18%.
Look at the money spent on Itanium-and how little came out of it versus Chuck Moore's Forth chips-and far Chuck got with that with virtually no funding.
The proponents of H-1b and mass immigration said it was supposed to be economically beneficial. Do you have data that suggests it was? Personally, I think the claim that immigration is economically beneficial(while perhaps true in some cases) is largely self serving. Some folks gain from immigration-other folks loose. Because more folks loose than gain, every poll I've seen indicates most folks in the US want tighter immigration regulations.
Here's the thing, the places where technies are expected to work in the US are often places where it is especially difficult to find mates. One of the big reasons for the success of Indians in those environments is IMHO the nature of Indian marriage practices(i.e. arranged marriages). The thing that mattered most to in Indian programmer was getting a stable job-if he got that, he had a lot of support from his family/culture in finding a mate. That isn't true of US techies. I know a lot of guys that had very good jobs and virtually no social prospects.
About 50% of all folks that ever get an H-1b visa eventually get a green card. I'd guess the value of an H-1b visa to be between $50-100K(based on the dowry market in India). Basically this is what someone would pay for one of those visas if there was an auction instead of a waiting list. My big point is that valuable immigration rights shouldn't be given away as corporate subsidies. I'd rather see companies pay for these rights and lower taxes for US citizens.
The point here, you aren't adding up _all_ the costs. Immigration can dilute the value of citizenship if it isn't managed correctly.
Honestly, I think the Indian programmers are just telling the truth about the life of techies in the USA. Actually, I think the average Indian techie has more of a community than most American techies-the real situation here is far, far worse.
I happen to opposed _any_ kind of immigration in which corporate donations are running the show. Most of the American public wants less immigration according to every poll I've seen. What is driving the show is the lust of politicians for corporate donations-but politicians also deserve contempt for the sale of their offices.
I don't have anything against H-1b holders as individuals-but what I think should really happen here is the folks that made money off this treason should have those funds taxed away--and those that hold H-1b visas should be sent home with cash in their pockets. Seriously, I have nothing against some guy that worked for years to get a chance at a green card. I recent corporations using those immigration rights as compensation without paying anything to the public.
Given that the major sources of news are corporate sponsored and owned-that later point is _certainly_ true. The question is how did folks come to think that prevarication on the part of business leaders is good, right and proper?
Is how stiff this penalty is compared to that of serious corporate criminals that are already wealthy. I've seen some of this stuff up close(I worked on the audit of Riscorp, the CEO of which did prison time). There seems to be a lot of hysteria around hackers-and very little around the REALLY big criminals-who are the managers of major corporations and governmental organizations.
I've known several folks with degrees in nuclear engineering that wound up working in IT simply because it paid better. If there were some strong incentives to produce breakthroughs in nuclear energy-and incentives that just weren't a con-we'd see some action in that area.
In the US, there is little incentive for citizens to be involved in technology-which is why the only way the corrupt establishment fills these positions is to offer folks green cards to take these jobs-which is really just another form of corporate welfare. If those same immigration rights were put up at auction, we'd see the market for engineering salaries rise and some folks inclined to become really sharp attorneys and what not buying the immigration rights.
The thing is, you _can_ theoretically go orbital using the level of technology used in NASCAR. What will really make space happen is getting the guvviews and corporate sociopaths out of the way.
One of the interesting things that Eisenhauer did as well as overthrow Mossadegh was to cease all major US alternative energy research at that time. In particular, there was a plant in my home town Louisiana, Missouri that could produce gasoline from coal at about $0.13/gal(figure $0.65 in today's money). My father and many of his friends worked there. The plant was shut down, and records are to this day classified. Even when Mossadegh was overthrown, there were no vital US interests at stake. Those involved had no reason but greed and their own obscene, treasonous lust for power.
All innovation is a threat to the established multi-national corporate entities. It is naive to think Big Business is going to invent something which will lift humanity out of gutter the we now condemn 3 quarters of the world population to live.
Such an invention if it could ever come, could only come from public research.
I agree that innovation is a threat to the established social order. However, I expect that serious innovation will also affect governmental elites-particuarly frauds like those that sold their office to enrich corporate welfare queens visa H-1/L-1 expansion. As hard as this may sound, I expect that the only serious innovation we can expect will come despite the best efforts of governmental and corporate elites. Technologists should consider themselves in a struggle in which the ultimate conclusion is obliteration of way of life and corporate and governmental elites, creating a viable frontier for humanity where bureacracies just don't matter any more. All humanity will have opportunity for much longer, healthier, more prosperous existance(if that is what they seek) and a chance for real autonomy.
Extreme concentration of power is simply incompatible with human progress. Those that seek to concentrate power in very few hands should be regarded as extreme sociopaths and dealt with by whatever means necessary.
Anybody who can become an investment banker, professional athlete or star attorney would have to be either foolish or extraordinarily dedicated to go into nuclear physics instead. The "goodies" that American society offers are largely bestowed own individuals who are at best useless-and at worse downright sociopathic. The existing social order in the US seems intent on self destruction.
What the Palestinians and Israelis do to each other would matter very, very little to the world outside of a few intensely religious ideologues if if wasn't for the current would dependency on oil as an energy source. I'm no real expert on US involvement in Iran. My impression is that Bush and virtually every major business/political interest that has had intense interactions with the middle east has had an undesirable impact on the United States. The only real visible exception I can think of is the Ansari X prize. If the fusion prize had been passed twelve years ago when it was proposed and properly backed, we could have very likely seen some serious results 5-8 years ago-which would mean that if 911 had happened anyhow, we could have used the funds now being squandered in the middle east to rebuild the US energy industry on a modern basis.
Instead, congrress chose to engineer a tech bust driven by H-1b/L-1 expansion and continue mass liquidation of American assets to keep their insane party going. Whatever happens to the plutocrats in Wall Street, LA and Washington, they have noone to blame but themselves.
There have been no real incentives to make fusion work. Twelve years ago, these guys has a chance and they blue it. The lawyers in congress refused to create sane incentives-and now are risking their own lives due to that failure. The world would be a very different-and imho better-place if viable fusion now existed. The middle east would not be a hotspot like it is now for example. The problem is that the kinds of people that run congress love centralization of power-more than they love life itself. In their eyes, the only suitable role for technical people is as obediant servants that like doing what they are told. What the last 20 years has shown, you just can't run a technological society that way.
If someone is already a US citizen, there is no financial incentive to do mathematically intensive work. One would be better off financially going to law school or business school-or even medical school. The foreigners are attracted to this work because the easiest way for them to get a green card is to do this type of work-but many of them are astute enough businessmen they do soemthing else once they get their green cards. The only folks left as engineers in the US are those of us that really would have trouble doing much of anything else. When the appropriate incentives are provided, American students will learn mathematics--but that will probably mean a cultural shift in which accountants and attorneys make no more than public school teachers--and ceo's make what their japanese counterparts do. We'd also need to see guys like Kary Mullis becoming national celebrities-and a revamping of the whole system of intellectual property and incentives for invention so that good inventors could "make it" even without being affiliated with corporate or governmental dinosauric organization.
By historical standards, US engineering salaries are low compared to other American jobs. 100 years ago, a mechanical engineering job was one of the best jobs you could have.
I don't think the US will do anything about it-rich and politically influential parasites will risk death in their corner offices via repeats of 911 before their create incentives for stuff like new energy technologies.
Well the thing about open source OS's, you have the potential to have _mergers_ of functionality/OS's. My own sense(and I'm not a Linux guru) is we have 2 major Open Source OS's out there right now:Linux and the BSD's-and each have their own niche. It isn't obvious to me that AIX, Solaris won't just get merged into the other Open Source OS's in time. I haven't seen a lot of compelling innovation from Sun or IBM recently in the area of OS's-but we'll see.
Is there any purpose behind the design of US voting machines beyond easing of election fraud? From what I've seen, there is no open source, not sound authentication techniques, no paper audit trail-none of the basic stuff that I would want in a secure voting system. That tells me these are not voting machines but fraud facilitation machines.
I think this was a good point. Honestly though, what I think they are afraid of goes beyond a lack of pork. The 'wrong' people will win prizes if they are based on anything other than how much money people can raise.
Use of prizes removes a lot of the risk-and a lot of the politics. The problem is that folks that win prizes are often not entirely "politically correct" in their outlook-Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh both achieved prominance first by winning major contests.
There is some precedent here. The government spurred a lot of early aviation by awarding prizes for airial photos of the west. Some thing could be done with the asteroid belt/lunar surface.
My issue isn't with the size or riskiness of the project-it is with the notion of using a government administered project instead of a prize. Personally, the big risky project I would most like to see is something along the lines of use of non-terrestrial material to develop space habitats similar to what Gerard O'Neill proposed.
The X prize was a relatively small amount of money compared to what we are talking about here-and the commercial implications appear to be far more substantial-and the organzation of the expenditure is such there was minimal risk. Republicans are supposed to believe in free markets and competition. What are they scared of here?
I think the US needs a good, innovative commericial space program it it wants to be viable economically. There is lots of money to be made in space-and the US will need lots of money to keep up with its interest payments. That isn't the drive I see behind the latest Bush proposal.
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point. Firstly, the US government is not in the
business of auctioning off permission to work,
nor should it be. And we're talking about
permissions here, not rights; and we're talking
about temporary foreign workers, not immigrants.
The federal government already auctions off spectrum in some cases-it used to just give it away. I see no reason why my taxes or yours should be higher so some fatcat can get cheap spectrum. Likewise, I see no reason why companies shouldn't pay the fair market value for the guest worker visas they want(and assume whatever risks are associated with having those workers in the US).
Secondly, there are no subsidies involved.
I suggest you take that up with Nobel prize winner economist Milton Friedman. Who told you it wasn't a subsidy?
According to the Labor Department, a company hiring an H1B is required to 1) determine the prevailing wage for the position, based on collective bargaining agreeements, government statistics, independent audit, etc; 2) determine the actual wage for the position, based on what the company pays people in the same or similar capacities with similar qualifications and experience; and 3) pay the H1B the higher of the two rates.
If you believe those regulations are enforcable-and that H-1b presence hasn't affected labor markets in the US, you are an absolute fool.
These foreign workers are already putting more tax money into the system than they're taking out.
Actually, recent immigration is associated with long term
economic deterioration.
As for your last point, H1Bs are not immigrants -- they are temporary workers.
The big reason for obtaining the H-1b visa is that it confers a 50% chance at a green card. If it weren't for that, the pool of workers interested in these programs would be much different-and smaller-and they would require fundamentally different compensation.
Once here they can pursue immigration, but that is not a given. Even if they do immigrate, we are talking about people who are highly educated, highly skilled, gainfully employed, productive and law-abiding members of our society -- exactly what every country in the world would like its citizens to be.
When I was at HP, a coworker that was attempting to get funding for a project was told by someone purporting to represent upper management that he could get him funding for his project on the condition that he agree only to hire H-1b workers from India. That simply isn't an example of "law abiding" citizens with whom I want to share a country.
I don't think
that "dilutes the value" of anyone's citizenship. Quite the contrary, I think it enriches our culture and makes all of us a little better off.
If you highly value local diversity, you may be better off. However, over 82 percent of the American public opposed expansion of that program. It took hundreds of missions of corporate donations to buy congress and override popular will. You are welcome to identify with that kind of process if you wish-but you should be aware of what you are doing here. I _can_ believe that 18% of the American public do have a value system by which they benefited here-but I'm clearly not in the 18%.
Look at the money spent on Itanium-and how little came out of it versus Chuck Moore's Forth chips-and far Chuck got with that with virtually no funding.
The proponents of H-1b and mass immigration said it was supposed to be economically beneficial. Do you have data that suggests it was? Personally, I think the claim that immigration is economically beneficial(while perhaps true in some cases) is largely self serving. Some folks gain from immigration-other folks loose. Because more folks loose than gain, every poll I've seen indicates most folks in the US want tighter immigration regulations.
Here's the thing, the places where technies are expected to work in the US are often places where it is especially difficult to find mates. One of the big reasons for the success of Indians in those environments is IMHO the nature of Indian marriage practices(i.e. arranged marriages). The thing that mattered most to in Indian programmer was getting a stable job-if he got that, he had a lot of support from his family/culture in finding a mate. That isn't true of US techies. I know a lot of guys that had very good jobs and virtually no social prospects.
The point here, you aren't adding up _all_ the costs. Immigration can dilute the value of citizenship if it isn't managed correctly.
Honestly, I think the Indian programmers are just telling the truth about the life of techies in the USA. Actually, I think the average Indian techie has more of a community than most American techies-the real situation here is far, far worse.
I don't have anything against H-1b holders as individuals-but what I think should really happen here is the folks that made money off this treason should have those funds taxed away--and those that hold H-1b visas should be sent home with cash in their pockets. Seriously, I have nothing against some guy that worked for years to get a chance at a green card. I recent corporations using those immigration rights as compensation without paying anything to the public.
Recent immigration to the US is statistically correlated with economic deterioration.
Given that the major sources of news are corporate sponsored and owned-that later point is _certainly_ true. The question is how did folks come to think that prevarication on the part of business leaders is good, right and proper?
Is how stiff this penalty is compared to that of serious corporate criminals that are already wealthy. I've seen some of this stuff up close(I worked on the audit of Riscorp, the CEO of which did prison time). There seems to be a lot of hysteria around hackers-and very little around the REALLY big criminals-who are the managers of major corporations and governmental organizations.
I've known several folks with degrees in nuclear engineering that wound up working in IT simply because it paid better. If there were some strong incentives to produce breakthroughs in nuclear energy-and incentives that just weren't a con-we'd see some action in that area.
In the US, there is little incentive for citizens to be involved in technology-which is why the only way the corrupt establishment fills these positions is to offer folks green cards to take these jobs-which is really just another form of corporate welfare. If those same immigration rights were put up at auction, we'd see the market for engineering salaries rise and some folks inclined to become really sharp attorneys and what not buying the immigration rights.
The thing is, you _can_ theoretically go orbital using the level of technology used in NASCAR. What will really make space happen is getting the guvviews and corporate sociopaths out of the way.
One of the interesting things that Eisenhauer did as well as overthrow Mossadegh was to cease all major US alternative energy research at that time. In particular, there was a plant in my home town Louisiana, Missouri that could produce gasoline from coal at about $0.13/gal(figure $0.65 in today's money). My father and many of his friends worked there. The plant was shut down, and records are to this day classified. Even when Mossadegh was overthrown, there were no vital US interests at stake. Those involved had no reason but greed and their own obscene, treasonous lust for power.
Such an invention if it could ever come, could only come from public research.
I agree that innovation is a threat to the established social order. However, I expect that serious innovation will also affect governmental elites-particuarly frauds like those that sold their office to enrich corporate welfare queens visa H-1/L-1 expansion. As hard as this may sound, I expect that the only serious innovation we can expect will come despite the best efforts of governmental and corporate elites. Technologists should consider themselves in a struggle in which the ultimate conclusion is obliteration of way of life and corporate and governmental elites, creating a viable frontier for humanity where bureacracies just don't matter any more. All humanity will have opportunity for much longer, healthier, more prosperous existance(if that is what they seek) and a chance for real autonomy.
Extreme concentration of power is simply incompatible with human progress. Those that seek to concentrate power in very few hands should be regarded as extreme sociopaths and dealt with by whatever means necessary.
Anybody who can become an investment banker, professional athlete or star attorney would have to be either foolish or extraordinarily dedicated to go into nuclear physics instead. The "goodies" that American society offers are largely bestowed own individuals who are at best useless-and at worse downright sociopathic. The existing social order in the US seems intent on self destruction.
Instead, congrress chose to engineer a tech bust driven by H-1b/L-1 expansion and continue mass liquidation of American assets to keep their insane party going. Whatever happens to the plutocrats in Wall Street, LA and Washington, they have noone to blame but themselves.
There have been no real incentives to make fusion work. Twelve years ago, these guys has a chance and they blue it. The lawyers in congress refused to create sane incentives-and now are risking their own lives due to that failure. The world would be a very different-and imho better-place if viable fusion now existed. The middle east would not be a hotspot like it is now for example. The problem is that the kinds of people that run congress love centralization of power-more than they love life itself. In their eyes, the only suitable role for technical people is as obediant servants that like doing what they are told. What the last 20 years has shown, you just can't run a technological society that way.
By historical standards, US engineering salaries are low compared to other American jobs. 100 years ago, a mechanical engineering job was one of the best jobs you could have.
I don't think the US will do anything about it-rich and politically influential parasites will risk death in their corner offices via repeats of 911 before their create incentives for stuff like new energy technologies.
Well the thing about open source OS's, you have the potential to have _mergers_ of functionality/OS's. My own sense(and I'm not a Linux guru) is we have 2 major Open Source OS's out there right now:Linux and the BSD's-and each have their own niche. It isn't obvious to me that AIX, Solaris won't just get merged into the other Open Source OS's in time. I haven't seen a lot of compelling innovation from Sun or IBM recently in the area of OS's-but we'll see.
Is there any purpose behind the design of US voting machines beyond easing of election fraud? From what I've seen, there is no open source, not sound authentication techniques, no paper audit trail-none of the basic stuff that I would want in a secure voting system. That tells me these are not voting machines but fraud facilitation machines.
I think this was a good point. Honestly though, what I think they are afraid of goes beyond a lack of pork. The 'wrong' people will win prizes if they are based on anything other than how much money people can raise.
There is some precedent here. The government spurred a lot of early aviation by awarding prizes for airial photos of the west. Some thing could be done with the asteroid belt/lunar surface.
The fundamental question here:
which would produce better results per dollar expended, prizes or government administered projects?
My issue isn't with the size or riskiness of the project-it is with the notion of using a government administered project instead of a prize. Personally, the big risky project I would most like to see is something along the lines of use of non-terrestrial material to develop space habitats similar to what Gerard O'Neill proposed.
compared to what we are talking about here-and the commercial implications appear to be far more substantial-and the organzation of the expenditure is such there was minimal risk. Republicans are supposed to believe in free markets and competition. What are they scared of here?
I think the US needs a good, innovative commericial space program it it wants to be viable economically. There is lots of money to be made in space-and the US will need lots of money to keep up with its interest payments. That isn't the drive I see behind the latest Bush proposal.