I said nothing about auctioning off people, I said auction off permits to hire H-1B visa workers. You can read English, correct?
I also said nothing about firing people, I said stop handing out new H-1B visas and stop renewing existing ones. Existing workers with H-1B visas would be able to work out the rest of their visa term.
Hurling arrogant insults at Americans is not going to help your argument any more either. If anyone benefits from the American economy, it should be the American people since we are stuck with it, for better or for worse.
Don't tell the corporations who to let go, just stop renewing H-1B visas and stop handing out new ones. We've had what... 3 million people lose their jobs over the last year? California's unemployment rate is at 9% and rising. The supply of labor, and I'm sure that includes professionals, has just had a huge increase. Unless they create more demand by ending the H-1B visa program, you're going to have a lot of U.S. citizens unnecessarily unemployed.
When the economy starts to turn around, then you can restore the professional worker visa program, except hopefully they'll do it right this time:
1) Give the visas to the WORKERS, not the companies. Allow the workers to choose from companies hiring foreign guest workers, so they are not stuck with one company. Have applicants take the GRE or some other specialized test, and give the visas to the applicants who score the highest. The visa should cost the worker a significant fee, which would be charged annually upon renewal. The funds from these fees should go to training U.S. citizens in the specialized fields that are currently in demand.
2) Auction off a limited number of guest worker permits to U.S. companies, the highest bidder winning. A guest worker permit would be needed before a company can hire a guest worker with a H-1B. Use the funds for the same purpose in 1.
3) ONLY ALLOW COMPANIES HEADQUARTERED IN THE U.S. TO HIRE H-1B GUEST WORKERS! Right now the top two H-1B visa companies are headquartered in India. They hire people from India and then contract them out to U.S. companies. They charge the U.S. company $30 - 80 an hour, and pocket 50% - 75% of it. I've known these contractors, one charged the company $30 while paying a Software Engineer with 7 years of experience $15 an hour (Mexico) and another charged $80 an hour while paying the worker $30 an hour (India).
The goal of H-1B visas should not be just to fulfill a demand for specialized workers, but also to increase the number of U.S. citizens who can fulfill those positions in the future.
I wish my mom didn't want broadband, cause then maybe should wouldn't forward crappy chain letters about menopause or Obama being a muslim to my email address.
He's trying to be bipartisan, this is just another example of a decision of his that is good for everyone.
Of course he's going to make decisions that liberals like and conservatives don't, and vice versa. That's a part of being bipartisan, you can't make everyone happy all of the time.
Of course they're going to lay people off, H-1B visa hiring is just around the corner!
I just wonder if:
1) They kept H-1B visa workers while firing Americans.
2) They're going to get away with hiring more H-1B visa workers in April, when more H-1B visas are handed out.
It's not a handout, it's reimbursement for the loss of value that my analog television will suffer once transmission is switched to digital.
How much would it cost all the people who have analog televisions to buy converter boxes themselves? That's the minimum it should cost whomever ends up using the spectrum freed as a result of the analog-to-digital conversion. Of course, it ended up costing Verizon billions, and the government set aside a chunk of that money to pay for converter boxes.
Why should owners of analog televisions eat any of the cost of the digital-to-analog conversion? They may have been satisfied with their analog television, but they're being forced to spend money to switch regardless.
How about the other side? The fact that the telcos want to start screwing the web startups by charging them for data sent from them to us over a connection we already pay for? That is what Net Neutrality was originally about, preventing the telcos from double dipping and creating a financial bottleneck for content sent over the internet. If he's associated with web startups and media that's not on the telcos' side, then most likely he is against the telcos' pay-to-play scheme.
So you're countering one slippery slope argument with another?
Slapping a warning label on a product will increase the likelihood of that product being banned as much as playing violent video games will increase the likelihood of committing violent acts.
If you say you aren't afraid of violent video games influencing people to cause violent acts, then you shouldn't be against a warning label out of fear that it might influence people to want to ban a product.
Also, cigarettes are a completely different beast. Wear a fishbowl on your head and smoke a cigarette in that, and you could smoke indoors, outdoors, wherever the hell you wanted.
They're already doing it, it's just not moving along very quickly. Radiologists are switching from keeping physical film to storing x-rays in databases, Hospital Information Systems store patient records and manage appointments. Switching health records to digital has some expensive start up costs, but saves a lot of time and money in the long run.
Employers wouldn't be able to abuse their employees if they knew they all belonged to the same IT/Programmers Union and they would risk losing all their IT/Programmers if they abuse even just one. No one cares about one squeaky wheel, you can even fire that squeaky wheel if it comes to that, but if all your wheels are squeaky, you can't fire them or else you wouldn't have any wheels to drive you car (business) on.
Oh, you'll just outsource or hiring HB-1 visas? Good luck doing that, you'll be getting a hell of a lot of political pressure from labor.
You'll just take your company and go crying to another country? Go ahead, another twenty companies will pop here to replace you and put you out of business.
As long as you make quality products, you can afford to treat your employees well and deal with an employee union.
Yes, does this guy still work for the RIAA? If he doesn't, then does anyone have any evidence that he personally believes in the RIAA agenda?
The question is, is the RIAA comes knocking, can he do his job without being biased towards a previous employer?
Why would they drop the price if, without a converter box, you will be cut off from television? People would pay $100 for a converter box if that was the cheapest available. They know that, because all us analog TV owners will be dead in the water come February 14th, they have us by the genitals.
About a month ago I bought a $40 Airlink Analog-To-Digital convertor from Frys, absolutely free with the $40 coupon, not even taxes. It wasn't fancy, but it did the job and our channels came in with absolutely no snow, noise, etc.
Recently I went back to Frys to purchase another for my sister. Well, they didn't have the $40 box in stock, only a $60 box. I asked a Frys employee if they had any $40 boxes and he said no, the manuf. had discontinued that version.
So then I asked, what feature did this box have that I had to pay $20 extra bucks for? Well, it passes the analog signal through, so that if I want to watch analog TV, I can just turn off the converter and flip the channels via the TV instead. Of course, this $20 feature is almost useless right now, since I could just plug the antenna back into the TV instead and every analog channel shows up with noise anyways, and it will be completely useless after February 17th when all analog television broadcasts are shut down.
Find out what works best for each of your engineers and be flexible. Is this person more productive when they work with a team, or when they work alone? Is this person more productive when you handle some of the organization responsibilities and let them focus on coding, or should you let them handle project planning themselves? Does this person like to have a more personal relationship with their manager (ex. happy hour) or would they rather come in, do their work, and go home at the end of the day?
See what works and what doesn't with each person. Chances are you'll be doing very little oversight, because you'll be busy fighting the pressure from the top down, but be ready to act as a decision maker for your team when asked.
COX in San Diego sells internet access without any other requirements. They even have specials; when I signed up I think I paid $25 for the first 3 months for their Premier internet access (6 Mbps), which went up to $40 thereafter.
I decided to try AT&T, and had a horrible experience. They do have "naked" DSL, but it cost an extra $10 than DSL with an active AT&T phoneline. The cheapest AT&T phoneline is ~$5, ends up being $10 after all the stupid fees, and has a $40 activation fee. You can choose the "naked" DSL or DSL with a phoneline and they both come out to about the same price.
I signed up for the $35 internet access, plus the $5 phoneline, which gave me a 6 Mbps connection. They activated the phone line about a week before the DSL. The DSL ended up being 3 Mbps, so I called to cancel and try to get some of my money back. I'm still dealing with AT&T, since they are charging me a full month when I canceled two days after my DSL was activated.
I was going to stay with AT&T, reluctantly, since I had already forked out all the fees, but COX offered me a retention offer of $30 for 6 months, so I decided to cancel AT&T and try to get as much money back as I could. COX has also recently upgraded Premier from 6 to 9 Mbps.
The only time I've paid for cable television or a phone line is when it was automatically included in the rent. Otherwise, I live off of my wireless phone, over-the-air television, cable internet access, NetFlix DVDs and Watch Now. All of that costs me 80 to 90 bucks a month.
I especially like this part:
"The plan would involve some level of filtering but might allow adults to opt out."
I think this opt-out attitude is great. Children can be protected by having the filters in place by default but adults can retain their freedom by having the choice to opt-out.
Judge Doom: A few weeks ago I had the good providence to stumble upon a plan of the city council. A construction plan of epic proportions. We're calling it a freeway.
Eddie Valiant: Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?
Judge Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.
Eddie Valiant: So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don't get it.
Judge Doom: Of course not. You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
What about everyone jumping on credit default swaps on loans that were imminently going into default? That wasn't a poor innocent company trying to do business, that was a stupid company blinded by all the money they were getting without doing a proper amount of risk management.
We've got like a 1.7 trillion dollar GDP, $15 billion is less than 1% of that. $1 billion is what... 0.06% of that?
California was only asking for a federal bailout because it couldn't access any credit because of the credit freeze. Since some states have successfully been able to tap into credit (MA), California will likely be able to survive without federal assistance.
We've also got a high speed train on the way, which will connect SF to LA. Los Angeles is pushing to get 10% of its electricity from solar (panels on roofs/in mojave desert). The more we move energy sources back into the state, the less money that ends up leaving the state.
I partially agree with you, that children need to be protected, but I partially agree with the arguments submitted below you, that the gov't shouldn't be responsible for censoring the internet.
What I think should be done is that either the ISP or the parent's should be held responsible for the content child have access to on their home internet.
The ISP's should be required to make a good-faith effort to help the parent's control the content that their children have access to, while the parent's should accept the full responsibility of monitoring their child's internet access.
If their child get's access to donkey show porn, there should be some kind of consequence for the parent: a fine, forced to take a class on parenting and the internet, banned from having in-home internet access for x number of months.
If the ISP did not make a good-faith effort to help the parent to control the content, then they too should face a consequence: a fine or potentially losing their right to be an ISP.
I would consider a good-faith effort to be. providing the parent with functional parental control software (client or server side). Cox's parent control/security software is crap, so I wouldn't consider that a good-faith effort. Easy to follow documentation for the setup and configuration of said software. A convenient email and phone technical support solution for the setup and configuration of said software.
This would put the responsibility and therefore power in the hands of the ISP and the consumer. Of course, the FCC can insure the policy is working by "auditing" the effectiveness of the ISP's policies.
"Solution 2 results in a bunch of individuals who made bad decisions getting a pass, plus a lot of profiteers jumping on the bandwagon"
You don't think the people in these banks are going to find a way to profit from this bail-out, even if they're not hurting that much?
"IMHO if you made a bad decision you should get thrown out of your home."
So its ok to let people get thrown out of their homes enmasse but not ok to let businesses collapse? Maybe some of these banks need to burn so that new ones can be created and so that this whole mess is less likely to happen again.
Maybe if we helped people pay their mortgages, the banks would feel more confident about buying/selling these securities since their risk is reduced. Then we could force the banks to renegotiate the terms of the mortgages to a more reasonable rate and/or term, so that the borrowers can pay it without assistance. The banks eat a loss because the interest is lower but so to the borrowers because their house has dropped in value.
I just feel that when it comes to bailing out a bank that's trying to make money off of investments or bailing out a taxpayer who's just trying to own a home, I sympathize more with the taxpayer because home ownership is a cornerstone of the American dream. Plus, if you give the money to the borrower in the form of mortgage assistance it's going to go to the bank anyways, right? It's just in that case, the borrower has a much better chance of keeping their home.
Shhhhhhhhh... Don't use such a good example against the argument that Capitalism is the greatest thing in the world otherwise they'll call you a Socialist! After all, being a socialist is unamerican. I'm sure glad our highway system wasn't a socialist invention, because that was one of the greatest American achievements and that would simply validate socialism in some way!
It's good for you unless the more expensive company goes out of business, leaving the cheaper company the only company who can serve you. Once the competition is gone, they slowly raise their prices to above what their competitor is charging. They've also bullied the local lawnmower manufacturers into selling them equipment at a discount, so any new competition is going to have a harder time re-entering the market because they'll actually pay much more for their equipment. If a competitor does somehow enter a market, well... since this landscaping company has business with income all over the region, they drop their prices again, negating their loss using the profits from the other regions. Another competitor goes out of businesses, prices go back up, so on and so forth.
Of course, you could just mow your lawn yourself. You could also grow food yourself, make your own gasoline, build your own car.
I'm just curious, did you have any qualifications besides 3 years of working at the support desk? Do you at least write code in your free time?
Most of the people in our support department would be terrible programmers. Some might be able to hack it, but they'd probably stick to ifs and for loops and make everything look like a huge main block.
Then again, there is one guy in development who does write everything like a huge main block.
If your only qualification is 3 years of working at the support desk, then you are lucky they hired you rather than someone with at least a B.S. in Computer Science. The best advice I can give you is start writing code in your free time immediately. Follow tutorials on common data structures, like stacks, heaps, pointers, etc. Once you have that down, start practicing OOP.
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I said nothing about auctioning off people, I said auction off permits to hire H-1B visa workers. You can read English, correct?
I also said nothing about firing people, I said stop handing out new H-1B visas and stop renewing existing ones. Existing workers with H-1B visas would be able to work out the rest of their visa term.
Hurling arrogant insults at Americans is not going to help your argument any more either. If anyone benefits from the American economy, it should be the American people since we are stuck with it, for better or for worse.
Don't tell the corporations who to let go, just stop renewing H-1B visas and stop handing out new ones. We've had what... 3 million people lose their jobs over the last year? California's unemployment rate is at 9% and rising. The supply of labor, and I'm sure that includes professionals, has just had a huge increase. Unless they create more demand by ending the H-1B visa program, you're going to have a lot of U.S. citizens unnecessarily unemployed.
When the economy starts to turn around, then you can restore the professional worker visa program, except hopefully they'll do it right this time:
1) Give the visas to the WORKERS, not the companies. Allow the workers to choose from companies hiring foreign guest workers, so they are not stuck with one company. Have applicants take the GRE or some other specialized test, and give the visas to the applicants who score the highest. The visa should cost the worker a significant fee, which would be charged annually upon renewal. The funds from these fees should go to training U.S. citizens in the specialized fields that are currently in demand.
2) Auction off a limited number of guest worker permits to U.S. companies, the highest bidder winning. A guest worker permit would be needed before a company can hire a guest worker with a H-1B. Use the funds for the same purpose in 1.
3) ONLY ALLOW COMPANIES HEADQUARTERED IN THE U.S. TO HIRE H-1B GUEST WORKERS! Right now the top two H-1B visa companies are headquartered in India. They hire people from India and then contract them out to U.S. companies. They charge the U.S. company $30 - 80 an hour, and pocket 50% - 75% of it. I've known these contractors, one charged the company $30 while paying a Software Engineer with 7 years of experience $15 an hour (Mexico) and another charged $80 an hour while paying the worker $30 an hour (India).
The goal of H-1B visas should not be just to fulfill a demand for specialized workers, but also to increase the number of U.S. citizens who can fulfill those positions in the future.
I wish my mom didn't want broadband, cause then maybe should wouldn't forward crappy chain letters about menopause or Obama being a muslim to my email address.
He's trying to be bipartisan, this is just another example of a decision of his that is good for everyone. Of course he's going to make decisions that liberals like and conservatives don't, and vice versa. That's a part of being bipartisan, you can't make everyone happy all of the time.
Of course they're going to lay people off, H-1B visa hiring is just around the corner! I just wonder if: 1) They kept H-1B visa workers while firing Americans. 2) They're going to get away with hiring more H-1B visa workers in April, when more H-1B visas are handed out.
It's not a handout, it's reimbursement for the loss of value that my analog television will suffer once transmission is switched to digital.
How much would it cost all the people who have analog televisions to buy converter boxes themselves? That's the minimum it should cost whomever ends up using the spectrum freed as a result of the analog-to-digital conversion. Of course, it ended up costing Verizon billions, and the government set aside a chunk of that money to pay for converter boxes.
Why should owners of analog televisions eat any of the cost of the digital-to-analog conversion? They may have been satisfied with their analog television, but they're being forced to spend money to switch regardless.
How about the other side? The fact that the telcos want to start screwing the web startups by charging them for data sent from them to us over a connection we already pay for? That is what Net Neutrality was originally about, preventing the telcos from double dipping and creating a financial bottleneck for content sent over the internet. If he's associated with web startups and media that's not on the telcos' side, then most likely he is against the telcos' pay-to-play scheme.
So you're countering one slippery slope argument with another?
Slapping a warning label on a product will increase the likelihood of that product being banned as much as playing violent video games will increase the likelihood of committing violent acts.
If you say you aren't afraid of violent video games influencing people to cause violent acts, then you shouldn't be against a warning label out of fear that it might influence people to want to ban a product.
Also, cigarettes are a completely different beast. Wear a fishbowl on your head and smoke a cigarette in that, and you could smoke indoors, outdoors, wherever the hell you wanted.
Just trying to nip stupidity in the bud.
They're already doing it, it's just not moving along very quickly. Radiologists are switching from keeping physical film to storing x-rays in databases, Hospital Information Systems store patient records and manage appointments. Switching health records to digital has some expensive start up costs, but saves a lot of time and money in the long run.
Employers wouldn't be able to abuse their employees if they knew they all belonged to the same IT/Programmers Union and they would risk losing all their IT/Programmers if they abuse even just one. No one cares about one squeaky wheel, you can even fire that squeaky wheel if it comes to that, but if all your wheels are squeaky, you can't fire them or else you wouldn't have any wheels to drive you car (business) on.
Oh, you'll just outsource or hiring HB-1 visas? Good luck doing that, you'll be getting a hell of a lot of political pressure from labor.
You'll just take your company and go crying to another country? Go ahead, another twenty companies will pop here to replace you and put you out of business.
As long as you make quality products, you can afford to treat your employees well and deal with an employee union.
Yes, does this guy still work for the RIAA? If he doesn't, then does anyone have any evidence that he personally believes in the RIAA agenda? The question is, is the RIAA comes knocking, can he do his job without being biased towards a previous employer?
So this is where all the Republicans and Paulites on Slashdot hang out!
Why would they drop the price if, without a converter box, you will be cut off from television? People would pay $100 for a converter box if that was the cheapest available. They know that, because all us analog TV owners will be dead in the water come February 14th, they have us by the genitals.
About a month ago I bought a $40 Airlink Analog-To-Digital convertor from Frys, absolutely free with the $40 coupon, not even taxes. It wasn't fancy, but it did the job and our channels came in with absolutely no snow, noise, etc.
Recently I went back to Frys to purchase another for my sister. Well, they didn't have the $40 box in stock, only a $60 box. I asked a Frys employee if they had any $40 boxes and he said no, the manuf. had discontinued that version.
So then I asked, what feature did this box have that I had to pay $20 extra bucks for? Well, it passes the analog signal through, so that if I want to watch analog TV, I can just turn off the converter and flip the channels via the TV instead. Of course, this $20 feature is almost useless right now, since I could just plug the antenna back into the TV instead and every analog channel shows up with noise anyways, and it will be completely useless after February 17th when all analog television broadcasts are shut down.
Yay capitalism.
Find out what works best for each of your engineers and be flexible. Is this person more productive when they work with a team, or when they work alone? Is this person more productive when you handle some of the organization responsibilities and let them focus on coding, or should you let them handle project planning themselves? Does this person like to have a more personal relationship with their manager (ex. happy hour) or would they rather come in, do their work, and go home at the end of the day?
See what works and what doesn't with each person. Chances are you'll be doing very little oversight, because you'll be busy fighting the pressure from the top down, but be ready to act as a decision maker for your team when asked.
COX in San Diego sells internet access without any other requirements. They even have specials; when I signed up I think I paid $25 for the first 3 months for their Premier internet access (6 Mbps), which went up to $40 thereafter.
I decided to try AT&T, and had a horrible experience. They do have "naked" DSL, but it cost an extra $10 than DSL with an active AT&T phoneline. The cheapest AT&T phoneline is ~$5, ends up being $10 after all the stupid fees, and has a $40 activation fee. You can choose the "naked" DSL or DSL with a phoneline and they both come out to about the same price.
I signed up for the $35 internet access, plus the $5 phoneline, which gave me a 6 Mbps connection. They activated the phone line about a week before the DSL. The DSL ended up being 3 Mbps, so I called to cancel and try to get some of my money back. I'm still dealing with AT&T, since they are charging me a full month when I canceled two days after my DSL was activated.
I was going to stay with AT&T, reluctantly, since I had already forked out all the fees, but COX offered me a retention offer of $30 for 6 months, so I decided to cancel AT&T and try to get as much money back as I could. COX has also recently upgraded Premier from 6 to 9 Mbps.
The only time I've paid for cable television or a phone line is when it was automatically included in the rent. Otherwise, I live off of my wireless phone, over-the-air television, cable internet access, NetFlix DVDs and Watch Now. All of that costs me 80 to 90 bucks a month.
I especially like this part:
"The plan would involve some level of filtering but might allow adults to opt out."
I think this opt-out attitude is great. Children can be protected by having the filters in place by default but adults can retain their freedom by having the choice to opt-out.
Judge Doom: A few weeks ago I had the good providence to stumble upon a plan of the city council. A construction plan of epic proportions. We're calling it a freeway.
Eddie Valiant: Freeway? What the hell's a freeway?
Judge Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.
Eddie Valiant: So that's why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don't get it.
Judge Doom: Of course not. You lack vision, but I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.
What about everyone jumping on credit default swaps on loans that were imminently going into default? That wasn't a poor innocent company trying to do business, that was a stupid company blinded by all the money they were getting without doing a proper amount of risk management.
We've got like a 1.7 trillion dollar GDP, $15 billion is less than 1% of that. $1 billion is what... 0.06% of that?
California was only asking for a federal bailout because it couldn't access any credit because of the credit freeze. Since some states have successfully been able to tap into credit (MA), California will likely be able to survive without federal assistance.
We've also got a high speed train on the way, which will connect SF to LA. Los Angeles is pushing to get 10% of its electricity from solar (panels on roofs/in mojave desert). The more we move energy sources back into the state, the less money that ends up leaving the state.
I partially agree with you, that children need to be protected, but I partially agree with the arguments submitted below you, that the gov't shouldn't be responsible for censoring the internet.
What I think should be done is that either the ISP or the parent's should be held responsible for the content child have access to on their home internet.
The ISP's should be required to make a good-faith effort to help the parent's control the content that their children have access to, while the parent's should accept the full responsibility of monitoring their child's internet access.
If their child get's access to donkey show porn, there should be some kind of consequence for the parent: a fine, forced to take a class on parenting and the internet, banned from having in-home internet access for x number of months.
If the ISP did not make a good-faith effort to help the parent to control the content, then they too should face a consequence: a fine or potentially losing their right to be an ISP.
I would consider a good-faith effort to be. providing the parent with functional parental control software (client or server side). Cox's parent control/security software is crap, so I wouldn't consider that a good-faith effort. Easy to follow documentation for the setup and configuration of said software. A convenient email and phone technical support solution for the setup and configuration of said software.
This would put the responsibility and therefore power in the hands of the ISP and the consumer. Of course, the FCC can insure the policy is working by "auditing" the effectiveness of the ISP's policies.
"Solution 2 results in a bunch of individuals who made bad decisions getting a pass, plus a lot of profiteers jumping on the bandwagon"
You don't think the people in these banks are going to find a way to profit from this bail-out, even if they're not hurting that much?
"IMHO if you made a bad decision you should get thrown out of your home."
So its ok to let people get thrown out of their homes enmasse but not ok to let businesses collapse? Maybe some of these banks need to burn so that new ones can be created and so that this whole mess is less likely to happen again.
Maybe if we helped people pay their mortgages, the banks would feel more confident about buying/selling these securities since their risk is reduced. Then we could force the banks to renegotiate the terms of the mortgages to a more reasonable rate and/or term, so that the borrowers can pay it without assistance. The banks eat a loss because the interest is lower but so to the borrowers because their house has dropped in value.
I just feel that when it comes to bailing out a bank that's trying to make money off of investments or bailing out a taxpayer who's just trying to own a home, I sympathize more with the taxpayer because home ownership is a cornerstone of the American dream. Plus, if you give the money to the borrower in the form of mortgage assistance it's going to go to the bank anyways, right? It's just in that case, the borrower has a much better chance of keeping their home.
Shhhhhhhhh... Don't use such a good example against the argument that Capitalism is the greatest thing in the world otherwise they'll call you a Socialist! After all, being a socialist is unamerican. I'm sure glad our highway system wasn't a socialist invention, because that was one of the greatest American achievements and that would simply validate socialism in some way!
It's good for you unless the more expensive company goes out of business, leaving the cheaper company the only company who can serve you. Once the competition is gone, they slowly raise their prices to above what their competitor is charging. They've also bullied the local lawnmower manufacturers into selling them equipment at a discount, so any new competition is going to have a harder time re-entering the market because they'll actually pay much more for their equipment. If a competitor does somehow enter a market, well... since this landscaping company has business with income all over the region, they drop their prices again, negating their loss using the profits from the other regions. Another competitor goes out of businesses, prices go back up, so on and so forth.
Of course, you could just mow your lawn yourself. You could also grow food yourself, make your own gasoline, build your own car.
I'm just curious, did you have any qualifications besides 3 years of working at the support desk? Do you at least write code in your free time?
Most of the people in our support department would be terrible programmers. Some might be able to hack it, but they'd probably stick to ifs and for loops and make everything look like a huge main block.
Then again, there is one guy in development who does write everything like a huge main block.
If your only qualification is 3 years of working at the support desk, then you are lucky they hired you rather than someone with at least a B.S. in Computer Science. The best advice I can give you is start writing code in your free time immediately. Follow tutorials on common data structures, like stacks, heaps, pointers, etc. Once you have that down, start practicing OOP.