Why do you need a tinfoil hat? "STEM shortage" is shouted from every rooftop, by government and non-government people alike, and has been ever since Sputnik. Objective statistics be damned - we need people who can take a scientific approach!
there was a 22% increase in enrollment for computer science bachelor's degree programs at U.S. schools
Great news for American technology! Of course it will take a while before those students graduate, so we'll need to "temporarily" increase the H-1B quota 3x. We assure you that this is being done only to keep the industry from completely collapsing due to the desperate shortage of qualified people, so that we'll be able to offer jobs to all those American students when they graduate.
We're talking about someone who is trying to mask their racism under the guise of economic protectionism.
Talk about straw men. What is your evidence for that? Can you read minds?
BTW, last time I checked Americans include an awful lot of dark skinned people. Not too far in the future they will become the majority. There's even a rumor that the president is one of them.
The best you can hope for is to find the magic level of capital versus labor to optimize growth and thus maximize benefits for all.
What is your argument that simply optimizing aggregate growth is necessarily the optimal strategy for maximizing benefits for all? Many people, like yourself, often state that as though it were axiomatic. At the very least explain the rationale for your unstated assumptions.
BTW the limited liability aspect of a corporation is the entire point of a corporation.
Which doesn't change the fact that it's a subsidy. It's a very useful subsidy in a modern economy, but still a subsidy.
People should remember that, lest they fall for your selective observation that limited immigration is a "subsidy to labor", as though there were no subsidies to capital.
Let's see if I can enumerate just some of the things I've purchased today that came from overseas.
Which does nothing to refute my point that "globalization" is selective. No kidding we get products from around the world. As I pointed out, that's the part of "free trade" that's encouraged by our trade agreements. I also mentioned some of the parts that are "overlooked".
Off-shoring is... simply economic laws in action. It's like saying "gravity is considered wonderful"
Which I suspect describes your economic beliefs - that economic "laws" are as natural and inexorable as the law of gravity. Hint: unless you have anarchy, all economics are affected by government policy. There is no "natural" or inexorable situation that just happens to resemble an economic situation you prefer, and implying that there is is just a way to avoid examination or debate.
Intellectual property laws are in place to mitigate the free rider problem
Maybe that's why I said "I'm not opposed to IP, for the reasons stated in the Constitution". All these straw men are starting to become a fire hazard.
Intellectual property is not "anti-free trade".
If you believe that then you real need to read up on the history of free trade thought and implementation. Many 19th century free trade advocates made this point. At the time some European countries completely dropped patents, and did fine.
Apparently you've been hoodwinked by the "modern interpretation" of free trade, which has little to do with the economic theory, and much to do with selectively citing it for the benefit of the most well off in affluent countries. Similarly you think that "labor mobility" (aka unlimited immigration) is an essential part of free trade. In fact it's not necessary at all. You could completely eliminate international "labor mobility" and still have free trade. Free trade is about trading goods and services between countries, not labor and capital.
They're nice hypotheticals though. You can come to any conclusion you want if you start with the right assumptions - like $200/250k jobs being the typical case for H-1B's (perhaps he could look at the actual statistics showing that H-1B's on average are paid less than equally skilled Americans). Lastly, for something like real AI gurus, there are the 'O' series visas, which nobody objects to.
In response to the GP: I completely agree about the US trade deficit, but pothole and bridge repair can be important there. The US really does have a rotting infrastructure, which makes it more difficult to do business efficiently. That's why it's important for less developed countries to improve their infrastructure. What's the point of making products efficiently if they're difficult or expensive to ship?
Another thing that's supposed to be great about the USA is lack of censorship, even of the non-government variety. An example of the latter is what modding the PP down to -1. I disagree with much of it, but it's not flamebait or a troll. "Hyper-socialist nonsense" may be a little over the top, but it's tolerable given that the rest of the post is concrete criticisms.
Here is the PP quoted in full in my attempt to overcome censorship.
Good luck with all of that hyper-socialist nonsense that you are preaching, I was born in a country that had it, USSR, I am glad it fell apart and I would never live in another one like that and you are turning USA into one. No amount of pot-hole and bridge repairs will reduce your trade imbalance, which is, by the way, the real indicator of health of your economy in the age of fake GPD and inflation numbers.
Your trade deficit is around 500 Billion / year and has been there for decades now, you are not paying for things you are getting in the US of A, your suggestion will only worsen the trade imbalance, pot-hole repairs cannot be exported in exchange for all those manufactured goods you are importing for FREE (free, because it's all vendor financed, thus the giant debt).
Anyway, as I said, good luck with your ideas. They have been proven completely false and harmful time and again, but I guess they don't actually teach real history any longer (if they ever did).
P.S. Looking forward to having my complaints about the mods modded down. Censors have no sense of irony.
you haven't addressed any of the substantive points made by OP about the matter at hand, instead choosing to handwave generalities
As opposed to your using "handwave [sic] generalities" to criticize my post? You haven't offered any specific criticisms, or addressed any of my substantive points, of which there are several (e.g. capital vs. labor subsidies, several specific points about how so-called free trade is not true free trade as espoused by economists, etc.). Your exclusive use of cliche generalities (e.g. "handwave [sic]") in an attempt to be condescending is a pathetic critique. If there is a post you disagree with, try an actual rebuttal.
As for taxes in my opinion, we already have a sliding scale that almost works OK.
That's true, if you only look at federal income tax. Look at all federal, state and local taxes, and you have a different picture. Estimates vary a bit, but at best total taxes are only very slightly progressive. Other estimates say they're regressive.
What you are talking about is essentially a subsidy to labor
Just as the limited liability aspect of incorporation is a subsidy to capital. Stop pretending that we live in, or ever will live in, a global libertopia. All government policy creates "distortions", and the big question is who those distortions benefit. The only alternative to having any such policies is anarchy.
What you are forgetting is that we are in a GLOBAL economy.
Where is that line from, the Thomas Friedman school of sycophancy? The global aspect of the economy is very selective. For example, offshoring is considered wonderful, but little mention is made of region pricing. Our so-called "free trade" agreements include lots of things that are very much anti-free trade, like requirements for the greater enforcement of government monopolies called "intellectual property". I'm not opposed to IP, for the reasons stated in the Constitution, but they're anathema to free trade, and the original free trade proponents said so. Odd how that aspect of "free trade" seems to have been forgotten. It's interesting how some government distortions are considered desirable.
On the bright side they actually write decent useful code during those three hours. France has higher hourly per capita productivity than the US. Their lower GDP per capita is because they work fewer hours. You can debate how many hours people should work (I actually lean towards US style) but there is no doubt that there is plenty of good work done in France.
Full disclosure: I also like some of their moldy cheeses, but am adverse to a language that lacks consonants.
when they start talking about better education, what is that french for?
"Better education" is French for "red herring".
Of course everybody wants better education, but that doesn't mean education is what's causing increased income disparity. It also doesn't mean poor education is the source of any supposed shortage of STEM workers. STEM people mostly come from the better educated range of our populace. There is no shortage of such people, and we have some of the best universities in the world to educate them. The actual education problem is with those who are not in the upper range. While praising Finnish education, and their results in international tests, they overlook that serving the less well performing students is the great emphasis of Finnish education.
It's also a regional issue in the US. For example, Massachusetts if judged by itself ranks right up there with the vaunted Asian countries, and yes that includes poor kids in Boston and whatnot.
Lastly, the nice thing about blaming education is that you can say that if we fix the education in this country, it will still take at least 10 years to bear fruit. Therefore we need interim measures, like increased H-1B quotas. Did you think it's a coincidence that pro-H-1B outfits like fwd.us are linked to silly things like "hour of code"?
you only allow immigrants with provable skills to immigrate
Which provable skills? In terms of guest workers or even real immigrants, the problem is that which skills are "critically needed" are determined by politics, money (oops, redundant) and myth, rather than anything silly like objective facts. TPTB have been pushing the idea of a STEM shortage for decades, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. The obviously unbiased claims of tech CEO's and academicians are the only "evidence". The objective statistics say otherwise (that was even the conclusion of a study commissioned by congress during the tech boom - which of course did nothing to stop raising H-1B quotas).
They're a couple of refineries each handling about 20,000 bbl/day, but the Bakken fields produce about 1,000,000 bbl/day. The refineries are mostly to produce diesel, for which there has been a big surge in demand in the Bakken fields due to all the work being done there. If the pipeline does get built, they'll also be useful for dilutants.
This is not to refute your point that you can build new refineries. However it does not refute my point that construction of new large "general purpose" refineries may not make economic sense. It wouldn't solve the shipping problem, because instead of shipping crude you'd just have to ship a nearly equal quantity of refined products.
"Rosie" from the Jetsons didn't have legs... She had wheels, so using her (egad, I'm anthropomorphizing!) as an example may not have been ideal.
Rosie was very good at what she did, but not quite the ideal. You should have seen the leggy "Hot French Maid 3000" model that Jane wouldn't let George get.
they should be building refineries in North Dakota
Refineries cost about $10B each, take years to build, and a very long time to amortize the costs. Also, is it any safer to transport volatile products like gasoline? (serious question - I don't know).
I've long thought this is an obvious application for electric vehicles, what with predictable routes and whatnot. Another one would be the small local delivery mail trucks, especially as those things are constantly stopping and starting - a very inefficient way to use an ICE, and one which puts a lot of wear on the engine.
newer full-sized buses actually get pretty amazing mileage. At 10-15 MPG
Wow. Seriously. Compared to what you get with cars, SUV's, etc. that seems amazing. I wonder what accounts for that fantastic efficiency compared to smaller vehicles.
I've often wondered if combustible fuel heaters would make sense on electric vehicles. I know that seems backwards, but where ICE's are very inefficient, especially as utilized in motor vehicles, burning fuel for heat is very efficient. Also external combustion has very low emissions (other than CO2 of course).
Undoubtedly people would ridicule such an idea, complain it's no longer zero emissions (not that electric vehicles are either, depending on how the electricity is generated), blah, blah, blah, but it might make engineering sense. That's particularly true for very cold areas, because not only do you need more thermal power in such places, but heat pumps become less efficient as the temperature difference rises.
How about the simple fact that it would screw the US more than the rest
Argument or evidence?
I'm sure quite a lot of countries would really love for you to leave it
As above. Additionally, which countries?
or else why is the US still in the WTO... your pollies to get you out of it and see what happens
Surprisingly, the people of the United States are not always of a like mind. As for which ones have more influence on government policy, use the first rule of any investigation: follow the money.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you need a tinfoil hat? "STEM shortage" is shouted from every rooftop, by government and non-government people alike, and has been ever since Sputnik. Objective statistics be damned - we need people who can take a scientific approach!
Seems like I hear complaints from every field these days about not enough jobs for graduates, even in the medical fields.
Which medical fields? How many unemployed doctors do you know? Their union does a good job of restricting supply.
there was a 22% increase in enrollment for computer science bachelor's degree programs at U.S. schools
Great news for American technology! Of course it will take a while before those students graduate, so we'll need to "temporarily" increase the H-1B quota 3x. We assure you that this is being done only to keep the industry from completely collapsing due to the desperate shortage of qualified people, so that we'll be able to offer jobs to all those American students when they graduate.
We're talking about someone who is trying to mask their racism under the guise of economic protectionism.
Talk about straw men. What is your evidence for that? Can you read minds?
BTW, last time I checked Americans include an awful lot of dark skinned people. Not too far in the future they will become the majority. There's even a rumor that the president is one of them.
The best you can hope for is to find the magic level of capital versus labor to optimize growth and thus maximize benefits for all.
What is your argument that simply optimizing aggregate growth is necessarily the optimal strategy for maximizing benefits for all? Many people, like yourself, often state that as though it were axiomatic. At the very least explain the rationale for your unstated assumptions.
BTW the limited liability aspect of a corporation is the entire point of a corporation.
Which doesn't change the fact that it's a subsidy. It's a very useful subsidy in a modern economy, but still a subsidy.
People should remember that, lest they fall for your selective observation that limited immigration is a "subsidy to labor", as though there were no subsidies to capital.
Let's see if I can enumerate just some of the things I've purchased today that came from overseas.
Which does nothing to refute my point that "globalization" is selective. No kidding we get products from around the world. As I pointed out, that's the part of "free trade" that's encouraged by our trade agreements. I also mentioned some of the parts that are "overlooked".
Off-shoring is ... simply economic laws in action. It's like saying "gravity is considered wonderful"
Which I suspect describes your economic beliefs - that economic "laws" are as natural and inexorable as the law of gravity. Hint: unless you have anarchy, all economics are affected by government policy. There is no "natural" or inexorable situation that just happens to resemble an economic situation you prefer, and implying that there is is just a way to avoid examination or debate.
Intellectual property laws are in place to mitigate the free rider problem
Maybe that's why I said "I'm not opposed to IP, for the reasons stated in the Constitution". All these straw men are starting to become a fire hazard.
Intellectual property is not "anti-free trade".
If you believe that then you real need to read up on the history of free trade thought and implementation. Many 19th century free trade advocates made this point. At the time some European countries completely dropped patents, and did fine.
Apparently you've been hoodwinked by the "modern interpretation" of free trade, which has little to do with the economic theory, and much to do with selectively citing it for the benefit of the most well off in affluent countries. Similarly you think that "labor mobility" (aka unlimited immigration) is an essential part of free trade. In fact it's not necessary at all. You could completely eliminate international "labor mobility" and still have free trade. Free trade is about trading goods and services between countries, not labor and capital.
It would be much easier to rebut those sound bites if I knew what [56] or [57] refer to, or even *gasp* what Wikipedia page you're quoting from.
They're nice hypotheticals though. You can come to any conclusion you want if you start with the right assumptions - like $200/250k jobs being the typical case for H-1B's (perhaps he could look at the actual statistics showing that H-1B's on average are paid less than equally skilled Americans). Lastly, for something like real AI gurus, there are the 'O' series visas, which nobody objects to.
In response to the GP: I completely agree about the US trade deficit, but pothole and bridge repair can be important there. The US really does have a rotting infrastructure, which makes it more difficult to do business efficiently. That's why it's important for less developed countries to improve their infrastructure. What's the point of making products efficiently if they're difficult or expensive to ship?
Another thing that's supposed to be great about the USA is lack of censorship, even of the non-government variety. An example of the latter is what modding the PP down to -1. I disagree with much of it, but it's not flamebait or a troll. "Hyper-socialist nonsense" may be a little over the top, but it's tolerable given that the rest of the post is concrete criticisms.
Here is the PP quoted in full in my attempt to overcome censorship.
Good luck with all of that hyper-socialist nonsense that you are preaching, I was born in a country that had it, USSR, I am glad it fell apart and I would never live in another one like that and you are turning USA into one. No amount of pot-hole and bridge repairs will reduce your trade imbalance, which is, by the way, the real indicator of health of your economy in the age of fake GPD and inflation numbers.
Your trade deficit is around 500 Billion / year and has been there for decades now, you are not paying for things you are getting in the US of A, your suggestion will only worsen the trade imbalance, pot-hole repairs cannot be exported in exchange for all those manufactured goods you are importing for FREE (free, because it's all vendor financed, thus the giant debt).
Anyway, as I said, good luck with your ideas. They have been proven completely false and harmful time and again, but I guess they don't actually teach real history any longer (if they ever did).
P.S. Looking forward to having my complaints about the mods modded down. Censors have no sense of irony.
you haven't addressed any of the substantive points made by OP about the matter at hand, instead choosing to handwave generalities
As opposed to your using "handwave [sic] generalities" to criticize my post? You haven't offered any specific criticisms, or addressed any of my substantive points, of which there are several (e.g. capital vs. labor subsidies, several specific points about how so-called free trade is not true free trade as espoused by economists, etc.). Your exclusive use of cliche generalities (e.g. "handwave [sic]") in an attempt to be condescending is a pathetic critique. If there is a post you disagree with, try an actual rebuttal.
As for taxes in my opinion, we already have a sliding scale that almost works OK.
That's true, if you only look at federal income tax. Look at all federal, state and local taxes, and you have a different picture. Estimates vary a bit, but at best total taxes are only very slightly progressive. Other estimates say they're regressive.
What you are talking about is essentially a subsidy to labor
Just as the limited liability aspect of incorporation is a subsidy to capital. Stop pretending that we live in, or ever will live in, a global libertopia. All government policy creates "distortions", and the big question is who those distortions benefit. The only alternative to having any such policies is anarchy.
What you are forgetting is that we are in a GLOBAL economy.
Where is that line from, the Thomas Friedman school of sycophancy? The global aspect of the economy is very selective. For example, offshoring is considered wonderful, but little mention is made of region pricing. Our so-called "free trade" agreements include lots of things that are very much anti-free trade, like requirements for the greater enforcement of government monopolies called "intellectual property". I'm not opposed to IP, for the reasons stated in the Constitution, but they're anathema to free trade, and the original free trade proponents said so. Odd how that aspect of "free trade" seems to have been forgotten. It's interesting how some government distortions are considered desirable.
On the bright side they actually write decent useful code during those three hours. France has higher hourly per capita productivity than the US. Their lower GDP per capita is because they work fewer hours. You can debate how many hours people should work (I actually lean towards US style) but there is no doubt that there is plenty of good work done in France.
Full disclosure: I also like some of their moldy cheeses, but am adverse to a language that lacks consonants.
when they start talking about better education, what is that french for?
"Better education" is French for "red herring".
Of course everybody wants better education, but that doesn't mean education is what's causing increased income disparity. It also doesn't mean poor education is the source of any supposed shortage of STEM workers. STEM people mostly come from the better educated range of our populace. There is no shortage of such people, and we have some of the best universities in the world to educate them. The actual education problem is with those who are not in the upper range. While praising Finnish education, and their results in international tests, they overlook that serving the less well performing students is the great emphasis of Finnish education.
It's also a regional issue in the US. For example, Massachusetts if judged by itself ranks right up there with the vaunted Asian countries, and yes that includes poor kids in Boston and whatnot.
Lastly, the nice thing about blaming education is that you can say that if we fix the education in this country, it will still take at least 10 years to bear fruit. Therefore we need interim measures, like increased H-1B quotas. Did you think it's a coincidence that pro-H-1B outfits like fwd.us are linked to silly things like "hour of code"?
you only allow immigrants with provable skills to immigrate
Which provable skills? In terms of guest workers or even real immigrants, the problem is that which skills are "critically needed" are determined by politics, money (oops, redundant) and myth, rather than anything silly like objective facts. TPTB have been pushing the idea of a STEM shortage for decades, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. The obviously unbiased claims of tech CEO's and academicians are the only "evidence". The objective statistics say otherwise (that was even the conclusion of a study commissioned by congress during the tech boom - which of course did nothing to stop raising H-1B quotas).
deracinated
I have a pretty good vocabulary but I had to look up that word.
deracinated: adjective, uprooted or displaced from one's geographical or social environment. noun, a person who has been or feels displaced.
The problem is that, like the word niggardly, it can easily be misunderstood.
Having looked it up though, I completely agree with your post.
They're a couple of refineries each handling about 20,000 bbl/day, but the Bakken fields produce about 1,000,000 bbl/day. The refineries are mostly to produce diesel, for which there has been a big surge in demand in the Bakken fields due to all the work being done there. If the pipeline does get built, they'll also be useful for dilutants.
This is not to refute your point that you can build new refineries. However it does not refute my point that construction of new large "general purpose" refineries may not make economic sense. It wouldn't solve the shipping problem, because instead of shipping crude you'd just have to ship a nearly equal quantity of refined products.
"Rosie" from the Jetsons didn't have legs ... She had wheels, so using her (egad, I'm anthropomorphizing!) as an example may not have been ideal.
Rosie was very good at what she did, but not quite the ideal. You should have seen the leggy "Hot French Maid 3000" model that Jane wouldn't let George get.
If you're trying to eliminate the human resistance in 2029
They always do things the hard way in movies - just use biological warfare.
they should be building refineries in North Dakota
Refineries cost about $10B each, take years to build, and a very long time to amortize the costs. Also, is it any safer to transport volatile products like gasoline? (serious question - I don't know).
How safe is it to vent propane and other natural gases?
I've long thought this is an obvious application for electric vehicles, what with predictable routes and whatnot. Another one would be the small local delivery mail trucks, especially as those things are constantly stopping and starting - a very inefficient way to use an ICE, and one which puts a lot of wear on the engine.
newer full-sized buses actually get pretty amazing mileage. At 10-15 MPG
Wow. Seriously. Compared to what you get with cars, SUV's, etc. that seems amazing. I wonder what accounts for that fantastic efficiency compared to smaller vehicles.
I've often wondered if combustible fuel heaters would make sense on electric vehicles. I know that seems backwards, but where ICE's are very inefficient, especially as utilized in motor vehicles, burning fuel for heat is very efficient. Also external combustion has very low emissions (other than CO2 of course).
Undoubtedly people would ridicule such an idea, complain it's no longer zero emissions (not that electric vehicles are either, depending on how the electricity is generated), blah, blah, blah, but it might make engineering sense. That's particularly true for very cold areas, because not only do you need more thermal power in such places, but heat pumps become less efficient as the temperature difference rises.
Especially when you add in lower maintenance costs for an electric vehicle.
How about the simple fact that it would screw the US more than the rest
Argument or evidence?
I'm sure quite a lot of countries would really love for you to leave it
As above. Additionally, which countries?
or else why is the US still in the WTO ... your pollies to get you out of it and see what happens
Surprisingly, the people of the United States are not always of a like mind. As for which ones have more influence on government policy, use the first rule of any investigation: follow the money.