He got healthcare reform through, and killed Bin Laden, and got us out of Iraq, but what else?
Republicans have him blocked, he can't close Gitmo because Republicans wrote it into law. He can't balance the budget because Republicans don't want military or medicare cut, and won't allow tax increases on rich people.
Now FBI feels confident enough to ask the Republican controlled legislature for laws to let them live warrantless wiretap.
And military already got it's 'kill Americans' law, Obama says he won't use, but the Republicans didn't put it in place for him, it's for the next time they get a Republican into power.
Yeh, Obama sucks,
Quoting the entire parent to bypass the censorship of some moderators. The PP shouldn't have been modded down to -1. What is it w/ some moderators? -1 is strictly for flamebait and trolls, not for modding down an AC you don't agree with. When I have mod points I never mod someone just because I disagree w/ them.
Hong Kong and Singapore wouldn't be too terrible to live in
You'd go to Hong Kong or Singapore for greater protection against government intrusion? Our government pisses on our Constitutional rights, but in those places there aren't even any such rights to piss on.
Wouldn't it be feasible for a volunteer fire department to own its own trucks? Or for a private charity to run a library?
Sure, but I was describing the way things typically are. The point is that we have a mixed capitalist/socialist system. If the socialism of the fire department is so un-American, why do they let them participate in Fourth of July parades?
The problem is we listened to those who wanted to protect jobs in the 1970s and 1980s. We resisted the urge to automate in order to preserve menial assembly line jobs.
Then please explain the declining number of production jobs that went along with increased production, as shown in the article. Please cite some examples were people deliberately decided to not automate in the US in order to protect jobs.
factories which didn't automate or were difficult to automate - steel, textiles, electronics assembly
Steel is difficult to automate? It's one of the most highly automated types of work. Whole mills are run by a couple of guys sitting at a control panel, and these days I suspect they're only for show. The biggest reason the US steel industry lost its dominance is because the owners didn't want to make the capital investments to improve productivity. Andrew Carnegie was probably spinning in his grave.
Similarly, to a surprising extent, for electronics assembly. When it's done in high wage countries it's very highly automated. Even in China there are some things, like PC board assembly, that have to be automated. The Chinese took the approach of using lots of cheap hand labor instead of designing for automated production. Lots of subsides and so forth didn't hurt.
the alternative of subsistence farming is significantly, brutally worse
If the Foxconn and other Chinese factory jobs were so desirable, you'd see little turnover. Instead the typical factory worker only stays for a few years. After every Lunar New Year (when everybody takes a week or two off and often visit family) Chinese factories have to hire a bunch of new people, because so many of the old ones have left without notice. The same pattern is often seen in maquiladoras. Why? In the US and Europe people who have decent factory jobs often hang on to them for year after year.
Why would it be morally superior to double the wages of the Asian factory workers, as opposed to keeping the wages the same and doubling the number of workers?
Why would they double the number of workers unless there was a demand for it? OTOH paying workers more means they'll buy more things, which means there will be more jobs making things, etc. in a virtuous cycle. Worked for Henry Ford. What makes China any different?
Now you see the real reason for banning the slavery.
Pretty much true. Much of the opposition to slavery in the Northerners who didn't want to compete w/ slave labor. However, there's no contradiction between opposing slavery for that reason and opposing it for the other reasons as well.
What doesn't exist is either pure socialism or pure capitalism, certainly in the countries being discussed. Socialism is defined as an economic system where the means of production of goods and and services have "social ownership". Often that means government ownership, though it doesn't have to. Capitalism is where the means of production of goods and and services are privately owned. Every civilized country has a mixed system, with the variables being how much and what parts of the economy are socialist and which parts capitalist.
If you have a public fire department or a public library, that's socialism. I don't care if it's a volunteer fire department because the firehouse and the equipment are still government owned. Both my examples of socialism were introduced to America by a fellow named B. Franklin. Curiously the man also owned a printing business, which made him a capitalist.
Have you tried Scons instead? Takes a day or two to get used to its different approach, but after that you will never go back. Make is a crude and error prone tool in this day and age. Also, Scons is a very solidly written and tested piece of software. Their idea of alpha is what most people call final release.
P.S. I'm not affiliated w/ the project in any way.
Not if they do it right. They should be searching for patterns that are associated with good programmers (or whatever type of person they're looking for), rather than following their preconceived notions as most interviewers do.
The more I think about it the more I realize that the basic problems w/ the software approach are not all that different than the problems w/ human interviewers. For example, there is always the self-reinforcing prejudice. If an employer looks for a set of qualities, and some of their hires are good, then they'll figure that, while not perfect (no hiring system is), they're right to look for those qualities. They'll never try to look for a different set of qualities. The same can happen w/ the software. They find some magic set of correlations that identifies some good programmers. Success! But they don't know if a different magic set would work. Probably the only way around this is to have people hire for their own team or department, and not go too far with the corporate wide approach.
There is also gaming the system, but that can be a problem w/ both humans and software.
As an electrical engineer I can assure you that engineers largely work the same way. And the job titles that they're always playing with are ridiculous. Programmer, system analyst, software engineer, computer scientist, blah, blah, blah. Please, nobody try to educate me on the fine distinctions. I know them, I don't care, and I think anybody who really does care is either a stuck-up ass or so insecure about their abilities that they cling to buzzwords. At least EE's just call themselves EE's (and I've never met anybody who bothered to distinguish between electrical engineer and electronic engineer). The best programmer I ever knew (who also had a Ph.D. in CS from a fancy school) simply called himself a programmer.
I bet 100 BILLION dollars and a pool of sharks with LASER beams that this algorithm can approximate the age of a candidate.
No takers on that bet. Yeah, there is that sort of potential for bias. Depends on how you use it. However you don't need fancy software for age discrimination. You can roughly figure someone's age just by looking at them. You can guess it before you meet them by looking at their resume.
This also has the potential to eliminate some biases though. Going to a fancy school is not a great proxy for how someone will do. I wouldn't discount it, but there are other things that indicate you're qualified. Also, how many people can afford the tuition for MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc. these days. So "good school" is also a proxy for socio-economic background. Probably always was, but it's probably worse now.
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
I've always done that too. Just get the interviewee to talk about their work, what was interesting about, the problems they encountered, etc. If a person doesn't know their stuff they won't be able to talk about it intelligently. Some people you have to coax out of their shell a bit, but that's it. If a person is reluctant I'll even ask them to pick something out of their resume to talk about instead of me suggesting a topic. I accept that most resumes have some exaggerations in them, so just let them pick something that isn't exaggerated. Also talk to them about the project they're being hired for, see what kind of questions or suggestions they have, etc.
It's purposely a low pressure technique. Some very good technical people don't do well being drilled about nonsense or brainteasers, or clam up if the interviewer starts playing Mr. Tough Guy and tries to trip them up on everything. Remember, you're trying to hire good technical people, not good interviewees. For other type of work this technique might suck.
It amazes me more companies haven't tried of this method.
Too simple and obvious - takes away the mystique of being a great interviewer. Also you've got to know your stuff to use the technique.
if Chinese and European imports double in price (which is what any significant devaluation of the US dollar means)
Please cite the source of the information that devaluations of less than 2:1 are not significant. I hope you're not a currency trader. Changes of 20-30% are considered very significant in trade discussions. I gotta love the circularity of trying to defend one number that you obviously pulled out of your posterior with another number so calculated.
that's roughly like a 30% pay cut for everybody in the US
And you get the arithmetic wrong! Our imports are about 15%/GDP, so even something ridiculous like a 2:1 exchange rate devaluation would yield at most a change of half of what you said (not that anybody who knows anything about trade and currency values would think 2:1 is anything but absurd). Moreover, due to import substitution, the actual change in effective compensation would be less.
neither the absolute value of our currency nor the rate of inflation make any significant difference in the long term
First, there is no such thing as the "absolute value" of a currency. But if you mean the exchange rate. then your statement is the trade economics equivalent of 2+2=5. Exchange rates (and inflation which changes the real exchange rate) don't affect trade? Wanna buy a car made in Japan if the yen/dollar doubles?
The only two ways of stopping borrowing is to (1) stop borrowing
Which, since we're talking about foreign debt, means by virtue of a simple and undisputed accounting identity that the trade deficit disappears. No kidding - that's what I was talking about.
I strongly agree with you, but by your own argument the problem is a lack of demand for EE's in the US, not a lack of supply. Rising unemployment numbers lend credence to that idea. Clearly the answer is to increase demand by moving more engineering and manufacturing back to the US, rather than further diluting a market already plagued by lack of demand with additional guest workers.
what a better way of ensuring American prosperity than effectively giving everybody a 30% paycut! If we keep doing that, soon we might reach the glorious level of prosperity of the French
This is bizarre. You think the French are an example of an impoverished people? Or do you just think that "Freedom Fries" were a good idea? And in the context of currency valuations, why would you pick a country that doesn't even have it's own currency?
You're 30% is also laughable. Do you think you can make a scary argument by pulling an absurd number out of your posterior? Do you think anyone will believe that's the result of calculation or estimate?
Moreover, how do you think we're ever going to pay our foreign debts if they keep increasing because of the trade deficit? Are you of the impression that foreigners will just let us live beyond our means forever because they enjoy lending us money, or because they like us so much that they don't care about having it repaid?
At current tax rates, that 1% in your scenario might pay so much in taxes that the 99% would still have more money then the status quo in post-tax and transfer terms.
"Might" and "if" are the most important words in your post. We also might have world peaces next year, but I'm not holding my breath. With capital gains rates capped at 15%, the average billionaire pays a lower marginal tax rate than I do. That does not bode well for your hypothesis.
the stinky rich countries come up with WTO and all the crap to tie down little and poor countries to transfer capital and resources whichever way they wish
As a citizen of a rich country I'd be more than happy to ditch the WTO and most of our trade agreements. They were created to help the plutocrats of both rich and poor countries, not the average person in either.
Capitalism and its underlying free market concept requires as a pre-condition the free movement of all means of production, i.e, labor included
Not at all. Capitalism, including "free trade", does not require the movement of either labor or capital across borders. In fact there are some very strong arguments against the unfettered flow of capital, in some cases from self proclaimed free traders. It often leads to panics and instability.
I do know the shortage is not made up from first hand experience. Here in the Silicon Valley a disproportionate number of kids (of friends and families of even STEM parents I know) are opting out of those areas.
How do you conclude from that that there is a shortage? If there was a shortage, presumably those kids would be more enticed to enter STEM because of rising salaries or at least low unemployment. Maybe the problem is that the kids who are smart enough to go into STEM aren't stupid enough to believe it's a good career choice anymore.
These studies are almost always pushing the "Patriotism" buttons of everyone
If that's true, please point to any "wrap yourself in the flag" rhetoric in the linked study or articles.
The buttons they're actually pressing are the "don't believe all this 'global village', and it's good for everyone" garbage. It's the same line that sold those onerous trade agreements that you rightly decry.
It gets worse, the submitter is "Nerval's Lobster", and as a reader wrote the other day:
[Nerval's Lobster] is a "Senior Editor at Slashdot," Nick Kolakowski [slashdot.org] (Twitter [twitter.com], Literary Gun For Hire [nickkolakowski.com]), who writes articles for Slashdot (and other places [huffingtonpost.com]) and apparently submits them under the guise of a "user" named Nerval's Lobster. Nerval's Lobster's submissions are "accepted" by the editors nearly every day, and always link to Slashdot's "Business Intelligence" or "Cloud" content... effectively passing off paid content as normal, user-submitted content.
With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important.
That argument would be pertinent if this was about outsourcing. Since it's about guest workers coming into the US, it's irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
He got healthcare reform through, and killed Bin Laden, and got us out of Iraq, but what else?
Republicans have him blocked, he can't close Gitmo because Republicans wrote it into law. He can't balance the budget because Republicans don't want military or medicare cut, and won't allow tax increases on rich people.
Now FBI feels confident enough to ask the Republican controlled legislature for laws to let them live warrantless wiretap.
And military already got it's 'kill Americans' law, Obama says he won't use, but the Republicans didn't put it in place for him, it's for the next time they get a Republican into power.
Yeh, Obama sucks,
Quoting the entire parent to bypass the censorship of some moderators. The PP shouldn't have been modded down to -1. What is it w/ some moderators? -1 is strictly for flamebait and trolls, not for modding down an AC you don't agree with. When I have mod points I never mod someone just because I disagree w/ them.
I now live in a "socialist" country with lower taxes and more services.
Which country is that? Serious question.
Hong Kong and Singapore wouldn't be too terrible to live in
You'd go to Hong Kong or Singapore for greater protection against government intrusion? Our government pisses on our Constitutional rights, but in those places there aren't even any such rights to piss on.
They might as well left the Root password as "password"
You can change it ???
Yes, but it's a bad idea. Think of changed passwords as security through obscurity.
Wouldn't it be feasible for a volunteer fire department to own its own trucks? Or for a private charity to run a library?
Sure, but I was describing the way things typically are. The point is that we have a mixed capitalist/socialist system. If the socialism of the fire department is so un-American, why do they let them participate in Fourth of July parades?
The problem is we listened to those who wanted to protect jobs in the 1970s and 1980s. We resisted the urge to automate in order to preserve menial assembly line jobs.
Then please explain the declining number of production jobs that went along with increased production, as shown in the article. Please cite some examples were people deliberately decided to not automate in the US in order to protect jobs.
factories which didn't automate or were difficult to automate - steel, textiles, electronics assembly
Steel is difficult to automate? It's one of the most highly automated types of work. Whole mills are run by a couple of guys sitting at a control panel, and these days I suspect they're only for show. The biggest reason the US steel industry lost its dominance is because the owners didn't want to make the capital investments to improve productivity. Andrew Carnegie was probably spinning in his grave.
Similarly, to a surprising extent, for electronics assembly. When it's done in high wage countries it's very highly automated. Even in China there are some things, like PC board assembly, that have to be automated. The Chinese took the approach of using lots of cheap hand labor instead of designing for automated production. Lots of subsides and so forth didn't hurt.
the alternative of subsistence farming is significantly, brutally worse
If the Foxconn and other Chinese factory jobs were so desirable, you'd see little turnover. Instead the typical factory worker only stays for a few years. After every Lunar New Year (when everybody takes a week or two off and often visit family) Chinese factories have to hire a bunch of new people, because so many of the old ones have left without notice. The same pattern is often seen in maquiladoras. Why? In the US and Europe people who have decent factory jobs often hang on to them for year after year.
Why would it be morally superior to double the wages of the Asian factory workers, as opposed to keeping the wages the same and doubling the number of workers?
Why would they double the number of workers unless there was a demand for it? OTOH paying workers more means they'll buy more things, which means there will be more jobs making things, etc. in a virtuous cycle. Worked for Henry Ford. What makes China any different?
Now you see the real reason for banning the slavery.
Pretty much true. Much of the opposition to slavery in the Northerners who didn't want to compete w/ slave labor. However, there's no contradiction between opposing slavery for that reason and opposing it for the other reasons as well.
Socialism doesnt exist
What doesn't exist is either pure socialism or pure capitalism, certainly in the countries being discussed. Socialism is defined as an economic system where the means of production of goods and and services have "social ownership". Often that means government ownership, though it doesn't have to. Capitalism is where the means of production of goods and and services are privately owned. Every civilized country has a mixed system, with the variables being how much and what parts of the economy are socialist and which parts capitalist.
If you have a public fire department or a public library, that's socialism. I don't care if it's a volunteer fire department because the firehouse and the equipment are still government owned. Both my examples of socialism were introduced to America by a fellow named B. Franklin. Curiously the man also owned a printing business, which made him a capitalist.
during the FDR regime, there were regulations against installing new machine tools in factories
Cite? This sounds like the kind of urban legend that's popular amongst those who think FDR was Lenin without the facial hair.
Good IDEs have ...
"Good" being the operative word. Many of the proprietary tools for embedded code have horrible IDE's.
I usually hand-craft my makefiles.
Have you tried Scons instead? Takes a day or two to get used to its different approach, but after that you will never go back. Make is a crude and error prone tool in this day and age. Also, Scons is a very solidly written and tested piece of software. Their idea of alpha is what most people call final release.
P.S. I'm not affiliated w/ the project in any way.
Not if they do it right. They should be searching for patterns that are associated with good programmers (or whatever type of person they're looking for), rather than following their preconceived notions as most interviewers do.
The more I think about it the more I realize that the basic problems w/ the software approach are not all that different than the problems w/ human interviewers. For example, there is always the self-reinforcing prejudice. If an employer looks for a set of qualities, and some of their hires are good, then they'll figure that, while not perfect (no hiring system is), they're right to look for those qualities. They'll never try to look for a different set of qualities. The same can happen w/ the software. They find some magic set of correlations that identifies some good programmers. Success! But they don't know if a different magic set would work. Probably the only way around this is to have people hire for their own team or department, and not go too far with the corporate wide approach.
There is also gaming the system, but that can be a problem w/ both humans and software.
We're Artisans - not engineers.
As an electrical engineer I can assure you that engineers largely work the same way. And the job titles that they're always playing with are ridiculous. Programmer, system analyst, software engineer, computer scientist, blah, blah, blah. Please, nobody try to educate me on the fine distinctions. I know them, I don't care, and I think anybody who really does care is either a stuck-up ass or so insecure about their abilities that they cling to buzzwords. At least EE's just call themselves EE's (and I've never met anybody who bothered to distinguish between electrical engineer and electronic engineer). The best programmer I ever knew (who also had a Ph.D. in CS from a fancy school) simply called himself a programmer.
I bet 100 BILLION dollars and a pool of sharks with LASER beams that this algorithm can approximate the age of a candidate.
No takers on that bet. Yeah, there is that sort of potential for bias. Depends on how you use it. However you don't need fancy software for age discrimination. You can roughly figure someone's age just by looking at them. You can guess it before you meet them by looking at their resume.
This also has the potential to eliminate some biases though. Going to a fancy school is not a great proxy for how someone will do. I wouldn't discount it, but there are other things that indicate you're qualified. Also, how many people can afford the tuition for MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc. these days. So "good school" is also a proxy for socio-economic background. Probably always was, but it's probably worse now.
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
I've always done that too. Just get the interviewee to talk about their work, what was interesting about, the problems they encountered, etc. If a person doesn't know their stuff they won't be able to talk about it intelligently. Some people you have to coax out of their shell a bit, but that's it. If a person is reluctant I'll even ask them to pick something out of their resume to talk about instead of me suggesting a topic. I accept that most resumes have some exaggerations in them, so just let them pick something that isn't exaggerated. Also talk to them about the project they're being hired for, see what kind of questions or suggestions they have, etc.
It's purposely a low pressure technique. Some very good technical people don't do well being drilled about nonsense or brainteasers, or clam up if the interviewer starts playing Mr. Tough Guy and tries to trip them up on everything. Remember, you're trying to hire good technical people, not good interviewees. For other type of work this technique might suck.
It amazes me more companies haven't tried of this method.
Too simple and obvious - takes away the mystique of being a great interviewer. Also you've got to know your stuff to use the technique.
Banking. Medical insurance. Hollywood is small potatoes compared to finance.
if Chinese and European imports double in price (which is what any significant devaluation of the US dollar means)
Please cite the source of the information that devaluations of less than 2:1 are not significant. I hope you're not a currency trader. Changes of 20-30% are considered very significant in trade discussions. I gotta love the circularity of trying to defend one number that you obviously pulled out of your posterior with another number so calculated.
that's roughly like a 30% pay cut for everybody in the US
And you get the arithmetic wrong! Our imports are about 15%/GDP, so even something ridiculous like a 2:1 exchange rate devaluation would yield at most a change of half of what you said (not that anybody who knows anything about trade and currency values would think 2:1 is anything but absurd). Moreover, due to import substitution, the actual change in effective compensation would be less.
neither the absolute value of our currency nor the rate of inflation make any significant difference in the long term
First, there is no such thing as the "absolute value" of a currency. But if you mean the exchange rate. then your statement is the trade economics equivalent of 2+2=5. Exchange rates (and inflation which changes the real exchange rate) don't affect trade? Wanna buy a car made in Japan if the yen/dollar doubles?
The only two ways of stopping borrowing is to (1) stop borrowing
Which, since we're talking about foreign debt, means by virtue of a simple and undisputed accounting identity that the trade deficit disappears. No kidding - that's what I was talking about.
I strongly agree with you, but by your own argument the problem is a lack of demand for EE's in the US, not a lack of supply. Rising unemployment numbers lend credence to that idea. Clearly the answer is to increase demand by moving more engineering and manufacturing back to the US, rather than further diluting a market already plagued by lack of demand with additional guest workers.
what a better way of ensuring American prosperity than effectively giving everybody a 30% paycut! If we keep doing that, soon we might reach the glorious level of prosperity of the French
This is bizarre. You think the French are an example of an impoverished people? Or do you just think that "Freedom Fries" were a good idea? And in the context of currency valuations, why would you pick a country that doesn't even have it's own currency?
You're 30% is also laughable. Do you think you can make a scary argument by pulling an absurd number out of your posterior? Do you think anyone will believe that's the result of calculation or estimate?
Moreover, how do you think we're ever going to pay our foreign debts if they keep increasing because of the trade deficit? Are you of the impression that foreigners will just let us live beyond our means forever because they enjoy lending us money, or because they like us so much that they don't care about having it repaid?
At current tax rates, that 1% in your scenario might pay so much in taxes that the 99% would still have more money then the status quo in post-tax and transfer terms.
"Might" and "if" are the most important words in your post. We also might have world peaces next year, but I'm not holding my breath. With capital gains rates capped at 15%, the average billionaire pays a lower marginal tax rate than I do. That does not bode well for your hypothesis.
Truly free markets cycle endlessly between boom and bust, with people starving and staging revolts at regular intervals.
Just consider the revolts a market response to the famines and it all makes sense to an economist.
the stinky rich countries come up with WTO and all the crap to tie down little and poor countries to transfer capital and resources whichever way they wish
As a citizen of a rich country I'd be more than happy to ditch the WTO and most of our trade agreements. They were created to help the plutocrats of both rich and poor countries, not the average person in either.
Capitalism and its underlying free market concept requires as a pre-condition the free movement of all means of production, i.e, labor included
Not at all. Capitalism, including "free trade", does not require the movement of either labor or capital across borders. In fact there are some very strong arguments against the unfettered flow of capital, in some cases from self proclaimed free traders. It often leads to panics and instability.
I do know the shortage is not made up from first hand experience. Here in the Silicon Valley a disproportionate number of kids (of friends and families of even STEM parents I know) are opting out of those areas.
How do you conclude from that that there is a shortage? If there was a shortage, presumably those kids would be more enticed to enter STEM because of rising salaries or at least low unemployment. Maybe the problem is that the kids who are smart enough to go into STEM aren't stupid enough to believe it's a good career choice anymore.
These studies are almost always pushing the "Patriotism" buttons of everyone
If that's true, please point to any "wrap yourself in the flag" rhetoric in the linked study or articles.
The buttons they're actually pressing are the "don't believe all this 'global village', and it's good for everyone" garbage. It's the same line that sold those onerous trade agreements that you rightly decry.
[Nerval's Lobster] is a "Senior Editor at Slashdot," Nick Kolakowski [slashdot.org] (Twitter [twitter.com], Literary Gun For Hire [nickkolakowski.com]), who writes articles for Slashdot (and other places [huffingtonpost.com]) and apparently submits them under the guise of a "user" named Nerval's Lobster. Nerval's Lobster's submissions are "accepted" by the editors nearly every day, and always link to Slashdot's "Business Intelligence" or "Cloud" content... effectively passing off paid content as normal, user-submitted content.
The full post (very interesting) is here.
With doctors and lawyers, a physical presence is a near-necessity (although this is less true today than 20 years ago even in those occupations). In STEM fields, physical presence is simply not that important.
That argument would be pertinent if this was about outsourcing. Since it's about guest workers coming into the US, it's irrelevant.