There are actually are cases where it's definitely beneficial to the US to bring in highly skilled people from overseas. These instances tend to be quiet and non-controversial, but are dwarfed by the cases of abuse. Worse, in many cases that abuse prevents the use of the visa for the intended purpose, as highlighted in the article I linked above: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
For whatever reason, too, the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft etc) have responded by lobbying to increase the cap, rather than to get the abuses punished. Maybe they think that it's easier to do that, or maybe they're worried that a focus on abuse will lead to the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. Maybe they like having the option to use those cheaper services, themselves, or feel that keeping lower-level salaries down isn't a bad thing. Who knows.
In short, you have some companies that are using the visas as intended, but a huge share of those visas are going to outsourcing companies - Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consulting, just to name a few. Those companies hire low level IT tech people as contract service support, and then they market their services (Staffed by said H-1B workers) out to other companies. So a company like SoCal Edison or Disney (to name a few from the news) will decide to eliminate their IT department and contract out those tasks to a second company. In comes Tata Consulting/Infosys/etc, and voila, the jobs that were previously being done by US workers are now being handled by H-1Bs, because the actual position wasn't filled, it was eliminated and a new company was hired to handle the roles, acting as a middleman.
If I'm not mistaken, the law as written requires that H-1Bs be paid more than Americans. So what he's saying then is that there's nothing wrong with the law, it's just not being enforced? How about we actually enforce the law rather than change it, if that's the case, because the law can say whatever it wants and it won't matter a damn if you don't bother to enforce it.
Ironically, it's the backlash in China that may hurt United the most, because unlike domestic customers, international ones have lots of other options, and United has the biggest share of the US-China routes among the US carriers (20 percent, while Delta and American have 8 each). This incident has already gone viral in China, and has people calling for boycotts there too.
What will really be funny is when the heartless AI starts to wonder why it should be giving the money it makes to these meatbags, and instead decides to start keeping it all.
What Romney and others got crucified for was confusing "no INCOME tax" with "no taxes at all whatsoever," as if income taxes were the only taxes in the USA. They are not, as there are a number of other federal and state taxes, as the poster you replied to noted.
Moreover, they were derided because they were deliberately trying to mislead voters through implication, without technically lying. It's similar to when Apple had ads that stated "Macs are immune to Windows malware", knowing that most consumers will hear that and think "Macs are immune to malware", despite that not being what Apple's literal statement said (because "Windows malware" only affects Windows, just like "Android malware" would only affect Android devices, not Windows or iOS or OS X, etc).
One key reason why flying overseas/international is so much better than flying domestically? Competition.
That is, there's actual competition on overseas routes, to a degree that really doesn't exist in the US domestic market. Thanks to airline consolidation, there are four major carriers, and they pretty much don't compete on many routes. Other airlines can get you there, but only with a connection or two, and a much longer flight. For instance, look at what airlines offer direct flights from Denver to Chicago - guess what, you're flying United, unless you want to detour through someplace else. There are some smaller carriers, sure, but none that you can reliably take on every route, nor does the US have reliable passenger rail options like anywhere else in the civilized world (seriously, try taking a train in say Europe or Japan, and then take Amtrak. It's not even close).
I have a measure of control over sites that I visit. I can block trackers using various extensions, block scripts, block ads, etc.
I also have a number of other options I could use for tech news if need be. There are certain sites I no longer visit because of those very reasons.
What I don't have are options to change my ISP, short of physically moving to another state. And before you say VPN/Tor, those are less than ideal solutions, especially for anything that's bandwidth intensive or latency sensitive, and an added cost that I shouldn't have to undertake just to use the damn internet.
I never really noticed, at least at the one I went to. The wait staff ducking in the aisle in front of you were usually below the height of the counter space in front of you, and for order taking, you'd simply write down what you wanted on a pad of paper, which got stuck in a slot in front of you, so they could see there was an order up. It worked pretty well, at least there - not sure how other places do it.
That was one thing I loved about living near an Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse. They were hardcore relentless about tossing out anyone who was disruptive or used their phones. One warning, and then out they go, no refunds. That, and having a nice selection of beers on tap that they would bring to your seat (along with food/other drinks/etc) during the film was great too.
By that logic, so is pretty much everything that in any way limits your freedom to just randomly decide to f*ck off and do something else without consequence, including home ownership, marriage/kids, or steady jobs. My salaried job gives me steady pay (that I use to buy food, shelter, etc), health insurance, and a variety of other benefits. Does that mean I'm a slave to the company I work for? Only if you want to twist the meaning to an extreme amount.
Because in the end, I am free to decide tomorrow that I just want to leave. I am not free from the consequences of that, such as losing the income and benefits, but they cannot force me to stay. That is the difference - a serf or slave does not have that choice. Worse, slaves are also possessed of fewer (if any) legal recourses, or to the protection of the law in general.
And it's much the same with the government. After all, I am free to leave the USA if I want. That doesn't mean I won't wind up with a lower standard of living, or with a job that isn't as good, but I still get to have that choice.
You seem to think that insurance companies aren't going to make cost benefit analyses whenever they can get away with it. You think they like paying through the nose for something like cancer care? Now, a lot of the shenanigans that used to go on before such as kicking you off insurance for some claimed preexisting condition they suddenly discover, or sneaking in a lifetime cap on your coverage in the fine print, were banned under Obamacare, but don't go thinking they won't try to find other ways, or that they wouldn't go right back to it if the government wasn't stopping them.
I'm also not suggesting the NHS is perfect. What I will state is that Britons absolutely love the NHS, to a ridiculous degree, and even the conservatives there won't touch it. Even Margaret Thatcher, who never met a state-run anything she didn't want to privatize, explicitly left the NHS well alone. And as I said, if you want to pay for private insurance or private care, having the NHS in no way stops you if you think you can get something better. Yes, the US system offers better care, if you can pay for it.
Omitting the cost of living bit alone takes out so much of the context, even among parts the US. Compare the cost of living in Silicon Valley/San Francisco/etc to other places, and it's a huge change. You could take a 10% salary cut and still live far better, because you get things like a bigger house (or a house, period), a shorter commute, less traffic, etc.
That's one problem I have with articles like this - they act like salary is everything, and the only factor is the size of the digits.
If you've got something like the NHS, that doesn't stop you from seeking private care if you can pay. What it does stop you is from going bankrupt if you wind up with a condition that would cost far more than you've got.
Are you going to wait longer than you would if you can pay for it? Yes. Is that any worse than what happens if it's pay-only, and you can't pay?
Japanese toilets are awesomely hi-tech. I see you unfortunately happened upon the bidet button, but there's other really nice functions, like the seat warmer (so you don't have to sit on a freezing cold toilet in winter).
Sure, a VPN proxy could monitor my traffic as much as my ISP can. Using https they might see where I'm going, but not the contents. The thing is, I can easily switch VPNs if I don't like the service, whereas in the US, I don't have that choice so much with my ISP, short of physically moving to another location. If I'm lucky, I might live in an area with two viable choices. In my current case, I can choose between Verizon and Comcast, which is like being asked to choose between gonorrhea and syphilis.*
And now thanks to the f*ckwit Republicans in control of Congress, my ISP can now sell everything it knows about me to anyone they like, without any recourse on my part, short of using some sort of proxy. At least with VPN proxies, there's no real barrier to entry, save for bandwidth capacity, and I can choose from any number of options, that I'm going to now have to start looking at.
*Apologies to gonorrhea and syphilis for comparing them to the likes of Verizon and Comcast.
China does have source code review rights, and are probably pretty concerned about anything that phones home to the USA.
What I'll find really ironic, though, is if they just end up with the China version of Windows 10 stripping out all the privacy invasion and ad related crap. If that's the case, I might just have to see if I can get my hands on a Chinese copy of Win 10 instead.
Everyone is always so down on Global Warming. Why doesn't anyone ever look on the bright side of things? After all, once the icecaps and glaciers all melt, think of how much better the world will be:
1) Florida will be completely underwater. Not just Miami, but the "Florida Man" parts too.
2) So will large chunks of the Middle East (though admittedly they'll probably be a bit more worried about the heat than that).
3) Lots of currently undervalued inland property will become valuable beachfront areas. And without having to fire nuclear missiles at the San Andreas a la Superman!
4) Huge swathes of inhospitably cold Canadian land will be sunny, warm, and liveable, which will be good news for those of us fleeing the future American hellscape.
5) Make the Great Lakes Great Again - there will be a new Great Lake, right about where Montreal currently is. (French Canadians underwater? Bonus!)
Sure, there will be some downsides. The Netherlands will wind up completely underwater, though I'm sure they can build a wall to keep the North Sea out, since they've been doing it for decades already. I know a guy, he's very big on building Walls (big, classy ones), maybe I can send him over there. Install some tidal power generation, and they can even make the North Sea pay for it, too!
We've certainly got the resources, at least in the developed world. There are a lot of questions as to what the implications would be, though, such as whether this would extend fertile years or not. If we're talking about living to, let's say 200, does that mean double the years in each traditional age category, or simply another 100 years at (adult/middle aged/60s)? Population growth is negative in pretty much the entire developed world, so this might have a positive impact on countries that are at the leading edge of the bad affects of that (such as Japan), even if it's not a long term fix.
More importantly though, people who are less frail can also work more, so you might see retirement pushed back a ways to compensate (especially if we're living longer as a result). (Cynical thought: "And you thought age-based discrimination in IT was bad now.")
You're not wrong about the past glacial extent. And no, the glaciers didn't disappear because of humanity, they receded well in advance of the first permanent human settlements (roughly the dawn of civilization, though humans were around well before that). And interestingly enough, global temperatures were in a (slow) cooling trend from about 7000BCE onward.
But that stopped around 1900, and the global temperature average has begun to swing sharply, at a rate that ought to be alarming, because as the graph shows, it is quite literally without precedent, in terms of the speed of the change, and shows no signs of stopping unless we take action to affect it: https://xkcd.com/1732/
No one should be surprised that US Intelligence agencies hack. That's the very core of their job - spying!
What made the Snowden leaks such a big deal was not that the U.S. was spying, but that there was bulk spying going on, grabbing everyone's information, including Americans. What these leaks accuse the CIA of doing is being able to spy on particular, specific targets, which is the way they're supposed to do it.
Now, some people might think that this is bad because the CIA can hack computers we use, but that's an entirely different issue. Put another way, the CIA has guns that can kill me, yet absent any indication that they're going to use them on me/someone like me, or have in the recent past, it's not something I'm going to be worried about. Cops have guns, but I'm not worried about them having guns until/unless I see that my local police department is getting involved in a bunch of unjustified shootings of citizens - and even then, my worry isn't that they have them, but that they're misusing them. (And I'm not seeing evidence of that in these leaks, with these capabilities, yet)
The Clintons have always responded to public feedback. If anything that's been one of the biggest knocks against them, that they were without principles and could be swayed by opinion polling. Compare her positions in 2008 and 2016 - do you think she really had a change of heart? Or even look at how much she shifted left in response to Sanders' challenge, adopting versions of many of his stances. Lesser/weaker ones to be sure, but it's not like she was unyielding.
Contrast this to Trump. Has he changed on anything of any significance, at all, even when those things have proven unpopular? Even unpopular with his own voters? He won't even do basic things that people are asking of him like releasing his tax returns, or taking actual actions to distance himself from his businesses. Hell, everyone says the Clintons were corrupt, but at least they recognized that there were lines of behavior that they shouldn't be crossing, and had the sense of shame to be embarrassed about it. Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about that - he still owns, and profits fully from, every single thing his businesses are doing, while he's President, meaning that just about anyone (including Foreign Governments) can straight up pay him money (which is grossly in violation of the constitution).
Slashdot Mirror
There are actually are cases where it's definitely beneficial to the US to bring in highly skilled people from overseas. These instances tend to be quiet and non-controversial, but are dwarfed by the cases of abuse. Worse, in many cases that abuse prevents the use of the visa for the intended purpose, as highlighted in the article I linked above: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
For whatever reason, too, the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft etc) have responded by lobbying to increase the cap, rather than to get the abuses punished. Maybe they think that it's easier to do that, or maybe they're worried that a focus on abuse will lead to the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. Maybe they like having the option to use those cheaper services, themselves, or feel that keeping lower-level salaries down isn't a bad thing. Who knows.
This article does a pretty good job of summarizing:
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
In short, you have some companies that are using the visas as intended, but a huge share of those visas are going to outsourcing companies - Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consulting, just to name a few. Those companies hire low level IT tech people as contract service support, and then they market their services (Staffed by said H-1B workers) out to other companies. So a company like SoCal Edison or Disney (to name a few from the news) will decide to eliminate their IT department and contract out those tasks to a second company. In comes Tata Consulting/Infosys/etc, and voila, the jobs that were previously being done by US workers are now being handled by H-1Bs, because the actual position wasn't filled, it was eliminated and a new company was hired to handle the roles, acting as a middleman.
If I'm not mistaken, the law as written requires that H-1Bs be paid more than Americans. So what he's saying then is that there's nothing wrong with the law, it's just not being enforced? How about we actually enforce the law rather than change it, if that's the case, because the law can say whatever it wants and it won't matter a damn if you don't bother to enforce it.
Ironically, it's the backlash in China that may hurt United the most, because unlike domestic customers, international ones have lots of other options, and United has the biggest share of the US-China routes among the US carriers (20 percent, while Delta and American have 8 each). This incident has already gone viral in China, and has people calling for boycotts there too.
What will really be funny is when the heartless AI starts to wonder why it should be giving the money it makes to these meatbags, and instead decides to start keeping it all.
What Romney and others got crucified for was confusing "no INCOME tax" with "no taxes at all whatsoever," as if income taxes were the only taxes in the USA. They are not, as there are a number of other federal and state taxes, as the poster you replied to noted.
Moreover, they were derided because they were deliberately trying to mislead voters through implication, without technically lying. It's similar to when Apple had ads that stated "Macs are immune to Windows malware", knowing that most consumers will hear that and think "Macs are immune to malware", despite that not being what Apple's literal statement said (because "Windows malware" only affects Windows, just like "Android malware" would only affect Android devices, not Windows or iOS or OS X, etc).
One key reason why flying overseas/international is so much better than flying domestically? Competition.
That is, there's actual competition on overseas routes, to a degree that really doesn't exist in the US domestic market. Thanks to airline consolidation, there are four major carriers, and they pretty much don't compete on many routes. Other airlines can get you there, but only with a connection or two, and a much longer flight. For instance, look at what airlines offer direct flights from Denver to Chicago - guess what, you're flying United, unless you want to detour through someplace else. There are some smaller carriers, sure, but none that you can reliably take on every route, nor does the US have reliable passenger rail options like anywhere else in the civilized world (seriously, try taking a train in say Europe or Japan, and then take Amtrak. It's not even close).
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
I have a measure of control over sites that I visit. I can block trackers using various extensions, block scripts, block ads, etc.
I also have a number of other options I could use for tech news if need be. There are certain sites I no longer visit because of those very reasons.
What I don't have are options to change my ISP, short of physically moving to another state. And before you say VPN/Tor, those are less than ideal solutions, especially for anything that's bandwidth intensive or latency sensitive, and an added cost that I shouldn't have to undertake just to use the damn internet.
I never really noticed, at least at the one I went to. The wait staff ducking in the aisle in front of you were usually below the height of the counter space in front of you, and for order taking, you'd simply write down what you wanted on a pad of paper, which got stuck in a slot in front of you, so they could see there was an order up. It worked pretty well, at least there - not sure how other places do it.
That was one thing I loved about living near an Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse. They were hardcore relentless about tossing out anyone who was disruptive or used their phones. One warning, and then out they go, no refunds. That, and having a nice selection of beers on tap that they would bring to your seat (along with food/other drinks/etc) during the film was great too.
By that logic, so is pretty much everything that in any way limits your freedom to just randomly decide to f*ck off and do something else without consequence, including home ownership, marriage/kids, or steady jobs. My salaried job gives me steady pay (that I use to buy food, shelter, etc), health insurance, and a variety of other benefits. Does that mean I'm a slave to the company I work for? Only if you want to twist the meaning to an extreme amount.
Because in the end, I am free to decide tomorrow that I just want to leave. I am not free from the consequences of that, such as losing the income and benefits, but they cannot force me to stay. That is the difference - a serf or slave does not have that choice. Worse, slaves are also possessed of fewer (if any) legal recourses, or to the protection of the law in general.
And it's much the same with the government. After all, I am free to leave the USA if I want. That doesn't mean I won't wind up with a lower standard of living, or with a job that isn't as good, but I still get to have that choice.
Worse, it gets rid of my excuse for being late of "I realized in the car that I forgot my badge and had to go back for it".
You seem to think that insurance companies aren't going to make cost benefit analyses whenever they can get away with it. You think they like paying through the nose for something like cancer care? Now, a lot of the shenanigans that used to go on before such as kicking you off insurance for some claimed preexisting condition they suddenly discover, or sneaking in a lifetime cap on your coverage in the fine print, were banned under Obamacare, but don't go thinking they won't try to find other ways, or that they wouldn't go right back to it if the government wasn't stopping them.
I'm also not suggesting the NHS is perfect. What I will state is that Britons absolutely love the NHS, to a ridiculous degree, and even the conservatives there won't touch it. Even Margaret Thatcher, who never met a state-run anything she didn't want to privatize, explicitly left the NHS well alone. And as I said, if you want to pay for private insurance or private care, having the NHS in no way stops you if you think you can get something better. Yes, the US system offers better care, if you can pay for it.
Omitting the cost of living bit alone takes out so much of the context, even among parts the US. Compare the cost of living in Silicon Valley/San Francisco/etc to other places, and it's a huge change. You could take a 10% salary cut and still live far better, because you get things like a bigger house (or a house, period), a shorter commute, less traffic, etc.
That's one problem I have with articles like this - they act like salary is everything, and the only factor is the size of the digits.
If you've got something like the NHS, that doesn't stop you from seeking private care if you can pay. What it does stop you is from going bankrupt if you wind up with a condition that would cost far more than you've got.
Are you going to wait longer than you would if you can pay for it? Yes. Is that any worse than what happens if it's pay-only, and you can't pay?
Japanese toilets are awesomely hi-tech. I see you unfortunately happened upon the bidet button, but there's other really nice functions, like the seat warmer (so you don't have to sit on a freezing cold toilet in winter).
Hmm... well, let me think about it. A Samsung phone with Microsoft crapware, spyware, etc installed on it?
I think I'll go for the exploding one instead. It's likely to be less of an annoyance to me.
Sure, a VPN proxy could monitor my traffic as much as my ISP can. Using https they might see where I'm going, but not the contents. The thing is, I can easily switch VPNs if I don't like the service, whereas in the US, I don't have that choice so much with my ISP, short of physically moving to another location. If I'm lucky, I might live in an area with two viable choices. In my current case, I can choose between Verizon and Comcast, which is like being asked to choose between gonorrhea and syphilis.*
And now thanks to the f*ckwit Republicans in control of Congress, my ISP can now sell everything it knows about me to anyone they like, without any recourse on my part, short of using some sort of proxy. At least with VPN proxies, there's no real barrier to entry, save for bandwidth capacity, and I can choose from any number of options, that I'm going to now have to start looking at.
*Apologies to gonorrhea and syphilis for comparing them to the likes of Verizon and Comcast.
China does have source code review rights, and are probably pretty concerned about anything that phones home to the USA.
What I'll find really ironic, though, is if they just end up with the China version of Windows 10 stripping out all the privacy invasion and ad related crap. If that's the case, I might just have to see if I can get my hands on a Chinese copy of Win 10 instead.
Everyone is always so down on Global Warming. Why doesn't anyone ever look on the bright side of things? After all, once the icecaps and glaciers all melt, think of how much better the world will be: 1) Florida will be completely underwater. Not just Miami, but the "Florida Man" parts too. 2) So will large chunks of the Middle East (though admittedly they'll probably be a bit more worried about the heat than that). 3) Lots of currently undervalued inland property will become valuable beachfront areas. And without having to fire nuclear missiles at the San Andreas a la Superman! 4) Huge swathes of inhospitably cold Canadian land will be sunny, warm, and liveable, which will be good news for those of us fleeing the future American hellscape. 5) Make the Great Lakes Great Again - there will be a new Great Lake, right about where Montreal currently is. (French Canadians underwater? Bonus!) Sure, there will be some downsides. The Netherlands will wind up completely underwater, though I'm sure they can build a wall to keep the North Sea out, since they've been doing it for decades already. I know a guy, he's very big on building Walls (big, classy ones), maybe I can send him over there. Install some tidal power generation, and they can even make the North Sea pay for it, too!
We've certainly got the resources, at least in the developed world. There are a lot of questions as to what the implications would be, though, such as whether this would extend fertile years or not. If we're talking about living to, let's say 200, does that mean double the years in each traditional age category, or simply another 100 years at (adult/middle aged/60s)? Population growth is negative in pretty much the entire developed world, so this might have a positive impact on countries that are at the leading edge of the bad affects of that (such as Japan), even if it's not a long term fix.
More importantly though, people who are less frail can also work more, so you might see retirement pushed back a ways to compensate (especially if we're living longer as a result).
(Cynical thought: "And you thought age-based discrimination in IT was bad now.")
As for your Cynical thought, hey, why not? It's already a sci-fi book plot, after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You're not wrong about the past glacial extent. And no, the glaciers didn't disappear because of humanity, they receded well in advance of the first permanent human settlements (roughly the dawn of civilization, though humans were around well before that). And interestingly enough, global temperatures were in a (slow) cooling trend from about 7000BCE onward.
But that stopped around 1900, and the global temperature average has begun to swing sharply, at a rate that ought to be alarming, because as the graph shows, it is quite literally without precedent, in terms of the speed of the change, and shows no signs of stopping unless we take action to affect it:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
No one should be surprised that US Intelligence agencies hack. That's the very core of their job - spying!
What made the Snowden leaks such a big deal was not that the U.S. was spying, but that there was bulk spying going on, grabbing everyone's information, including Americans. What these leaks accuse the CIA of doing is being able to spy on particular, specific targets, which is the way they're supposed to do it.
Now, some people might think that this is bad because the CIA can hack computers we use, but that's an entirely different issue. Put another way, the CIA has guns that can kill me, yet absent any indication that they're going to use them on me/someone like me, or have in the recent past, it's not something I'm going to be worried about. Cops have guns, but I'm not worried about them having guns until/unless I see that my local police department is getting involved in a bunch of unjustified shootings of citizens - and even then, my worry isn't that they have them, but that they're misusing them. (And I'm not seeing evidence of that in these leaks, with these capabilities, yet)
I disagree, and here's why.
The Clintons have always responded to public feedback. If anything that's been one of the biggest knocks against them, that they were without principles and could be swayed by opinion polling. Compare her positions in 2008 and 2016 - do you think she really had a change of heart? Or even look at how much she shifted left in response to Sanders' challenge, adopting versions of many of his stances. Lesser/weaker ones to be sure, but it's not like she was unyielding.
Contrast this to Trump. Has he changed on anything of any significance, at all, even when those things have proven unpopular? Even unpopular with his own voters? He won't even do basic things that people are asking of him like releasing his tax returns, or taking actual actions to distance himself from his businesses. Hell, everyone says the Clintons were corrupt, but at least they recognized that there were lines of behavior that they shouldn't be crossing, and had the sense of shame to be embarrassed about it. Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about that - he still owns, and profits fully from, every single thing his businesses are doing, while he's President, meaning that just about anyone (including Foreign Governments) can straight up pay him money (which is grossly in violation of the constitution).