A true libertarian would understand those structural problems rather than attempt to slap the bandaid of "government oversight" on top.
Ahh, the No True Scotsman argument. Are you really going to trot out that logical fallacy? Understanding structural problems and seeking to solve them has nothing to do with being (or not being) a libertarian. In fact one could argue that hands-off libertarian style thinking is what caused this problem with LIBOR in the first place. No one was keeping an eye on the banks and so they behaved exactly how one would predict they would when no one was watching. While I'm certainly no fan of needless government oversight, there is a reason it exists and sometimes it is the least worst option.
Reducing the conflicts of interest are a more effective solution than having corrupt government agencies watch harder.
I don't think anyone will disagree that setting the right incentives is the most ideal solution. There is an old saying "show me my incentives and I'll tell you how I'm going to behave". Incentives are something economists focus heavily on. Problem is that setting incentives is often incredibly difficult (often impossible) to do well even if there are no conflicts of interest present in the people setting them.
Let me give an example. Let's say you own a company and you want to motivate your sales staff to go out and sell. How do you compensate them? If you pay a salary they likely will not work as hard as on commission. If they are on commission what do you base the commission on? Base it on sales and they will have no reason to care about profitability. Base it on profits and they'll try to cherry pick. If there is no sunset provision on commissions they may try to build up a few clients and then not worry about getting new ones. Basically any incentive structure you can come up with, I can tell you how people will game it. It is REALLY hard to come up with a system that provides the right incentives and eliminates motivation to game the system
So let's wait for them to implement that and watch the fireworks when Anonymous destroys the whole U.S. military.
If you truly think such a thing will happen then you are dumber than a Styrofoam submarine.
Not that anyone would notice now that the DoD ensures no soldier ever sees real combat, only mercenaries do nowadays, because those have zero oversight.
I have family in the army serving in the Middle East who would be very surprised to hear that they never see any real combat. Is the view nice from the cheap seats?
Chrome is really fast. It does stand out when you use it, even if I prefer to use Firefox.
I use both daily and frankly can't really see any speed difference for anything I need to do. While there probably are some differences I'm usually more limited by the speed of my connection to the ISP than anything else.
That's the "our encryption is unbreakable" argument. Let me know how that works out for you.
Exactly how do you propose The Enemy figure out the right key for each device? You can easily have a unique destruct code for each device which is vaguely close to a one time pad setup. The only way for The Enemy to destroy the device is to either A) get the code from The Good Guys or B) crack the encryption. If the device has a self destruct timer (or accelerometer or geo-locator or...) and the encryption is sufficiently robust it could be very difficult to crack in a sufficiently short time even with physical access. Without physical access it could be effectively impossible. Even cracking one device wouldn't enable The Enemy to do anything with the others unless The Good Guys do something stupid like reuse keys.
Basically a well designed system would be pretty hard to disable. The device just has to last long enough to do its job, not be impregnable for the rest of time.
But the GP raises an interesting question about what happens when an enemy has the ability to press a button and turn all your most critical battlefield C&C gear into slag.
If it truly is that easy to do then you deserve to lose the battle. Just because something can be destroyed easily doesn't mean it has to be easy for anyone to destroy it.
That would hand The Enemy an easy method of sabotage.
Only if the designer and/or user of the equipment is rather stupid.
If you want the authorized user to be the one to determine when the gear should (and should not) be sacrificed, it has to be "destroy on command".
It's pretty easy to think of circumstances where you would want it destroyed for anyone except the intended user. Sensitive document transport, various black ops activities, etc. If you are a spy you might very well want your electronics to dissolve unless someone knows the correct password.
A day in court may be a constitutional right but it is not a moral right when everyone knows the defendant has committed the crimes.
The entire point of having a trial is that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing as "everyone knows" because by definition you cannot know all the facts until they are presented. Having your day in court is absolutely a moral right whether the person is ultimately guilty or not.
Ultimately management does, whether or not a union exists. That's not to imply that management is always right (they demonstrably aren't) but any action ultimately needs management to approve it.
What if you can negotiate a lower fee for the company to move to a different but less well managed 401k program, I know my company moved, if we had a union stuff like that would negotiated.
A union is not needed to negotiate that sort of thing. Merely sufficiently interested and motivated employees who are willing to walk away if it is sufficiently important to them. You (probably) don't actually need to form a union, merely talk among yourselves and then go talk with management regarding what you want. The only real thing a union can do is to go on strike which is basically a threat to the existence of the company. The problem had better be rather severe for that to be a reasonable step. (sometimes a strike is an unfortunately necessary action) A union is pretty much regarded as something close to a suicide bomber by management. Unions threaten to take the company down unless management gives in to their demands. While I won't argue its effectiveness, negotiation through ultimatums is not a tactic that will win hearts and minds.
Bear in mind that when you request the company to pay additional costs on your behalf you are asking the owners of the company to take money out of their pocket and put it in yours. It's ok to do that but put yourself in their shoes for a second and consider your request. Is this something they can afford? What is the full cost to the company and its owners? Does this hurt the company's competitive position? How important is this request really? etc. If the workers really are getting an unfair deal then it is time to negotiate. Bear in mind that unless you have a BATNA, you can live with then you are not in a strong negotiating position.
Forming a union is not an admission of the workers not being willing to communicate but a relization that without a union management has all the power and has been abusing it.
Re-read what I wrote. I said "willing or able". Often workers are willing to communicate but are ineffective in doing so. (the reverse is true as well, often management is seriously lacking in communication ability) I've worked with many unions and quite a few are unwilling to negotiate in good faith with management. I've seen union contracts where someone can show up for work drunk multiple time before they can be terminated. Many unions make it virtually impossible to get rid of genuinely bad employees - see this flowchart for the steps required to terminate a bad teacher in New York. Unions tend to quickly change from protecting worker rights to extortion rackets. (nice company you have there - shame to see anything bad happen to it...) Management almost never has "all the power" because most employment is at-will. You can leave anytime you want for any reason or even no reason at all. And frankly if working conditions really are so bad that a union seems like a genuinely good idea, do you really want to stay there any longer than you have to?
I assure you I am not. I run a manufacturing company and about 10% of my work force at any given time has green cards or work visas. Professionally I am a degreed engineer and also a certified accountant.
Corporations are NOT hiring the "best talent they can get" unless you expand the phrase with "for jr level wages"
You aren't quite there. The full phrasing would be "the best talent they can get given the financial situation of the company". In case you had forgotten the point of a corporation is to make money, not to produce the prettiest code. Competitive forces necessarily mean that companies will attempt to get the necessary work done for the least cost.
The skill level needed to accomplish a task has to be balanced against the financial constraints and often the highest quality of work possible costs more than the quality of work that is necessary. In IT work the largest cost typically is labor. You can reduce labor costs by reducing headcount or by hiring individuals willing to work for lower wages. If local workers are unwilling or unable to work for competitive wages then either companies have to relocate where the talent is (offshoring) or bring in talent from abroad (consultants or foreign workers on visas). Either way, workers are potentially in competition with a wider labor pool than those who happened to be born within the boundaries of the USA.
So does this really fit in with your charactorization about corps just trying to hire the best darn talent they can, and gosh darn it those dumb Americans just cant meet our needs!
I don't think Americans are dumb at all. Quite the opposite in fact. However I've been to China and they have 4X the people we do in the US. Think there might be a few smart ones over there? Think they might usefully contribute to the US economy if we can persuade them to work here? If you want people who aren't just "junior level" talent, you have to look for that talent wherever it might be and sometimes the best people for a particular position are not people who happened to be born in the USA.
Let me put this issue into some sort of perspective. The number of H1B visas issued is around 120,000 annually. The size of the US labor force is roughly 150 million people. That means the number of H1B visas amounts to less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the overall workforce. Even acknowledging the fact that H1B visa holders work disproportionately in IT this furor over H1B visas is incredibly overblown. Even tripling the number of H1B visas would have a most a modest effect on wages and employment of US workers. The risk to IT workers to wage competition with foreign talent is not at all mitigated by reducing the number of H1B visas. All that does is force companies to send the work elsewhere to be done at the lowest cost.
Don't think of good or evil in terms of "people" or "world", but try to realize that each and every country should focus on their own first...
Countries do not hire (most) people, companies do. Companies have a very limited ability to develop specialized talent. For the most part they need to hire people who already possess certain skills and attributes. These people may come from the same country as the company but quite commonly they do not. Forcing companies to hire people locally who lack critical skills when they are available elsewhere is absurd. The US is a nation of immigrants and pretending it is otherwise is to forget what made us successful in the first place.
Let's put this problem in perspective shall we? The number of H1B visas is around 120,000 annually. The size of the US labor force is roughly 150 million people. That means the number of H1B visas amounts to less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the overall workforce. That is almost a rounding error.
If your argument is that governments should set policies that encourage development of domestic talent then I agree. I think you will find few companies that will argue against such policies. Hiring foreigners is quite an administrative burden and the more local talent that is available the less it tends to cost.
If tech workers would quit thinking they are all above average and form a union you can bet your ass the wages would rise and working conditions rise.
A better option is to work with and, if necessary, become management. You form a union when you have no realistic opportunity for employment elsewhere and conditions are truly unfair and a danger to your well being. While there are companies out there that treat their IT employees badly, there is plenty of data that indicates jobs in IT are plentiful and mostly they are treated pretty well. My sister actually works for an IT staffing firm and they have no lack of job opportunities available. There are times when forming a union is appropriate behavior (some companies really are kind of evil) but that is very much the exception in IT. I have never seen a situation in IT where a union would have improved the prospects of the company or the people who worked there in the long run.
Imagine if your IT department went on strike. Try hiring a bunch of scabs that could quickly come up to speed on the existing architecture without the assistance of incumbent staff.
I have an IT department. If my IT department went on strike I would see to it that they would no longer be employed at my company as soon as it could be managed. Why? Iif they have a grievance I expect them to talk to me first about it. If it is a reasonable request and I can do something about it I will. If I cannot accommodate their request there is probably a good reason and going on strike will not change that reason. Most IT workers are paid well, work reasonable if sometimes demanding hours, and have a decent working environment. I invite any IT worker who thinks his work environment is terrible to work in a steel mill or in a coal mine for a week. Forming a union basically is an admission by employees (and indirectly by management) that they are not willing or able to communicate and negotiate in good faith.
Does Gimp suck so much that people are willing to go and beg Adobe for a 17 year old version
For most things GIMP is fine and quite capable but it could be SO much better. Seriously, I use GIMP all the time but the interface arguably does suck that bad. Also GIMP isn't really built with printing capabilities in mind the way Photoshop always had been.
While I wouldn't put GIMP up against today's Photoshop I would imagine it could at least best any version from the 90s.
Hard to be certain without them in front of me but even the current versions of GIMP aren't designed with printing in mind. GIMP is great for stuff you'll display on a screen or if your printing needs are rather modest. For web stuff current GIMP is probably better than ancient Photoshop but for certain printing needs even an old Photoshop has a strong chance to be better.
H1B visa are for specialty occupations requiring highly specialized knowledge. H1B visas are not for people who pick produce and calling them "slaves" is an absurd comparison. Real slavery is a horrific crime and slaves certainly don't get paid.
US workers are not the best option as they will want market wages.
Market wages are the wages that they can get. If others are willing to work for less then your "market wages" then what you are calling market wages isn't. Just because you think you deserve more money doesn't mean a thing if no one will pay you that amount. If you have the same skills and are willing to work for the same price I'm pretty sure a US company will hire you or did you think that Americans are somehow immune to economics?
There are plenty of trained americans, but they will not accept low wages and terrible working conditions.
Fair enough. Then I hope these same people will enjoy unemployment
The supply of domestic tech workers will never increase until the price (pay) is allowed to rise with demand.
You seem to think that there is some secret cabal who controls wages for tech workers. When there is sufficient demand and competition for talent then wages will rise. The market sets the rate. Just because wages aren't as high as you think they should be is irrelevant. Tech workers aren't more special than anyone else and there is no small group that controls their wages.
Screw that! If we need this for anything, it's doctors, since the supply is artificially limited by the AMA.
The article you reference is from 2005 and is quite out of date. The AMA does not control the supply of physicians in the US - Congress is in charge of that. The AMA is a lobbying group and a professional association but they do not control Congress.
I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours.
So you don't want to sound xenophobic but you really are. Foreign workers contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and bring specific talents that are badly needed by companies but you think we should hire Americans just because they are Americans?
Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers.
You've never tried to run a business have you? Forcing a company to hire substandard talent is literally counterproductive. Companies need to and should hire the best talent they can get regardless of where the person is from. If that happens to be people from the US that is terrific. Companies need specific skills and those skills don't have anything to do with national boundaries. If the US workers are the best available option then I guarantee you that companies will hire them. If they aren't the best then they don't really deserve the jobs now do they?
A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way.
So less competition for jobs is somehow supposed to push Americans to get more training? Curious logic since generally less competition has exactly the opposite effect. If I don't have to compete for my job, I'm going to have zero motivation to spend money or time on additional education.
RIM has positive cash flow, no debt, and significant capital assets and cash
RIM has had an operating loss for the last 4 straight quarters. While you are correct that the company isn't on financial life support (yet), their prospects are not looking especially cheery. Their cash hoard is around $3 billion which while substantial is tiny compared to Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. All their major competitors have extremely strong balance sheets, far stronger than RIM. It's a bit like playing poker when everyone at the table has a much larger pile of chips. You still can win but the odds are not in your favor.
RIM is far from dead and with their new offerings have continued opportunity to grow.
The sales numbers for RIM's products are do not back you up. Competing products from Apple and Android makers are in far higher demand. RIM's product line is pretty widely considered to be not competitive. While RIM might succeed yet with some brilliant new products, there is little evidence so far that we should expect anything that will put them ahead of the curve.
Another thing to consider - RIM is still has the only FIPS compliant smart phone on the market.
Which is something that the majority of the market could not care less about. At best it gives them some breathing room for a little while. But the number of people who really need that level of security is a pretty small fraction of the overall market. RIM needs a product offering with much broader appeal and significant advantages over the competition. Right now this is a battle they are losing and losing badly.
I bought my mother-in-law a $80 Belkin for Christmas and it needs resets every couple of weeks.
This has been my roughly my experience with Belkin equipment. It always seems to be a little bit unreliable. I realize my experience is entirely anecdotal but I've bought probably a dozen various bits of Belkin gear (usb hubs, switches, charging gear, etc) over the years and I've had small but irritating problems with most of them. A few simply didn't work at all. It's one of those things where I just don't trust their brand anymore even if they actually might have a good product.
why would you tax differently US corporations buying US T-Bills and foreign corporations buying US T-Bills ?
Because you have less/no legal authority over the foreign corporations. I should have thought that was obvious. Good luck collecting taxes for a foreign corporation that does no business in the USA.
The problem is that the idiot managers think that avoiding taxes at the cost of investing less is somehow a good idea.
It is a good idea to keep the cash parked overseas if the return on the investment is less than the cost of the taxes. Taxes on repatriated earnings effectively raise the cost of capital and reduce the number of available investment opportunities for that cash with a net present value greater than zero. If you are taxed at 20% then your investment needs to have a return of greater than 20% to justify repatriating the earnings. Those aren't quite so easy to find as you seem to imagine.
the interest is tax deductible making it like free money
Not precisely though the tax shield can make some investments possible/attractive that might otherwise not be feasible. What makes it close to free money is the fact that interest rates are so low. The deducti
why pay employees from your bank account when you can borrow short term, pay the low interest, deduct interest from your taxes and just roll the notes over into new notes every year or so?
There are two big reasons why you might not do this. The first and most important is cash flow. It's fine to borrow like you describe but if you have an interruption in cash flow and cannot repay your obligations then you have killed the business. For a company like Oracle or General Electric this is probably not a problem unless they get carried away. For smaller companies like mine cash flow is a huge issue and it has the potential to be a big problem. The second reason why not is opportunity cost. You are basically making a bet that by borrowing the cash that you be able to invest the cash that would otherwise have gone to payroll into something that will result in a greater return than the cost of interest + inflation. It's a reasonable thing to do but you can't simply assume the return will be greater by borrowing. In tough economic times even a 1-2% return on investment might be a bridge too far, especially in low margin businesses like Walmart.
I don't care if you see my balls, but I would like to prevent my thyroid condition from getting any worse.
I'm not particularly shy but I don't particular care to show my stuff either. It's just none of their business and doesn't make anyone safer.
What exactly is the rational objection to millimeter wave?
My fourth amendment rights. The fact that it doesn't improve safety. That it is expensive. That it is security theater. That while we logically can infer that it is safe we do not have much in the way of credible data backing up our logical assumptions.
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A true libertarian would understand those structural problems rather than attempt to slap the bandaid of "government oversight" on top.
Ahh, the No True Scotsman argument. Are you really going to trot out that logical fallacy? Understanding structural problems and seeking to solve them has nothing to do with being (or not being) a libertarian. In fact one could argue that hands-off libertarian style thinking is what caused this problem with LIBOR in the first place. No one was keeping an eye on the banks and so they behaved exactly how one would predict they would when no one was watching. While I'm certainly no fan of needless government oversight, there is a reason it exists and sometimes it is the least worst option.
Reducing the conflicts of interest are a more effective solution than having corrupt government agencies watch harder.
I don't think anyone will disagree that setting the right incentives is the most ideal solution. There is an old saying "show me my incentives and I'll tell you how I'm going to behave". Incentives are something economists focus heavily on. Problem is that setting incentives is often incredibly difficult (often impossible) to do well even if there are no conflicts of interest present in the people setting them.
Let me give an example. Let's say you own a company and you want to motivate your sales staff to go out and sell. How do you compensate them? If you pay a salary they likely will not work as hard as on commission. If they are on commission what do you base the commission on? Base it on sales and they will have no reason to care about profitability. Base it on profits and they'll try to cherry pick. If there is no sunset provision on commissions they may try to build up a few clients and then not worry about getting new ones. Basically any incentive structure you can come up with, I can tell you how people will game it. It is REALLY hard to come up with a system that provides the right incentives and eliminates motivation to game the system
So let's wait for them to implement that and watch the fireworks when Anonymous destroys the whole U.S. military.
If you truly think such a thing will happen then you are dumber than a Styrofoam submarine.
Not that anyone would notice now that the DoD ensures no soldier ever sees real combat, only mercenaries do nowadays, because those have zero oversight.
I have family in the army serving in the Middle East who would be very surprised to hear that they never see any real combat. Is the view nice from the cheap seats?
Chrome is really fast. It does stand out when you use it, even if I prefer to use Firefox.
I use both daily and frankly can't really see any speed difference for anything I need to do. While there probably are some differences I'm usually more limited by the speed of my connection to the ISP than anything else.
That's the "our encryption is unbreakable" argument. Let me know how that works out for you.
Exactly how do you propose The Enemy figure out the right key for each device? You can easily have a unique destruct code for each device which is vaguely close to a one time pad setup. The only way for The Enemy to destroy the device is to either A) get the code from The Good Guys or B) crack the encryption. If the device has a self destruct timer (or accelerometer or geo-locator or...) and the encryption is sufficiently robust it could be very difficult to crack in a sufficiently short time even with physical access. Without physical access it could be effectively impossible. Even cracking one device wouldn't enable The Enemy to do anything with the others unless The Good Guys do something stupid like reuse keys.
Basically a well designed system would be pretty hard to disable. The device just has to last long enough to do its job, not be impregnable for the rest of time.
But the GP raises an interesting question about what happens when an enemy has the ability to press a button and turn all your most critical battlefield C&C gear into slag.
If it truly is that easy to do then you deserve to lose the battle. Just because something can be destroyed easily doesn't mean it has to be easy for anyone to destroy it.
That would hand The Enemy an easy method of sabotage.
Only if the designer and/or user of the equipment is rather stupid.
If you want the authorized user to be the one to determine when the gear should (and should not) be sacrificed, it has to be "destroy on command".
It's pretty easy to think of circumstances where you would want it destroyed for anyone except the intended user. Sensitive document transport, various black ops activities, etc. If you are a spy you might very well want your electronics to dissolve unless someone knows the correct password.
One match, and I guarantee no readable data will be found in the resulting puddle of slag.
Perhaps they are looking for a slightly less ostentatious display of destruction in order to attract less attention.
A day in court may be a constitutional right but it is not a moral right when everyone knows the defendant has committed the crimes.
The entire point of having a trial is that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing as "everyone knows" because by definition you cannot know all the facts until they are presented. Having your day in court is absolutely a moral right whether the person is ultimately guilty or not.
All you have to do is sit on a jury and vote innocent on anyone that is brought up on a stupid law or on charges that are way over the top.
There are lots of aspects of law that have nothing to do with jury trials.
Who decides if it is a reasonable request?
Ultimately management does, whether or not a union exists. That's not to imply that management is always right (they demonstrably aren't) but any action ultimately needs management to approve it.
What if you can negotiate a lower fee for the company to move to a different but less well managed 401k program, I know my company moved, if we had a union stuff like that would negotiated.
A union is not needed to negotiate that sort of thing. Merely sufficiently interested and motivated employees who are willing to walk away if it is sufficiently important to them. You (probably) don't actually need to form a union, merely talk among yourselves and then go talk with management regarding what you want. The only real thing a union can do is to go on strike which is basically a threat to the existence of the company. The problem had better be rather severe for that to be a reasonable step. (sometimes a strike is an unfortunately necessary action) A union is pretty much regarded as something close to a suicide bomber by management. Unions threaten to take the company down unless management gives in to their demands. While I won't argue its effectiveness, negotiation through ultimatums is not a tactic that will win hearts and minds.
Bear in mind that when you request the company to pay additional costs on your behalf you are asking the owners of the company to take money out of their pocket and put it in yours. It's ok to do that but put yourself in their shoes for a second and consider your request. Is this something they can afford? What is the full cost to the company and its owners? Does this hurt the company's competitive position? How important is this request really? etc. If the workers really are getting an unfair deal then it is time to negotiate. Bear in mind that unless you have a BATNA, you can live with then you are not in a strong negotiating position.
Forming a union is not an admission of the workers not being willing to communicate but a relization that without a union management has all the power and has been abusing it.
Re-read what I wrote. I said "willing or able". Often workers are willing to communicate but are ineffective in doing so. (the reverse is true as well, often management is seriously lacking in communication ability) I've worked with many unions and quite a few are unwilling to negotiate in good faith with management. I've seen union contracts where someone can show up for work drunk multiple time before they can be terminated. Many unions make it virtually impossible to get rid of genuinely bad employees - see this flowchart for the steps required to terminate a bad teacher in New York. Unions tend to quickly change from protecting worker rights to extortion rackets. (nice company you have there - shame to see anything bad happen to it...) Management almost never has "all the power" because most employment is at-will. You can leave anytime you want for any reason or even no reason at all. And frankly if working conditions really are so bad that a union seems like a genuinely good idea, do you really want to stay there any longer than you have to?
Oh come on! You're wearing a blindfold man!
I assure you I am not. I run a manufacturing company and about 10% of my work force at any given time has green cards or work visas. Professionally I am a degreed engineer and also a certified accountant.
Corporations are NOT hiring the "best talent they can get" unless you expand the phrase with "for jr level wages"
You aren't quite there. The full phrasing would be "the best talent they can get given the financial situation of the company". In case you had forgotten the point of a corporation is to make money, not to produce the prettiest code. Competitive forces necessarily mean that companies will attempt to get the necessary work done for the least cost.
The skill level needed to accomplish a task has to be balanced against the financial constraints and often the highest quality of work possible costs more than the quality of work that is necessary. In IT work the largest cost typically is labor. You can reduce labor costs by reducing headcount or by hiring individuals willing to work for lower wages. If local workers are unwilling or unable to work for competitive wages then either companies have to relocate where the talent is (offshoring) or bring in talent from abroad (consultants or foreign workers on visas). Either way, workers are potentially in competition with a wider labor pool than those who happened to be born within the boundaries of the USA.
So does this really fit in with your charactorization about corps just trying to hire the best darn talent they can, and gosh darn it those dumb Americans just cant meet our needs!
I don't think Americans are dumb at all. Quite the opposite in fact. However I've been to China and they have 4X the people we do in the US. Think there might be a few smart ones over there? Think they might usefully contribute to the US economy if we can persuade them to work here? If you want people who aren't just "junior level" talent, you have to look for that talent wherever it might be and sometimes the best people for a particular position are not people who happened to be born in the USA.
Let me put this issue into some sort of perspective. The number of H1B visas issued is around 120,000 annually. The size of the US labor force is roughly 150 million people. That means the number of H1B visas amounts to less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the overall workforce. Even acknowledging the fact that H1B visa holders work disproportionately in IT this furor over H1B visas is incredibly overblown. Even tripling the number of H1B visas would have a most a modest effect on wages and employment of US workers. The risk to IT workers to wage competition with foreign talent is not at all mitigated by reducing the number of H1B visas. All that does is force companies to send the work elsewhere to be done at the lowest cost.
Don't think of good or evil in terms of "people" or "world", but try to realize that each and every country should focus on their own first...
Countries do not hire (most) people, companies do. Companies have a very limited ability to develop specialized talent. For the most part they need to hire people who already possess certain skills and attributes. These people may come from the same country as the company but quite commonly they do not. Forcing companies to hire people locally who lack critical skills when they are available elsewhere is absurd. The US is a nation of immigrants and pretending it is otherwise is to forget what made us successful in the first place.
Let's put this problem in perspective shall we? The number of H1B visas is around 120,000 annually. The size of the US labor force is roughly 150 million people. That means the number of H1B visas amounts to less than 0.1% (one tenth of one percent) of the overall workforce. That is almost a rounding error.
If your argument is that governments should set policies that encourage development of domestic talent then I agree. I think you will find few companies that will argue against such policies. Hiring foreigners is quite an administrative burden and the more local talent that is available the less it tends to cost.
If tech workers would quit thinking they are all above average and form a union you can bet your ass the wages would rise and working conditions rise.
A better option is to work with and, if necessary, become management. You form a union when you have no realistic opportunity for employment elsewhere and conditions are truly unfair and a danger to your well being. While there are companies out there that treat their IT employees badly, there is plenty of data that indicates jobs in IT are plentiful and mostly they are treated pretty well. My sister actually works for an IT staffing firm and they have no lack of job opportunities available. There are times when forming a union is appropriate behavior (some companies really are kind of evil) but that is very much the exception in IT. I have never seen a situation in IT where a union would have improved the prospects of the company or the people who worked there in the long run.
Imagine if your IT department went on strike. Try hiring a bunch of scabs that could quickly come up to speed on the existing architecture without the assistance of incumbent staff.
I have an IT department. If my IT department went on strike I would see to it that they would no longer be employed at my company as soon as it could be managed. Why? Iif they have a grievance I expect them to talk to me first about it. If it is a reasonable request and I can do something about it I will. If I cannot accommodate their request there is probably a good reason and going on strike will not change that reason. Most IT workers are paid well, work reasonable if sometimes demanding hours, and have a decent working environment. I invite any IT worker who thinks his work environment is terrible to work in a steel mill or in a coal mine for a week. Forming a union basically is an admission by employees (and indirectly by management) that they are not willing or able to communicate and negotiate in good faith.
Does Gimp suck so much that people are willing to go and beg Adobe for a 17 year old version
For most things GIMP is fine and quite capable but it could be SO much better. Seriously, I use GIMP all the time but the interface arguably does suck that bad. Also GIMP isn't really built with printing capabilities in mind the way Photoshop always had been.
While I wouldn't put GIMP up against today's Photoshop I would imagine it could at least best any version from the 90s.
Hard to be certain without them in front of me but even the current versions of GIMP aren't designed with printing in mind. GIMP is great for stuff you'll display on a screen or if your printing needs are rather modest. For web stuff current GIMP is probably better than ancient Photoshop but for certain printing needs even an old Photoshop has a strong chance to be better.
I know the age of superintelligence is near...
You "know" this? Do you have some powers of pre-cognition you would like to share with the rest of the class?
Specific skills would be O1A, H1B is just a slave
H1B visa are for specialty occupations requiring highly specialized knowledge. H1B visas are not for people who pick produce and calling them "slaves" is an absurd comparison. Real slavery is a horrific crime and slaves certainly don't get paid.
US workers are not the best option as they will want market wages.
Market wages are the wages that they can get. If others are willing to work for less then your "market wages" then what you are calling market wages isn't. Just because you think you deserve more money doesn't mean a thing if no one will pay you that amount. If you have the same skills and are willing to work for the same price I'm pretty sure a US company will hire you or did you think that Americans are somehow immune to economics?
There are plenty of trained americans, but they will not accept low wages and terrible working conditions.
Fair enough. Then I hope these same people will enjoy unemployment
The supply of domestic tech workers will never increase until the price (pay) is allowed to rise with demand.
You seem to think that there is some secret cabal who controls wages for tech workers. When there is sufficient demand and competition for talent then wages will rise. The market sets the rate. Just because wages aren't as high as you think they should be is irrelevant. Tech workers aren't more special than anyone else and there is no small group that controls their wages.
Screw that! If we need this for anything, it's doctors, since the supply is artificially limited by the AMA.
The article you reference is from 2005 and is quite out of date. The AMA does not control the supply of physicians in the US - Congress is in charge of that. The AMA is a lobbying group and a professional association but they do not control Congress.
I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours.
So you don't want to sound xenophobic but you really are. Foreign workers contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and bring specific talents that are badly needed by companies but you think we should hire Americans just because they are Americans?
Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers.
You've never tried to run a business have you? Forcing a company to hire substandard talent is literally counterproductive. Companies need to and should hire the best talent they can get regardless of where the person is from. If that happens to be people from the US that is terrific. Companies need specific skills and those skills don't have anything to do with national boundaries. If the US workers are the best available option then I guarantee you that companies will hire them. If they aren't the best then they don't really deserve the jobs now do they?
A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way.
So less competition for jobs is somehow supposed to push Americans to get more training? Curious logic since generally less competition has exactly the opposite effect. If I don't have to compete for my job, I'm going to have zero motivation to spend money or time on additional education.
RIM has positive cash flow, no debt, and significant capital assets and cash
RIM has had an operating loss for the last 4 straight quarters. While you are correct that the company isn't on financial life support (yet), their prospects are not looking especially cheery. Their cash hoard is around $3 billion which while substantial is tiny compared to Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. All their major competitors have extremely strong balance sheets, far stronger than RIM. It's a bit like playing poker when everyone at the table has a much larger pile of chips. You still can win but the odds are not in your favor.
RIM is far from dead and with their new offerings have continued opportunity to grow.
The sales numbers for RIM's products are do not back you up. Competing products from Apple and Android makers are in far higher demand. RIM's product line is pretty widely considered to be not competitive. While RIM might succeed yet with some brilliant new products, there is little evidence so far that we should expect anything that will put them ahead of the curve.
Another thing to consider - RIM is still has the only FIPS compliant smart phone on the market.
Which is something that the majority of the market could not care less about. At best it gives them some breathing room for a little while. But the number of people who really need that level of security is a pretty small fraction of the overall market. RIM needs a product offering with much broader appeal and significant advantages over the competition. Right now this is a battle they are losing and losing badly.
I bought my mother-in-law a $80 Belkin for Christmas and it needs resets every couple of weeks.
This has been my roughly my experience with Belkin equipment. It always seems to be a little bit unreliable. I realize my experience is entirely anecdotal but I've bought probably a dozen various bits of Belkin gear (usb hubs, switches, charging gear, etc) over the years and I've had small but irritating problems with most of them. A few simply didn't work at all. It's one of those things where I just don't trust their brand anymore even if they actually might have a good product.
why would you tax differently US corporations buying US T-Bills and foreign corporations buying US T-Bills ?
Because you have less/no legal authority over the foreign corporations. I should have thought that was obvious. Good luck collecting taxes for a foreign corporation that does no business in the USA.
The problem is that the idiot managers think that avoiding taxes at the cost of investing less is somehow a good idea.
It is a good idea to keep the cash parked overseas if the return on the investment is less than the cost of the taxes. Taxes on repatriated earnings effectively raise the cost of capital and reduce the number of available investment opportunities for that cash with a net present value greater than zero. If you are taxed at 20% then your investment needs to have a return of greater than 20% to justify repatriating the earnings. Those aren't quite so easy to find as you seem to imagine.
the interest is tax deductible making it like free money
Not precisely though the tax shield can make some investments possible/attractive that might otherwise not be feasible. What makes it close to free money is the fact that interest rates are so low. The deducti
why pay employees from your bank account when you can borrow short term, pay the low interest, deduct interest from your taxes and just roll the notes over into new notes every year or so?
There are two big reasons why you might not do this. The first and most important is cash flow. It's fine to borrow like you describe but if you have an interruption in cash flow and cannot repay your obligations then you have killed the business. For a company like Oracle or General Electric this is probably not a problem unless they get carried away. For smaller companies like mine cash flow is a huge issue and it has the potential to be a big problem. The second reason why not is opportunity cost. You are basically making a bet that by borrowing the cash that you be able to invest the cash that would otherwise have gone to payroll into something that will result in a greater return than the cost of interest + inflation. It's a reasonable thing to do but you can't simply assume the return will be greater by borrowing. In tough economic times even a 1-2% return on investment might be a bridge too far, especially in low margin businesses like Walmart.
I believe the courts have held these searches as constitutional.
And we know that the courts NEVER get anything wrong... [/sarcasm]
The scanners are no better or worse than the pat downs.
That is a matter of opinion.
I don't care if you see my balls, but I would like to prevent my thyroid condition from getting any worse.
I'm not particularly shy but I don't particular care to show my stuff either. It's just none of their business and doesn't make anyone safer.
What exactly is the rational objection to millimeter wave?
My fourth amendment rights. The fact that it doesn't improve safety. That it is expensive. That it is security theater. That while we logically can infer that it is safe we do not have much in the way of credible data backing up our logical assumptions.