I've said this for years. The problem with H1-B isn't about salary it's about indentured servitude. If we really need the talent that badly, why train them up on any kind of temporary visa? Give highly skilled tech workers access to an accelerated permanent residency and let them play on the same field as everyone else. I think you'd expose the lie about not enough resources in a hurry.
H1-B isn't even the answer for that problem. An accelerated green card program for highly skilled tech workers would support immigration without creating indentured servants. The H1-B program is irredeemably broken because it creates a worker who cannot fight back without extreme consequences for themselves. It also creates people trained to work with Americans who are then sent home to be better offshore workers. Very bad for Americans and not so good for the imported workers either.
The only real solution to the H1-B problem is to eliminate it entirely. If somehow it's true that finding talent is so hard that we need to import it, then institute a proper accelerated green card program for properly qualified folks and let them compete with Americans on equal legal footing. The H1-B program creates indentured servants who risk getting tossed out on their ear if they don't stay in line. That is the edge they have over American workers who are free to leave oppressive conditions. I think that is what companies want out of it, not the talent. Just look at who is actually hiring these folks for proof.
So no, raising the minimum H1-B wage is just theater. Kill the program and replace it with something far more fair for everyone involved. Well, except the greedy companies sucking the job out of life.
Solitaire used to be free with no ads on windows and then the era of monetizing anything and everything struck and what was a tool to learn to use a mouse is now a money maker? Blech.
I think it's funny that you think Clinton is saying "we're doing great." All I've heard is "we're doing better now than the last time there was a Republican in the oval office." Which is not the same thing.
Trump is a narcissistic, juvenile, puerile, mean, petty, scheming, lying bullshit artist who's most common debate tactic is variations on "I know you are but what am I?" Every time he calls Secretary Clinton "crooked" or "liar" my head almost explodes from the irony.
So sadly true. H1B is such a crock of shit it's a wonder that anyone in the process can stomach the stench. I guess the piles of money made from the indentured servitude of others must mask the smell.
I can understand a personality fit problem, but complaining about 'the right experience' is nonsense. Look for flexible people who can solve problems and they'll pick up whatever your flavor of the month is. Has hiring really come down to stupid HR lists? Must have 3 years of X and 2 years of Y. Please. You should be looking for problem solvers, not people who fit some arbitrary magical list. Yeah, it's harder to evaluate for 'smart, flexible' person than to scan a resume but the result is much better.
There is a caveat to this that someone else mentioned... the venues are often subsidized in some part by the public via taxes. So there is at least some expectation of ordinary tax payers getting to benefit from the place they helped pay for.
So far, nearly all of the extra money from the productivity increases has gone to a select few at the top of the food chain. We are already working despite getting little reward. I don't actually expect that 90% of people will be satisfied with collecting enough money to eat and live in cheap housing. I think it's more likely that knowing you'll be able to feed your children no matter what means people are more free to try their hand at new things. More people can get educated, start businesses etc knowing that food and housing are taken care of. In fact, the few studies done so far seem to show that happens more than the 'smoke and play video games' does.
Actually productivity has gone up so much with automation and efficiencies that we have the opposite problem. When one person can do the job of 10, what do we expect he other 9 to do? Population keeps increasing so eventually there will have to be big changes. UIB is probably one of the least impactful ways to deal with an increasing number of people for whom there simply aren't useful jobs to do. They aren't going to peacefully starve to death.
I think this is a two edged sword. There are times when the venue for airing both sides really does lend more credibility to a topic than it deserves. Major news stations include the young earth creationist minister next to the PhD evolutionary biologist and ask them the same serious questions as if they both had the same likelihood of offering a factual answer.
There is a problem when the venue is so concerned with keeping the controversy alive (and keeping viewers' attention) that they don't tout the 20 years of study and research that one person has done vs. the bible thumping (or paid loyalties) of the other.
I suspect, with no proof whatsoever, that it isn't completely transparent. They are possibly getting kickbacks of some sort from their whitelisted partners which makes it economically better for them. Obviously the submitter is correct from a purely technical perspective, but money changes the game. T-Mobile customers end up encouraged to use those services which are unlimited so there is value there to Netflix etc. I can believe they would pony up some cash.
He's enough of a showman to convince some people that he's honest. Every time I see him all I get is the impression that he has carefully crafted his rhetoric to appeal to the baser nature of an apparently large minority of this country. Every time he mentions the bible I cringe because it sounds so calculated. Every time he insults or lies about some easy to target group it sounds so carefully planned to whip up a frenzy. I can't understand how anyone thinks he's being "real" or "honest" except when he's bragging about being a guy who started out rich and got richer. It would be funny if it weren't so scary that people are falling for it.
Is the job located in a good area and your pay scale comparable to the cost of living? I've gotten a zillion job listings that are totally nuts... move to San Francisco for a 30% pay raise and a 400% cost of living increase - Yay! Err. No. Good people expect good things. I have no idea the position or pay your company is offering, but don't judge the whole market by your circumstances either.
I imagine they would pay what it costs to get work done. They might even have to stop paying their CEOs $20M plus. Allowing companies to create indentured servants is just another way to funnel money from the bottom 99% to the top 1%. If pay scales get crazy, more people will study STEM and normal market processes of supply and demand will bring wages into an equilibrium. Short circuiting the market by bringing in cheap labor under false pretenses is what our gov't representatives are supposed to be protecting us from. Of course they've been bought out on both sides of the aisle and due to vote laziness (and craziness) have no reason to actually pay attention when rubber-stamping the laws they're given by their corporate overlords.
If there really were a shortage of tech workers, which I don't believe for a moment, the H1-B program is still about indentured servants. They should speed up/open up proper permanent residencies for these people so they come in with all the same rights and expectations of the Americans they are currently displacing. Holding them hostage to one company, training them to work well with Americans and then sending them home to lead off-shored teams is so bad for American workers that it's ridiculous.
Phone number is a crap identifier. It's not unique nor constant for any one person. And knowing someone's phone number is a crap way to prove you know anything about that someone too. This site will suck.
We have a hard enough time convincing citizens to vote. I find it very hard to believe non-citizens are so excited by our candidates and in such numbers that they could affect an election. My non-citizen spouse finds American politics to be disgusting and laughable on alternating days.
If only that were true. Several of the more conservative Republican candidates are already adding a push to get a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage added to their platform.
We have term limits. They go by the fancy name of elections. Sadly, for it to work you have to have an informed and active electorate. I don't support hard term limits for two reasons:
1) They barely care about the people they supposedly represent now. If they know they can only get a term or two, I think they'll care even less. The end result will be an endless parade of the same schmucks we have now who really have no reason to do anything other than what benefits them personally. These people are mostly turned out by a political grinder anyway. The supply of jackasses is pretty much unlimited, so making sure that in each election half the people there don't even have to pretend to be working for their constituents isn't helpful.
2) On the off chance that someone decent and caring does manage to get elected, I don't want them forced out by some blanket law and replaced by one of the aforementioned endless supply of jackasses just because people are too lazy to vote.
It's true what I read a while back that in most elections the real winner is "none of the above" since voter turnout is crap and we are essentially saying we don't like any of them enough to get off our asses and put them in office. We should set a quorum and each election has to be repeated until someone gets an actual majority of the total number of eligible voters in their district/state/country. If on a second try, you still don't get a quorum, all candidates must be replaced by new ones who get to try to motivate people.
At this point, having no-body in office would at least keep them from doing more harm than good.
The old homophobic argument that somehow being homosexual is similar to being a pedophile. If you can't see the difference between consensual adult activity and taking advantage of a child then the deficiency is yours.
Not that it matters, but being homosexual is also considered to be 'what you are' by folks who study such things scientifically. And even if it was purely a choice, in as much as it's a choice that hurts no one and isn't illegal, public businesses should not discriminate based on it.
Now if a business owner wishes to declare their business closed to the public and open only to select customers based on the owner prejudices then I'm all for it. Make those conditions known up front and let it play out.
And how is that made better by having autonomous robots do the fighting for those who can afford it? Then the poor and less technologically advanced suffer even more while being unable to inflict the slightest real harm on their foes.
There was an episode of ST:TOS on this point. Two planets had warring factions and they had managed to reduce it to basically a computer program that simulated attacks and decided who was killed by them. Those people were then supposed to show up to a center to be exterminated. The problem of course was that since there weren't all the hardships of war... famine, disease, destruction etc... it had gone on for ages. Kirk's solution of course was to destroy the computer so they'd either have to fight the old fashioned messy way or actually settle their differences.
Like many of those episodes I think it really did touch on the realities of the human mind. If war becomes too detached, too clean and simple then we will put much less effort into diplomacy. I'm not a pacifist, but I do think war should be a last option. And it should be messy and painful so that we'll try to find ways to end it.
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I've said this for years. The problem with H1-B isn't about salary it's about indentured servitude. If we really need the talent that badly, why train them up on any kind of temporary visa? Give highly skilled tech workers access to an accelerated permanent residency and let them play on the same field as everyone else. I think you'd expose the lie about not enough resources in a hurry.
H1-B isn't even the answer for that problem. An accelerated green card program for highly skilled tech workers would support immigration without creating indentured servants. The H1-B program is irredeemably broken because it creates a worker who cannot fight back without extreme consequences for themselves. It also creates people trained to work with Americans who are then sent home to be better offshore workers. Very bad for Americans and not so good for the imported workers either.
The only real solution to the H1-B problem is to eliminate it entirely. If somehow it's true that finding talent is so hard that we need to import it, then institute a proper accelerated green card program for properly qualified folks and let them compete with Americans on equal legal footing. The H1-B program creates indentured servants who risk getting tossed out on their ear if they don't stay in line. That is the edge they have over American workers who are free to leave oppressive conditions. I think that is what companies want out of it, not the talent. Just look at who is actually hiring these folks for proof.
So no, raising the minimum H1-B wage is just theater. Kill the program and replace it with something far more fair for everyone involved. Well, except the greedy companies sucking the job out of life.
What a ripoff.
Solitaire used to be free with no ads on windows and then the era of monetizing anything and everything struck and what was a tool to learn to use a mouse is now a money maker? Blech.
I think it's funny that you think Clinton is saying "we're doing great." All I've heard is "we're doing better now than the last time there was a Republican in the oval office." Which is not the same thing.
Trump is a narcissistic, juvenile, puerile, mean, petty, scheming, lying bullshit artist who's most common debate tactic is variations on "I know you are but what am I?" Every time he calls Secretary Clinton "crooked" or "liar" my head almost explodes from the irony.
So sadly true. H1B is such a crock of shit it's a wonder that anyone in the process can stomach the stench. I guess the piles of money made from the indentured servitude of others must mask the smell.
I can understand a personality fit problem, but complaining about 'the right experience' is nonsense. Look for flexible people who can solve problems and they'll pick up whatever your flavor of the month is. Has hiring really come down to stupid HR lists? Must have 3 years of X and 2 years of Y. Please. You should be looking for problem solvers, not people who fit some arbitrary magical list. Yeah, it's harder to evaluate for 'smart, flexible' person than to scan a resume but the result is much better.
There is a caveat to this that someone else mentioned... the venues are often subsidized in some part by the public via taxes. So there is at least some expectation of ordinary tax payers getting to benefit from the place they helped pay for.
I think many of these people serve on each other's boards and they make sure they are all mutually taken care of.
Apparently being rich makes you an asshole: http://www.scientificamerican....
So far, nearly all of the extra money from the productivity increases has gone to a select few at the top of the food chain. We are already working despite getting little reward. I don't actually expect that 90% of people will be satisfied with collecting enough money to eat and live in cheap housing. I think it's more likely that knowing you'll be able to feed your children no matter what means people are more free to try their hand at new things. More people can get educated, start businesses etc knowing that food and housing are taken care of. In fact, the few studies done so far seem to show that happens more than the 'smoke and play video games' does.
Actually productivity has gone up so much with automation and efficiencies that we have the opposite problem. When one person can do the job of 10, what do we expect he other 9 to do? Population keeps increasing so eventually there will have to be big changes. UIB is probably one of the least impactful ways to deal with an increasing number of people for whom there simply aren't useful jobs to do. They aren't going to peacefully starve to death.
I think this is a two edged sword. There are times when the venue for airing both sides really does lend more credibility to a topic than it deserves. Major news stations include the young earth creationist minister next to the PhD evolutionary biologist and ask them the same serious questions as if they both had the same likelihood of offering a factual answer.
There is a problem when the venue is so concerned with keeping the controversy alive (and keeping viewers' attention) that they don't tout the 20 years of study and research that one person has done vs. the bible thumping (or paid loyalties) of the other.
I suspect, with no proof whatsoever, that it isn't completely transparent. They are possibly getting kickbacks of some sort from their whitelisted partners which makes it economically better for them. Obviously the submitter is correct from a purely technical perspective, but money changes the game. T-Mobile customers end up encouraged to use those services which are unlimited so there is value there to Netflix etc. I can believe they would pony up some cash.
>> Here's why people like Trump: he's honest.
He's enough of a showman to convince some people that he's honest. Every time I see him all I get is the impression that he has carefully crafted his rhetoric to appeal to the baser nature of an apparently large minority of this country. Every time he mentions the bible I cringe because it sounds so calculated. Every time he insults or lies about some easy to target group it sounds so carefully planned to whip up a frenzy. I can't understand how anyone thinks he's being "real" or "honest" except when he's bragging about being a guy who started out rich and got richer. It would be funny if it weren't so scary that people are falling for it.
Is the job located in a good area and your pay scale comparable to the cost of living? I've gotten a zillion job listings that are totally nuts... move to San Francisco for a 30% pay raise and a 400% cost of living increase - Yay! Err. No. Good people expect good things. I have no idea the position or pay your company is offering, but don't judge the whole market by your circumstances either.
I imagine they would pay what it costs to get work done. They might even have to stop paying their CEOs $20M plus. Allowing companies to create indentured servants is just another way to funnel money from the bottom 99% to the top 1%. If pay scales get crazy, more people will study STEM and normal market processes of supply and demand will bring wages into an equilibrium. Short circuiting the market by bringing in cheap labor under false pretenses is what our gov't representatives are supposed to be protecting us from. Of course they've been bought out on both sides of the aisle and due to vote laziness (and craziness) have no reason to actually pay attention when rubber-stamping the laws they're given by their corporate overlords.
If there really were a shortage of tech workers, which I don't believe for a moment, the H1-B program is still about indentured servants. They should speed up/open up proper permanent residencies for these people so they come in with all the same rights and expectations of the Americans they are currently displacing. Holding them hostage to one company, training them to work well with Americans and then sending them home to lead off-shored teams is so bad for American workers that it's ridiculous.
Phone number is a crap identifier. It's not unique nor constant for any one person. And knowing someone's phone number is a crap way to prove you know anything about that someone too. This site will suck.
We have a hard enough time convincing citizens to vote. I find it very hard to believe non-citizens are so excited by our candidates and in such numbers that they could affect an election. My non-citizen spouse finds American politics to be disgusting and laughable on alternating days.
If only that were true. Several of the more conservative Republican candidates are already adding a push to get a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage added to their platform.
We have term limits. They go by the fancy name of elections. Sadly, for it to work you have to have an informed and active electorate. I don't support hard term limits for two reasons:
1) They barely care about the people they supposedly represent now. If they know they can only get a term or two, I think they'll care even less. The end result will be an endless parade of the same schmucks we have now who really have no reason to do anything other than what benefits them personally. These people are mostly turned out by a political grinder anyway. The supply of jackasses is pretty much unlimited, so making sure that in each election half the people there don't even have to pretend to be working for their constituents isn't helpful.
2) On the off chance that someone decent and caring does manage to get elected, I don't want them forced out by some blanket law and replaced by one of the aforementioned endless supply of jackasses just because people are too lazy to vote.
It's true what I read a while back that in most elections the real winner is "none of the above" since voter turnout is crap and we are essentially saying we don't like any of them enough to get off our asses and put them in office. We should set a quorum and each election has to be repeated until someone gets an actual majority of the total number of eligible voters in their district/state/country. If on a second try, you still don't get a quorum, all candidates must be replaced by new ones who get to try to motivate people.
At this point, having no-body in office would at least keep them from doing more harm than good.
The old homophobic argument that somehow being homosexual is similar to being a pedophile. If you can't see the difference between consensual adult activity and taking advantage of a child then the deficiency is yours.
Not that it matters, but being homosexual is also considered to be 'what you are' by folks who study such things scientifically. And even if it was purely a choice, in as much as it's a choice that hurts no one and isn't illegal, public businesses should not discriminate based on it.
Now if a business owner wishes to declare their business closed to the public and open only to select customers based on the owner prejudices then I'm all for it. Make those conditions known up front and let it play out.
And how is that made better by having autonomous robots do the fighting for those who can afford it? Then the poor and less technologically advanced suffer even more while being unable to inflict the slightest real harm on their foes.
There was an episode of ST:TOS on this point. Two planets had warring factions and they had managed to reduce it to basically a computer program that simulated attacks and decided who was killed by them. Those people were then supposed to show up to a center to be exterminated. The problem of course was that since there weren't all the hardships of war... famine, disease, destruction etc... it had gone on for ages. Kirk's solution of course was to destroy the computer so they'd either have to fight the old fashioned messy way or actually settle their differences.
Like many of those episodes I think it really did touch on the realities of the human mind. If war becomes too detached, too clean and simple then we will put much less effort into diplomacy. I'm not a pacifist, but I do think war should be a last option. And it should be messy and painful so that we'll try to find ways to end it.