Logged in to say this. The 'moral majority' (which is neither) has decided that they know what's best for the rest of us. They terrorize politicians into implementing 'decency' rules that reinforce this belief. They pay hordes of lawyers to sue media companies that don't toe their line.
They're a bunch of fundamentally insecure white males (and their chattel) that are so terrified of the concept of female sexuality that they move to oppress any expression of it outside of... well, actually, any expression of it at all.
Fundamentalist Evangelical "Christians" are a plague on the United States. Hopefully the drubbing their meat puppets took in the last election will disarm them a bit; if the politicians know they can no longer win elections just by pandering to the fundies, they'll stop doing it.
The level of entitlement in the OP is staggering, but, unfortunately, not unusual. At least in the USA, companies seem to be convinced that they have a divine right to treat their employees like liabilities and traitors (and generally like shit), even in the absence of any proof whatsoever. Mandatory drug testing. Credit checks. Background checks. Interviews that are more like an inquisition than a productive effort towards a common goal. And if they even get the slightest whiff of their employees being dissatisfied with the quality of the shit they're being fed, out the door they go, with no explanation whatsoever. "Security will meet you at your desk and escort you from the premises. No, we're not going to tell you, you just don't work here any more. Your belongings will be mailed to you, at your expense. Here's some information that the fascist state we live in DEMANDS that we give people when we fire them, and since they're so incredibly anti-business, they also DEMAND that we actually give you the wages you've earned AND vacation pay. BASTARDS!"
Companies treat their employees like the enemy. Labor relations resemble a banana republic civil war more than a professional interaction. A hostile environment makes people feel insecure and defensive, and when you threaten someone's livelihood for the mortal sin of not wanting to be treated like a garbage bin, they tend to take drastic steps to protect themselves (like using the resources they have access to to make it harder to fire them). Most people will choose continuing to be able to feed their families over ethics, especially when it's made clear to them that the people calling the shots have no ethics whatsoever and will not hesitate to throw them under whatever bus happens to be rolling by if it makes them look good (or covers for their own astounding incompetence).
Firing people SHOULD be painful. Most of the time, it's not painful ENOUGH. Most of the time, the fired employee is hurt so much more drastically than the former employer; after all, the company can just scare the remaining employees into doing the ex-employee's job in addition to theirs.
If you fire a key IT employee, and as a result your company burns, well, tough shit. You have nobody but yourself to blame for either hiring the wrong guy, or allowing an incompetent to run things for so long unsupervised, or treating a competent employee like garbage.
"Why are you requesting three roles here? I thought you just needed a computer guy". "Having a team adds flexibility and redundancy, for example, if one gets hit by a bus or goes on vacation, the others can cover." "How likely is he/she to be hit by a bus? And we'll just not let them go on vacation if that's what it takes." "I doubt we'll be able to hire someone qualified if we don't allow them vacation time." "Oh, we'll give them vacation time, we just won't let them take it. Or, if we have to, we'll make them carry their laptop while they're away." "Then that's not vacation, is it?" "Quit being such a whiner. Oh, and the salary you asked for? Find someone for 60% of that. Revenues are down." "Didn't the CEO just get a huge bonus?" "What does that have to do with anything?"
TL;DR: Companies don't make hiring decisions based on what makes sense, they make them based on how little they can spend.
I don't think people here really resent the people who come here on H1B visas, I think they resent the way the system for H1Bs is set up.
A foreign-educated engineer who comes to the USA on an H1B visa cannot be faulted for wanting to have a better standard of living than they would otherwise have access to in their native country. That's what used to be called the "American Dream"; we are, after all, a nation of immigrants. But there are problems with the system as it currently exists:
1) Employers do not pay H1B visa holders the same amount as native workers. They're supposed to, but they don't, because : 2) H1B visa holders are beholden to their employers for the opportunity to continue to live here. All employees are at a significant disadvantage to their employers in the USA, but a native worker exercising the only real right they have in employment conditions (finding another job and quitting) does not face immediate deportation. Also, employees that complain about working conditions get fired, so H1B visa holders don't complain about mistreatment, legal or otherwise. A right that you cannot assert is not a right. 3) The employer, not an impartial (government or otherwise) agency is allowed to determine what the "prevailing wage" is for a given position. 4) Enforcement of existing rules intended to protect both native workers and H1B visa holders is largely ineffective, and that's if the regulating authorities even hear about the violations; see 2) above. 5) H1B visas are intended to allow employers to hire for positions that they cannot find native workers for. However, there is significant evidence to suggest that there is no actual shortage of native workers in the fields that H1B visa holders traditionally see the most use. The truth is, that employers COULD fill these positions with native workers (as there are more than enough native workers to fill the open positions in a given field) but would rather use H1B visa holders to save money and exploit their willingness to put up with substandard treatment. 6) There is a phenomenon of foreign agencies sending workers over here to gain experience in how an American business is run, then repatriating them in order to encourage American companies to outsource to cheaper foreign labor.
What if you're doing e-commerce? You could have a customer in any jurisdiction in the country (assuming you don't sell internationally.)
Sales tax laws are byzantine and obscure. Some states require you to charge tax on shipping and handling, some don't. Some states say category X specifically is tax-free but everything else is not. Some delivery addresses have four or more tax jurisdictions to calculate, and sometimes in those jurisdictions one tax calculation is dependent on another (it is possible to charge tax on a taxed amount.) Some states have different tax rates depending on the total taxable amount of the transaction.
There is an entire industry around calculating sales tax accurately. I wrote a module for the ecommerce application I maintain to interface with a service that accepts a SOAP request with information regarding SKU, quantity, and cost for the items in the customer's cart, and based on both the originating AND delivery addresses, returns the appropriate amount to charge for total sales tax, and records the various tax rates in a database than can be queried later for the purposes of distributing collected funds later. They track all the jurisdictions for you down to the rooftop level; they take into account state-wide, city, county, local, and any special jurisdictions.
The solution, of course, is to have a single nationwide sales tax rate charged on every transaction that originates in the United States. But, that would require everyone who squawks "STATE'S RIGHTS! STATE'S RIGHTS! AWWK" every time anyone makes a suggestion about federalizing something to improve things to know what's in their best interest.
Regulation no matter how imposed is not intended to fix a basic trait of the human race. Instead it is to mitigate this ill at some cost.
Um, I think that's what I said in the GP post.
Without a consideration of the benefit and the cost, it makes no sense to moralize. You may just be making the matter worse. My view is that some regulation, even government regulation, is desirable. But when the description of that regulatory burden increases at an exponential rate, then something is out of control. Even if the cost justifies the benefits now, it won't remain the case without long term changes in how regulation is created and maintained.
So if I read you correctly, your problem isn't with regulation per se, but with its complexity.
Government regulation is failing as well. In recent years, US regulatory agencies have been adding somewhere around 70-80k [blogspot.com] new pages per year. From that graph, I'd also characterize the growth rate in regulation as vaguely exponential over time with a doubling every 30-40 years.
The fact that there are more regulations does not mean that government regulation is failing. Yes, in a perfect world, government regulation would not be necessary. Every private company in the country would act in the best interests of its customers, its employees, and its stockholders at all times. Industrial pollution would not exist, insider trading would not exist, employees of every company would share equitably in their employer's success or failures. Nobody would ever be required to work unpaid overtime, no employee would ever be asked to do something that would put life and limb at risk, no company would deliberately mislead its customers in order to realize short-term sales gains. The day that all of the preceding has come to pass is the day I will gladly burn all the regulations side by side with you.
Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where people (and the companies they run) are short-sighted, greedy, selfish, irresponsible assholes. That's the real problem; the government regulation is just a band-aid.
So why not hire a 22 year old college grad from the US than a 21 year old Indian with questionable education or experience?
The question makes inaccurate assumptions. You are assuming that employers value education and experience over how little they can pay their employees. That, and both potential hires are pretty much blank slates in terms of whether they can actually effectively use the education/experience they have gained.
I mean think about it: Your college grad more that likely has very little to no experience, and you can't be sure if the foreign worker actually has the experience he/she is claiming. So, the experience/education factor is basically a wash.
In the end, what is an employer at a for-profit private business going to do: Pay the US college grad $X or the H1-B worker $X *.75? I'll give you a hint: They'll hire the H1-B every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Plus, the domestic worker is going to want silly things like "health insurance" and "a 401k" and "dignity in employment", while the H1-B worker not only will accept work without benefits, they are far more likely to eat the shit that the employer feeds them in the form of unpaid overtime and slave-labor working conditions. I mean, what are they going to do, complain? Complainers get fired no matter their nationality or status, but the difference is that the H1-B faces deportation if he/she gets fired, so he/she is much less likely to do anything if he/she is poorly treated.
Employers like spineless worker bees that they can pay peanuts. Period.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to do. If you look at the AC post I'm replying to, he is the one throwing around the numbers, I'm just doing the math that those numbers represent. I agree that someone making $50k/year should not be living in a $300,000 house or driving a $25k car. When I use the words "bare necessities" I'm incorporating the assumptions that the GP post made (indicated by the fact that I said "bare necessities if you have that big a house and that expensive a car"). If you replace the $25k car with one costing $10k or so, and renting an apartment for $1000 or so in the place of buying a house, the numbers are much saner. Still not great, but at least you aren't in the red. Those are much closer to "bare necessities" for me. You need a place to live (-$1000), a job (+$3125), a car to get to said job (-$180 payment, -$65 insurance, -$12.50 excise tax, -$150 fuel), food (-$400), heat (-$200), water (-$30), a phone (-$50), arguably an Internet connection depending on what your job is (-$60), and electricity (-$100). This leaves $112.50 extra each month. You can pare down each to the bare bones, but there's a point of diminishing returns.
There are a number of assumptions in that last set of numbers. Rent is $1000 if you can find a 1 bedroom apartment that isn't leaking toxic waste at that price (and that would take some doing in this market), car figures are based on a $10,000 loan over 60 months at 3 percent, average insurance and excise tax, and gas at $4/gallon, heat is a year-round average, phone is a dumbphone with no data plan, standard broadband internet connection, and similar electric rates to what I'm paying.
Probably more accurate to say that hospital administrators would rather rip their own arms off than fund IT adequately. Hospitals are *notorious* for under-funding IT departments.
$50k/year = about $37,500 after taxes/medicare/social security. Health insurance = $500/month x 12 = $6,000 (assuming that your employer even provides it. If they don't, jack this up to $1000 or go without insurance.) $300,000 mortgage = $1500 mortgage payment x 12 = $18,000. (And that's assuming you have $50,000 to put down on a $300,000 house, and get a 4% interest rate, and low property taxes.) $25,000 car = $450/month payment x 12 = $5,400. (Assuming you're able to get a 0% down loan, and get a 3% interest rate over 60 months.) Insurance on said car = $1500/year. Fuel for said car = 40 miles/day commute x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year = 10,400 miles/year. 10.400 miles/year / 30 miles/gallon = 347 gal/year. 347 gal/year x $4/gal = $1388/year. Excise/property tax on car: In this state, $25 for each $1000 of value of the car x.9 for the 'new' model year = $625. Electricity/phones/heat etc = $450/month x 12 = $5,400. ($100 for electric, $100 for phones/Internet service, $250/month for heat. Adjust electric and heat payments for your local climate, but that's pretty much a wash in the end.) Food: $100/week x 52 weeks = $5200.
With the above, you have a net income of -$6,013 (-$12,013 if you have to buy health insurance independently). And that's just the bare necessities if you have that big a house and that expensive a car. We haven't even talked about putting clothes on your back or doing ANYTHING that isn't strictly survival-based. Not even water/sewer.
$150,000 = $112,500 after taxes/medicare/social security (approximately). Health insurance = Same $6000/$12,000 as above. Mortgage on $900,000 house (assuming $100k down, 4% over 30 years) = $4757/month x 12 = $57,084. Car loans = $898/month x 2 x 12 months = $21,552. Insurance on said cars = $4000/year. Assuming no additional mileage, fuel is the same $1388/year. Excise taxes on cars = $2250/year. Electricity/phones/heat = $600/month x 12 = $7200/year (factoring in the fact that the house is larger and requires more in utilities.) Food = same $5200.
You're in a little better shape here, net income is $7826 (assuming access to employer-sponsored health coverage. $1826 without.) But, you're a little older, and your non-covered health care expenses are higher, and there's probably a spouse and a kid or two to support. And, you're assuming $6666 in raises each year on average. If you assume the typical 3% raise that most Americans get each year (if they're lucky) you get about $78k/year.
I'm not discounting your point about living within your means, but realistic numbers are always more useful.
Who, exactly, are you to decide that? What makes you so sure your reading of the Constitution is the 'truth' and that SCOTUS is just wrong about it?
Are you a legal professional? A law professor? Constitutional scholar? Or are you just someone frustrated with the fact that people disagree with your worldview?
And what, exactly, do you mean by "upholding the Constitution" here? I have a suspicion that it doesn't involve petitions or angry letters.
Given that it is a true statement, namely, that the individual mandate truly isn't supported by the Constitution as a valid means of collecting revenue and hence, is unconstitutional, then what's the point of saying otherwise? The Supreme Court can be stacked and was to sufficient degree (the vote was aside from the crazy thing that Justice Roberts did, strictly along ideological lines)
Except, that it isn't a true statement. You can interpret the Constitution any way you want; you're entitled to your opinion. But, as corrupt/ideological as they are, they are still the Supreme Court of the United States, and you're not. If they say something is constitutional, then it is. That's the whole point of having SCOTUS in the first place. They're there to keep the Executive and Legislative branches from passing laws that aren't constitutional. They found this one to be constitutional. If you think you know the law better than the Justices do, well, go on with your bad self. But until a different SCOTUS overturns it as unconstitutional, it's the law of the land.
We don't need a single payer system, we need indefinite, healthy lives at moderate cost. For healthy person health care, it's generally pretty cheap. For example, I broke my arm in two places. That cost somewhere around $20,000 to patch up. Kind of high as one would expect in the US system, but affordable.
Wow, you consider $20,000 "affordable"? That's enough to drive a significant portion of the population into extreme financial distress. Also, you picked a relatively low-cost injury to talk about; what if it was cancer? Millions.
But for people in their last few years, the costs are expensive no matter what sort of health care system you are in. And there really isn't much value in heroic efforts to prolong one's death.
That's what I'll call here "deathbed theater". I see a significant portion of health care as merely show with little if any benefit for the dying patient. It's only dubious virtue over other ostentatious displays of mourning and grief for the departed is that it is done while the person is still alive.
I think any sort of public health care should be directed at things that have significant, demonstrable benefit such as immunizations, pregnancy care, and young child nutrition programs. Maybe needs based health care for health problems that have a fairly high benefit to cost ratio.
As for dying people, aside from providing a comfortable, pain-free place to die and a nice gravestone, I don't see any necessary duty to provide there. My view is that public health care should be very limited and it should be the choice of the patient how much they're willing to spend for health care. Single payer subverts that and gives patients little incentive to cut their health care consumption. That shows in massive, above inflation growth in health care costs through out the developed world.
You remind me of Ford in the 70s, who assigned a dollar value to a person's life. I'm hoping you're not as callous as you sound.
You raise a number of legitimate concerns. It's my understanding that the Tea Party was originally founded out of reaction to those concerns, and as such, was a movement that, while I would not join it, would at least be working towards a number of goals that I would consider constructive.
However, shortly after its creation, the extreme right-wing movement ripped the wool off the Tea Party sheep and started wearing it, lest they look like the wolves that they are. They're no longer concerned about the size of government, the role of a federal government as described in the Constitution, or inefficient bureaucracies that waste government resources. They still talk a good game about stopping corruption and lowering taxes, but once you elect a Tea Party-endorsed candidate, they immediately forget all about any of that and instead promote their social agenda. They waste government time and resources voting again and again for bills that have no chance of passing, and are simply a fig leaf to be used when needed. They can say that they voted to repeal Obamacare over 30 times (no kidding), or that they made it triple-dog-dare illegal for government funds to be used to provide abortion services (which has been illegal since the 1970s).
Oh, and just to be pedantic, calling the ACA "unconstitutional" is black-letter wrong. The Supreme Court said so, and they have some measure of authority over that. Call it 'inefficient' and 'short-sighted' and 'wasteful' all you want; those arguments can be made (as well as the fact that it doesn't give us what we need, which is a single payer system).
Training existing employees in needed skills represents a conscious desire to improve the skill set of your existing employees, so you gain ability without the expense and hassle of finding someone new to hire. It treats your employees like assets to be improved, not liabilities to be minimized.
Unfortunately, ISTM that most employers would rather rip off an arm than provide training for their employees. Their logic is that helping employees to expand their skill sets only leads to freshly trained employees that quickly leave because they can make more money/improve their working conditions/get away from a horrible manager by going to another employer. The problem is, while it's short-sighted, they're right. Keeping employees happy is expensive, complicated and time-consuming. Lots of times, it requires a change in the corporate culture. It's hard to go from treating your employees like liabilities and cost centers to treating them like assets. It's *very* hard to convince employees that the culture has genuinely changed; they'll assume it's just another case of management saying all the right things while not actually changing anything of substance, which they have more than likely done before.
In an ideal world, companies that treated their people like shit would quickly find themselves without employees, having had said employees leave to go to another employer that treats them like human beings. (The free market in action, no?) The trouble is that, in practice, the employee is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to how their employer treats them. Their employer basically controls their entire lives (literally, in the case of employer-provided health insurance). Wage slavery is a real thing, and the norm. Most companies treat their employees just well enough to keep them from leaving immediately, which results in employees doing just enough work to not get fired. Management does not want to provide the employee with more ammunition in the battle by making them more marketable as employees; they like them right where they are. Yeahh, I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Saturday, mmkay?
"Hey, boss, I've written this code you want. Who's doing the QA on it?" "You." "OK. What about the functionality testing?" "Also you." "..OK, what about the security testing?" "You again." "... uhh, OK, what about compatibility testing?" "Which part of "No, you aren't getting any QA resources, testing resources, engineering backup, DBA staffing, IT support, or project management" are you having trouble with?"
It would be great to work someplace where there was a sane amount of separation of duties. Most people are lucky to get a testing server that's an ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY SEPARATE MACHINE from the production server. The truth (at least in my experience) is that the question in TFA is irrelevant, since if the developers aren't doing the installations, nobody is, since there IS nobody else.
If there were any 'really good compan[ies]' to work for, then unions would not be necessary. Companies do not care about their employees. They might talk a good game, they might even spend a little money on 'employee morale', but it's all bullshit. In a capitalist system, the purpose of a for-profit enterprise is to.. well, make profit. You make profit by increasing revenues and lowering costs. Employees are a cost. Therefore it is in the company's best interest to treat their employees like shit, because that's cheaper than treating them like human beings.
Until the labor laws in the USA catch up with the rest of the world, unions will be necessary here. When you can be fired for no stated reason, you have no rights as an employee. Oh sure, you've got 'rights' on paper. But asserting those rights gets you fired. Enforcement is a joke; if you can't afford a lawyer to represent you, you have no chance of prevailing should you file a complaint with the relevant agency.
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Logged in to say this. The 'moral majority' (which is neither) has decided that they know what's best for the rest of us. They terrorize politicians into implementing 'decency' rules that reinforce this belief. They pay hordes of lawyers to sue media companies that don't toe their line.
They're a bunch of fundamentally insecure white males (and their chattel) that are so terrified of the concept of female sexuality that they move to oppress any expression of it outside of... well, actually, any expression of it at all.
Fundamentalist Evangelical "Christians" are a plague on the United States. Hopefully the drubbing their meat puppets took in the last election will disarm them a bit; if the politicians know they can no longer win elections just by pandering to the fundies, they'll stop doing it.
Way to be part of the problem, asshole.
The level of entitlement in the OP is staggering, but, unfortunately, not unusual. At least in the USA, companies seem to be convinced that they have a divine right to treat their employees like liabilities and traitors (and generally like shit), even in the absence of any proof whatsoever. Mandatory drug testing. Credit checks. Background checks. Interviews that are more like an inquisition than a productive effort towards a common goal. And if they even get the slightest whiff of their employees being dissatisfied with the quality of the shit they're being fed, out the door they go, with no explanation whatsoever. "Security will meet you at your desk and escort you from the premises. No, we're not going to tell you, you just don't work here any more. Your belongings will be mailed to you, at your expense. Here's some information that the fascist state we live in DEMANDS that we give people when we fire them, and since they're so incredibly anti-business, they also DEMAND that we actually give you the wages you've earned AND vacation pay. BASTARDS!"
Companies treat their employees like the enemy. Labor relations resemble a banana republic civil war more than a professional interaction. A hostile environment makes people feel insecure and defensive, and when you threaten someone's livelihood for the mortal sin of not wanting to be treated like a garbage bin, they tend to take drastic steps to protect themselves (like using the resources they have access to to make it harder to fire them). Most people will choose continuing to be able to feed their families over ethics, especially when it's made clear to them that the people calling the shots have no ethics whatsoever and will not hesitate to throw them under whatever bus happens to be rolling by if it makes them look good (or covers for their own astounding incompetence).
Firing people SHOULD be painful. Most of the time, it's not painful ENOUGH. Most of the time, the fired employee is hurt so much more drastically than the former employer; after all, the company can just scare the remaining employees into doing the ex-employee's job in addition to theirs.
If you fire a key IT employee, and as a result your company burns, well, tough shit. You have nobody but yourself to blame for either hiring the wrong guy, or allowing an incompetent to run things for so long unsupervised, or treating a competent employee like garbage.
"Why are you requesting three roles here? I thought you just needed a computer guy".
"Having a team adds flexibility and redundancy, for example, if one gets hit by a bus or goes on vacation, the others can cover."
"How likely is he/she to be hit by a bus? And we'll just not let them go on vacation if that's what it takes."
"I doubt we'll be able to hire someone qualified if we don't allow them vacation time."
"Oh, we'll give them vacation time, we just won't let them take it. Or, if we have to, we'll make them carry their laptop while they're away."
"Then that's not vacation, is it?"
"Quit being such a whiner. Oh, and the salary you asked for? Find someone for 60% of that. Revenues are down."
"Didn't the CEO just get a huge bonus?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
TL;DR: Companies don't make hiring decisions based on what makes sense, they make them based on how little they can spend.
But, isn't the real problem here that companies are insisting that there isn't enough domestic talent to fill their needs, when there is?
I don't think people here really resent the people who come here on H1B visas, I think they resent the way the system for H1Bs is set up.
A foreign-educated engineer who comes to the USA on an H1B visa cannot be faulted for wanting to have a better standard of living than they would otherwise have access to in their native country. That's what used to be called the "American Dream"; we are, after all, a nation of immigrants. But there are problems with the system as it currently exists:
1) Employers do not pay H1B visa holders the same amount as native workers. They're supposed to, but they don't, because :
2) H1B visa holders are beholden to their employers for the opportunity to continue to live here. All employees are at a significant disadvantage to their employers in the USA, but a native worker exercising the only real right they have in employment conditions (finding another job and quitting) does not face immediate deportation. Also, employees that complain about working conditions get fired, so H1B visa holders don't complain about mistreatment, legal or otherwise. A right that you cannot assert is not a right.
3) The employer, not an impartial (government or otherwise) agency is allowed to determine what the "prevailing wage" is for a given position.
4) Enforcement of existing rules intended to protect both native workers and H1B visa holders is largely ineffective, and that's if the regulating authorities even hear about the violations; see 2) above.
5) H1B visas are intended to allow employers to hire for positions that they cannot find native workers for. However, there is significant evidence to suggest that there is no actual shortage of native workers in the fields that H1B visa holders traditionally see the most use. The truth is, that employers COULD fill these positions with native workers (as there are more than enough native workers to fill the open positions in a given field) but would rather use H1B visa holders to save money and exploit their willingness to put up with substandard treatment.
6) There is a phenomenon of foreign agencies sending workers over here to gain experience in how an American business is run, then repatriating them in order to encourage American companies to outsource to cheaper foreign labor.
What if you're doing e-commerce? You could have a customer in any jurisdiction in the country (assuming you don't sell internationally.)
Sales tax laws are byzantine and obscure. Some states require you to charge tax on shipping and handling, some don't. Some states say category X specifically is tax-free but everything else is not. Some delivery addresses have four or more tax jurisdictions to calculate, and sometimes in those jurisdictions one tax calculation is dependent on another (it is possible to charge tax on a taxed amount.) Some states have different tax rates depending on the total taxable amount of the transaction.
There is an entire industry around calculating sales tax accurately. I wrote a module for the ecommerce application I maintain to interface with a service that accepts a SOAP request with information regarding SKU, quantity, and cost for the items in the customer's cart, and based on both the originating AND delivery addresses, returns the appropriate amount to charge for total sales tax, and records the various tax rates in a database than can be queried later for the purposes of distributing collected funds later. They track all the jurisdictions for you down to the rooftop level; they take into account state-wide, city, county, local, and any special jurisdictions.
The solution, of course, is to have a single nationwide sales tax rate charged on every transaction that originates in the United States. But, that would require everyone who squawks "STATE'S RIGHTS! STATE'S RIGHTS! AWWK" every time anyone makes a suggestion about federalizing something to improve things to know what's in their best interest.
Yet.
Um, I think that's what I said in the GP post.
So if I read you correctly, your problem isn't with regulation per se, but with its complexity.
The fact that there are more regulations does not mean that government regulation is failing. Yes, in a perfect world, government regulation would not be necessary. Every private company in the country would act in the best interests of its customers, its employees, and its stockholders at all times. Industrial pollution would not exist, insider trading would not exist, employees of every company would share equitably in their employer's success or failures. Nobody would ever be required to work unpaid overtime, no employee would ever be asked to do something that would put life and limb at risk, no company would deliberately mislead its customers in order to realize short-term sales gains. The day that all of the preceding has come to pass is the day I will gladly burn all the regulations side by side with you.
Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where people (and the companies they run) are short-sighted, greedy, selfish, irresponsible assholes. That's the real problem; the government regulation is just a band-aid.
Yeah, the rich have enough money already.
Wow, racist song parodies? Really? That's what you've got?
The question makes inaccurate assumptions. You are assuming that employers value education and experience over how little they can pay their employees. That, and both potential hires are pretty much blank slates in terms of whether they can actually effectively use the education/experience they have gained.
I mean think about it: Your college grad more that likely has very little to no experience, and you can't be sure if the foreign worker actually has the experience he/she is claiming. So, the experience/education factor is basically a wash.
In the end, what is an employer at a for-profit private business going to do: Pay the US college grad $X or the H1-B worker $X * .75? I'll give you a hint: They'll hire the H1-B every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Plus, the domestic worker is going to want silly things like "health insurance" and "a 401k" and "dignity in employment", while the H1-B worker not only will accept work without benefits, they are far more likely to eat the shit that the employer feeds them in the form of unpaid overtime and slave-labor working conditions. I mean, what are they going to do, complain? Complainers get fired no matter their nationality or status, but the difference is that the H1-B faces deportation if he/she gets fired, so he/she is much less likely to do anything if he/she is poorly treated.
Employers like spineless worker bees that they can pay peanuts. Period.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to do. If you look at the AC post I'm replying to, he is the one throwing around the numbers, I'm just doing the math that those numbers represent. I agree that someone making $50k/year should not be living in a $300,000 house or driving a $25k car. When I use the words "bare necessities" I'm incorporating the assumptions that the GP post made (indicated by the fact that I said "bare necessities if you have that big a house and that expensive a car"). If you replace the $25k car with one costing $10k or so, and renting an apartment for $1000 or so in the place of buying a house, the numbers are much saner. Still not great, but at least you aren't in the red. Those are much closer to "bare necessities" for me. You need a place to live (-$1000), a job (+$3125), a car to get to said job (-$180 payment, -$65 insurance, -$12.50 excise tax, -$150 fuel), food (-$400), heat (-$200), water (-$30), a phone (-$50), arguably an Internet connection depending on what your job is (-$60), and electricity (-$100). This leaves $112.50 extra each month. You can pare down each to the bare bones, but there's a point of diminishing returns.
There are a number of assumptions in that last set of numbers. Rent is $1000 if you can find a 1 bedroom apartment that isn't leaking toxic waste at that price (and that would take some doing in this market), car figures are based on a $10,000 loan over 60 months at 3 percent, average insurance and excise tax, and gas at $4/gallon, heat is a year-round average, phone is a dumbphone with no data plan, standard broadband internet connection, and similar electric rates to what I'm paying.
Probably more accurate to say that hospital administrators would rather rip their own arms off than fund IT adequately. Hospitals are *notorious* for under-funding IT departments.
Your numbers do not reflect reality.
$50k/year = about $37,500 after taxes/medicare/social security. .9 for the 'new' model year = $625.
Health insurance = $500/month x 12 = $6,000 (assuming that your employer even provides it. If they don't, jack this up to $1000 or go without insurance.)
$300,000 mortgage = $1500 mortgage payment x 12 = $18,000. (And that's assuming you have $50,000 to put down on a $300,000 house, and get a 4% interest rate, and low property taxes.)
$25,000 car = $450/month payment x 12 = $5,400. (Assuming you're able to get a 0% down loan, and get a 3% interest rate over 60 months.)
Insurance on said car = $1500/year.
Fuel for said car = 40 miles/day commute x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year = 10,400 miles/year. 10.400 miles/year / 30 miles/gallon = 347 gal/year. 347 gal/year x $4/gal = $1388/year.
Excise/property tax on car: In this state, $25 for each $1000 of value of the car x
Electricity/phones/heat etc = $450/month x 12 = $5,400. ($100 for electric, $100 for phones/Internet service, $250/month for heat. Adjust electric and heat payments for your local climate, but that's pretty much a wash in the end.)
Food: $100/week x 52 weeks = $5200.
With the above, you have a net income of -$6,013 (-$12,013 if you have to buy health insurance independently). And that's just the bare necessities if you have that big a house and that expensive a car. We haven't even talked about putting clothes on your back or doing ANYTHING that isn't strictly survival-based. Not even water/sewer.
$150,000 = $112,500 after taxes/medicare/social security (approximately). /year (factoring in the fact that the house is larger and requires more in utilities.)
Health insurance = Same $6000/$12,000 as above.
Mortgage on $900,000 house (assuming $100k down, 4% over 30 years) = $4757/month x 12 = $57,084.
Car loans = $898/month x 2 x 12 months = $21,552.
Insurance on said cars = $4000/year.
Assuming no additional mileage, fuel is the same $1388/year.
Excise taxes on cars = $2250/year.
Electricity/phones/heat = $600/month x 12 = $7200
Food = same $5200.
You're in a little better shape here, net income is $7826 (assuming access to employer-sponsored health coverage. $1826 without.) But, you're a little older, and your non-covered health care expenses are higher, and there's probably a spouse and a kid or two to support. And, you're assuming $6666 in raises each year on average. If you assume the typical 3% raise that most Americans get each year (if they're lucky) you get about $78k/year.
I'm not discounting your point about living within your means, but realistic numbers are always more useful.
Who, exactly, are you to decide that? What makes you so sure your reading of the Constitution is the 'truth' and that SCOTUS is just wrong about it?
Are you a legal professional? A law professor? Constitutional scholar? Or are you just someone frustrated with the fact that people disagree with your worldview?
And what, exactly, do you mean by "upholding the Constitution" here? I have a suspicion that it doesn't involve petitions or angry letters.
Except, that it isn't a true statement. You can interpret the Constitution any way you want; you're entitled to your opinion. But, as corrupt/ideological as they are, they are still the Supreme Court of the United States, and you're not. If they say something is constitutional, then it is. That's the whole point of having SCOTUS in the first place. They're there to keep the Executive and Legislative branches from passing laws that aren't constitutional. They found this one to be constitutional. If you think you know the law better than the Justices do, well, go on with your bad self. But until a different SCOTUS overturns it as unconstitutional, it's the law of the land.
Wow, you consider $20,000 "affordable"? That's enough to drive a significant portion of the population into extreme financial distress. Also, you picked a relatively low-cost injury to talk about; what if it was cancer? Millions.
You remind me of Ford in the 70s, who assigned a dollar value to a person's life. I'm hoping you're not as callous as you sound.
You raise a number of legitimate concerns. It's my understanding that the Tea Party was originally founded out of reaction to those concerns, and as such, was a movement that, while I would not join it, would at least be working towards a number of goals that I would consider constructive.
However, shortly after its creation, the extreme right-wing movement ripped the wool off the Tea Party sheep and started wearing it, lest they look like the wolves that they are. They're no longer concerned about the size of government, the role of a federal government as described in the Constitution, or inefficient bureaucracies that waste government resources. They still talk a good game about stopping corruption and lowering taxes, but once you elect a Tea Party-endorsed candidate, they immediately forget all about any of that and instead promote their social agenda. They waste government time and resources voting again and again for bills that have no chance of passing, and are simply a fig leaf to be used when needed. They can say that they voted to repeal Obamacare over 30 times (no kidding), or that they made it triple-dog-dare illegal for government funds to be used to provide abortion services (which has been illegal since the 1970s).
Oh, and just to be pedantic, calling the ACA "unconstitutional" is black-letter wrong. The Supreme Court said so, and they have some measure of authority over that. Call it 'inefficient' and 'short-sighted' and 'wasteful' all you want; those arguments can be made (as well as the fact that it doesn't give us what we need, which is a single payer system).
Because Texas.
Some people will use ANY topic as a chance to bitch about taxes. Your taxes are lower now than they have been in 50 years.
Training existing employees in needed skills represents a conscious desire to improve the skill set of your existing employees, so you gain ability without the expense and hassle of finding someone new to hire. It treats your employees like assets to be improved, not liabilities to be minimized.
Unfortunately, ISTM that most employers would rather rip off an arm than provide training for their employees. Their logic is that helping employees to expand their skill sets only leads to freshly trained employees that quickly leave because they can make more money/improve their working conditions/get away from a horrible manager by going to another employer. The problem is, while it's short-sighted, they're right. Keeping employees happy is expensive, complicated and time-consuming. Lots of times, it requires a change in the corporate culture. It's hard to go from treating your employees like liabilities and cost centers to treating them like assets. It's *very* hard to convince employees that the culture has genuinely changed; they'll assume it's just another case of management saying all the right things while not actually changing anything of substance, which they have more than likely done before.
In an ideal world, companies that treated their people like shit would quickly find themselves without employees, having had said employees leave to go to another employer that treats them like human beings. (The free market in action, no?) The trouble is that, in practice, the employee is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to how their employer treats them. Their employer basically controls their entire lives (literally, in the case of employer-provided health insurance). Wage slavery is a real thing, and the norm. Most companies treat their employees just well enough to keep them from leaving immediately, which results in employees doing just enough work to not get fired. Management does not want to provide the employee with more ammunition in the battle by making them more marketable as employees; they like them right where they are. Yeahh, I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Saturday, mmkay?
So let's say I'm a developer.
"Hey, boss, I've written this code you want. Who's doing the QA on it?"
"You."
"OK. What about the functionality testing?"
"Also you."
"..OK, what about the security testing?"
"You again."
"... uhh, OK, what about compatibility testing?"
"Which part of "No, you aren't getting any QA resources, testing resources, engineering backup, DBA staffing, IT support, or project management" are you having trouble with?"
It would be great to work someplace where there was a sane amount of separation of duties. Most people are lucky to get a testing server that's an ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY SEPARATE MACHINE from the production server. The truth (at least in my experience) is that the question in TFA is irrelevant, since if the developers aren't doing the installations, nobody is, since there IS nobody else.
It doesn't make me money. It is worth $0 to anyone else. Therefore, any value I assign to it is delusional.
If there were any 'really good compan[ies]' to work for, then unions would not be necessary. Companies do not care about their employees. They might talk a good game, they might even spend a little money on 'employee morale', but it's all bullshit. In a capitalist system, the purpose of a for-profit enterprise is to.. well, make profit. You make profit by increasing revenues and lowering costs. Employees are a cost. Therefore it is in the company's best interest to treat their employees like shit, because that's cheaper than treating them like human beings.
Until the labor laws in the USA catch up with the rest of the world, unions will be necessary here. When you can be fired for no stated reason, you have no rights as an employee. Oh sure, you've got 'rights' on paper. But asserting those rights gets you fired. Enforcement is a joke; if you can't afford a lawyer to represent you, you have no chance of prevailing should you file a complaint with the relevant agency.