I don't see anything about the cost of rent in Bangalore on their pages. I see a bunch of averages, but I already agree that the average American spends a lot more than the average Indian.
By your logic, all the agricultural companies in the US who are exporting billions of dollars worth of grain to other countries should be employing farmers in the countries we export to, including those where the climate makes it impossible to bring a crop in.
Umm, no, I never said that. I made a single comment about a single company facing a single situation.
What is the point of international trade if you can't sell to anybody with also employing them?
I didn't say anything about what a company can or can't do.
In India probably this will get you a very nice house.
Depends on what part of India. In the United States, you could get a very nice house for this much, too.
In NYC you would be extremely lucky if you find a tiny roach infested smelly studio within an hour of commute in subway to your job for that money.
No one's forcing you to live in NYC. Yes, perhaps the most expensive city to live in the United States exceeds the most expensive city to live in India. But that's not what I'm talking about.
And no, you can't use bicycle to commute to work. It would take 2-3 hours at least.
Depends where you live, and where you work.
In India you would probably be able to buy half of the Bangalore.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about the cost of property in Bangalore.
No disrespect, but I think you're confusing employability with base survivable wages.
OK, what's your definition of cost of living?
Suppose an minimum wage cost of living index sets New York city at $10.50/hour while setting Cincinnati, OH at $6.50 (just numbers I pulled out of my ass as an example). This wouldn't make New York any more livable than Cincinnati, nor would it push wages up across the board for all - it would simply set a sustainable floor.
It would make New York equally livable to Cincinatti. Of course that would make more people want to live in New York, which would cause rents in New York to go up, which would cause the minimum wage in New York to go up even more. The vicious cycle would probably never end, unless maybe if you set rent controls. Then it'd just be a dice roll whether or not you get to live in the greatest city in the world (yeah yeah, just my humble opinion).
Of course, all of this assumes by New York City you mean Manhattan. And even then, it assumes you don't include Harlem. So that goes back to what you're going to define as the cost of living. Should that be the minimum cost of living of anyone living there? Do you include the homeless? Or is it the average? Should the minimum wage in Beverly Hills, CA be $9000/hour? And how granular do you want to be? All of New York City, or is each borough separate? Do you include Harlem, or do you subdivide even the boroughs?
As for arguing that people should simply move if they can't afford to live in a location, what does a family do if their children are in school?
Move. They shouldn't have lived there in the first place.
What does a family do if one member is employed while another is not?
If they can't afford it, then they should move. And what does this have to do with minimum wage, anyway? If the employed family member is making minimum wage, surely they can get a job somewhere else making the same amount.
I think you're extrapolating your personal experience in the dot.bomb bust with the vast majority of low wage poor familys.
No. Not at all. The vast majority of low wage poor families were low wage poor families before they even had children. I'm extrapolating my ability to live on a very small amount of money to the vast majority of low wage poor families.
And further, you likely earned far more in your position than what any minimum wage earner could hope to expect.
If you average out what I made those two years over the many years I've lived off of it, it wouldn't come out to very much. I was only paying $230/month to share that three bedroom house with two others. It's easily affordable on minimum wage.
As for the argument that this policy would promote an influx of people moving to the best cities, I argue that if this happened regional unemployment in those areas would increase to offset that effect.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but there's limited space, so something would have to be used to decide who gets to live there and who doesn't.
I simply argue that what jobs are available ought to provide enough in wages so that the poor don't starve while working full time.
This isn't about people starving. This is about them having to move somewhere else.
The Cost of living in USA is NOT less than India. India's cost of living if far less.
Define cost of living.
I'm not Indian and have never lived there but I am pretty sure my opinion is correct.
LOL. Well, it's not an opinion. It's a fact.
Rent may seem high but how about everything else?
Rent is the vast majority of the cost of living.
Food, for example, is FAR cheaper over there.
Depends on what type of food, and where in the United States you live.
A bread costs $1 here and it probably costs 10cents over there.
You can make your own bread here for less than 10 cents. I've done it before. Homemade bread tastes better, and doesn't have all those nasty preservatives anyway.
Public transportation costs $2 here while it might cost 50 cents there.
Again, depends on the location. But transportation isn't really part of the cost of living. Use a bike, or a motorcycle. Both are very cheap for transportation.
I agree with you that Americans are used to better lifestyle. However, that doesn't change the cost of living.
You're going to have to define cost of living, then.
Then again, you can not protect them from then being outcompeted by foreign companies not under such restrictions.
Sure you can, you can tax imports.
Either way the jobs will eventually go to those who will perform them with the most bang per buck.
Not necessarily. The United States has a strong workforce with a lot of intelligent people. Other countries are going to recognize that and be willing to deal with us on a fair basis. We don't want all the jobs in the world. Just enough to employ our citizens. I'm not suggesting that we ban all US companies from hiring foreigners, I'm just suggesting that we level the playing field. There needs to be certain standards of employment across all employees of US companies. Frankly I'm surprised there isn't already. The federal government has more authority over US companies engaging in foreign trade than over a US company local to a single state anyway.
But in the major metropolitan areas the prevailing minimum wage simply doesn't come close to providing a bare minimum poverty subsistance.
So don't live in a major metropolitan area. When I lost my job, I didn't move to New York City. I moved to Trenton, New Jersey.
Which is why a minimum wage indexed to local cost of living and inflation might serve service industry and blue collar workers better than the current system.
Well, I don't agree. I think if you can't afford to live where you live, you should move. Otherwise, I'd expect a big influx of people moving to the nicest areas of the country. It's not self-sustaining. I know I'd move to NYC if I could afford it. It's a great city, and I've known others who have lived there during the dot com boom and left after losing their jobs. But I can't move there. Not until I have more money, anyway.
If your goal is to use law to prevent US based companies using outsourced labor, why not pass specific laws saying (for example) you may not employ non-US citizens at offices outside of the US.
Because sometimes employment of non-US citizens at offices outside of the US is beneficial to the US.
That way, you get what you want (no outsourcing) without the risk of screwing the Indian job market to hell.
I didn't say I wanted no outsourcing. And I couldn't care less about the Indian job market. If India wants to make a trade agreement to protect the Indian job market which is in the best interests of both countries, then that is an option, of course.
What you are suggesting is passing a law where you hope the side effect will be your actual desired goal. That is dangerous.
What I want is to equalize the playing field. Such a law would have that as a direct result, not a side effect. And actually, I think the best way to equalize the playing field would be to eliminate the federal minimum wage, which is unconstitutional anyway.
If enough people like you ran the world, we'd still be making textiles by hand on wooden looms, because mechanization cost jobs to the textile industry. This is a natural if painful, but necessary part of the labor cycle.
No, I think you're confusing the issue. Sure, there's situations where progress forces you to lay people off. And in those situations someone like me would do so, at least after offering the opportunity to retrain those employees, and giving adequate notice for the employee to get another job. But his isn't a matter of inevitable progress. This is pure greed, and it's shortsighted greed at that.
They'll reap what they sow. If they don't have any loyalty to their employees, they're not going to get any loyalty back. That's pretty much where the country has headed anyway, at least in the tech sector, so maybe it's inevitable.
Sony has also profited greatly from the American people. Is it also their responsibility to support them with jobs? Or is their only responsibility, in fact, to their shareholders?
If they can get quality labor for cheaper elsewhere, why should they support a bloated, overpriced labor market?
Because that's The HP Way.
Responibility to the society in which a company operates is now widely recognized and accepted by American business. But it wasn't always so. I recall a conference I attended in the late 1940s that included people from various industries and organizations. We began talking about whether businesses had responsibilities beyond making a profit for their shareholders. I expressed my view that we did, that we had important responsibilities to our employees, to our customers, to our suppliers, and to the welfare of society at large. I was surprised and disappointed that most of the others disagreed with me. They felt their only responsibility was to generate profits for their shareholders.
That's from David Packard, the friggen co-founder of Hewlett Packard, in the book "The HP Way" which was given to all employees (when I worked there, anyway). I doubt Fiorina even read it, though.
But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world.
True, but that argument is used equally well right here in the United States. The descrepancy between the cheapest and most expensive places to live domestically is about as much as the descrepancy between here and abroad.
Yes, the minimum wage needs to be equalized if you're going to have fair trade between the two countries, but it makes just as much sense to lower the minimum wage here as to raise it there. There are many places in the United States where you can live off minimum wage. Especially if you are willing to do away with so many of the conveniences which Americans deem to be necessities. Live in a house with your extended family, don't eat at resturants, abandon your cable television with 10 thousand channels of crap, make long distance phone calls sparingly, get rid of your cell phone, turn off the air conditioner.
Gee, it seems there isn't really such a big "cost of living" difference after all.
You can't just impose your standards on other countries - it makes a mess.
However, you can impose your standards on corporations which are based in your own country.
And the only mess it would make is that it would move the vast majority of the jobs back to the United States. Low level call centre techs wouldn't be outsourced any more, because the cost savings would disappear.
If the cost of living in the US were the same as India, I'd be willing to be paid the same as an Indian software engineer. Guess what, it's significantly more expensive to live in the US.
Nonsense. The cost of living in the US is actually less than that of India. People in the US are just used to better lifestyles than those in India.
Rental prices in Bangalore are about $600/month, not very different from many places in the United States. And in Bangalore you generally have to pay a housing deposit of up to 10 months rent! If you want an equivalent lifestyle to that which you're used to in the United States, you're not going to pay less, in fact, you're probably going to pay more.
No. Wrong. Completely. People don't get to choose to pay taxes or not. There's no choice, they live in the US, they pay taxes.
Let's talk specifically about income taxes. I live in the US, but I don't pay income taxes.
People choose voluntarily to purchase, or not, Microsoft software.
Likewise people choose voluntarily to get a job, or not to get a job.
It's almost not worth arguing with someone like you who is so stubborn about staying ignorant.
It's not worth arguing because I am right. If you're going to say that the United States uses force to collect taxes, then you have to admit that Microsoft also uses force to collect licensing fees.
And as you said, the breach of contract is based on the code being copied without permission.
I said that "Copying code would be a breach of contract, which is what SCO's legal case is based upon." "Which" refers to "breach of contract," not "copying code."
That's a copyright violation, whether NewSCO is suing over it or not.
Not if the code is not copyrighted!
Hey, that was my point. Shenanigans.
No, your point was that SCO will lose if the code is not copyrighted. My point was that copyright law and contract law are two completely different animals.
Fine, I'm not going to argue against that. I don't know enough about what actuaries do.
But I might argue [Slashdot employees] are paid to operate a website;
I assume there are some employees who are paid to operate the website, and others who are paid to write software for the website.
for this they need software which they must write;
The company needs software which they must hire someone to write.
Hence, some software developers are paid to write free software. There is no requirement that free software be created for no cost.
But I do want to get paid to write software, and I don't consider writing non-open software unethical. I might be able to get paid to write open software, but at present it is a lot easier to get paid if I'm not so picky.
That's fine. I didn't mean to get into what you should or shouldn't do. You brought it up, and I stated my opinion. Right now it's basically impossible to make as much money writing free software as you can make writing proprietary software. The state sponsored monopoly the government offers you is sometimes just too tempting.
Hopefully copyleft will be able to attract people back to writing free software, by providing them with a base on which they can more easily create free software. That's what Stallman is talking about. You can go ahead and create your non-free software, but the free software community shouldn't be bending over backwards to help you. "To free the citizens of cyberspace, we have to replace those non-free programs, not accept them. They are not contributions to our community, they are temptations to settle for continuing non-freedom."
Slashdot Mirror
And how, praytell, do you expect people to make rent?
Same way they make rent now.
And tell me... HOW is the minimum wage law unconstitutional?
Congress does not have the constitutional authority to enact it under its power to regulate interstate commerce.
I don't see anything about the cost of rent in Bangalore on their pages. I see a bunch of averages, but I already agree that the average American spends a lot more than the average Indian.
By your logic, all the agricultural companies in the US who are exporting billions of dollars worth of grain to other countries should be employing farmers in the countries we export to, including those where the climate makes it impossible to bring a crop in.
Umm, no, I never said that. I made a single comment about a single company facing a single situation.
What is the point of international trade if you can't sell to anybody with also employing them?
I didn't say anything about what a company can or can't do.
In India probably this will get you a very nice house.
Depends on what part of India. In the United States, you could get a very nice house for this much, too.
In NYC you would be extremely lucky if you find a tiny roach infested smelly studio within an hour of commute in subway to your job for that money.
No one's forcing you to live in NYC. Yes, perhaps the most expensive city to live in the United States exceeds the most expensive city to live in India. But that's not what I'm talking about.
And no, you can't use bicycle to commute to work. It would take 2-3 hours at least.
Depends where you live, and where you work.
In India you would probably be able to buy half of the Bangalore.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about the cost of property in Bangalore.
No disrespect, but I think you're confusing employability with base survivable wages.
OK, what's your definition of cost of living?
Suppose an minimum wage cost of living index sets New York city at $10.50/hour while setting Cincinnati, OH at $6.50 (just numbers I pulled out of my ass as an example). This wouldn't make New York any more livable than Cincinnati, nor would it push wages up across the board for all - it would simply set a sustainable floor.
It would make New York equally livable to Cincinatti. Of course that would make more people want to live in New York, which would cause rents in New York to go up, which would cause the minimum wage in New York to go up even more. The vicious cycle would probably never end, unless maybe if you set rent controls. Then it'd just be a dice roll whether or not you get to live in the greatest city in the world (yeah yeah, just my humble opinion).
Of course, all of this assumes by New York City you mean Manhattan. And even then, it assumes you don't include Harlem. So that goes back to what you're going to define as the cost of living. Should that be the minimum cost of living of anyone living there? Do you include the homeless? Or is it the average? Should the minimum wage in Beverly Hills, CA be $9000/hour? And how granular do you want to be? All of New York City, or is each borough separate? Do you include Harlem, or do you subdivide even the boroughs?
As for arguing that people should simply move if they can't afford to live in a location, what does a family do if their children are in school?
Move. They shouldn't have lived there in the first place.
What does a family do if one member is employed while another is not?
If they can't afford it, then they should move. And what does this have to do with minimum wage, anyway? If the employed family member is making minimum wage, surely they can get a job somewhere else making the same amount.
I think you're extrapolating your personal experience in the dot.bomb bust with the vast majority of low wage poor familys.
No. Not at all. The vast majority of low wage poor families were low wage poor families before they even had children. I'm extrapolating my ability to live on a very small amount of money to the vast majority of low wage poor families.
And further, you likely earned far more in your position than what any minimum wage earner could hope to expect.
If you average out what I made those two years over the many years I've lived off of it, it wouldn't come out to very much. I was only paying $230/month to share that three bedroom house with two others. It's easily affordable on minimum wage.
As for the argument that this policy would promote an influx of people moving to the best cities, I argue that if this happened regional unemployment in those areas would increase to offset that effect.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but there's limited space, so something would have to be used to decide who gets to live there and who doesn't.
I simply argue that what jobs are available ought to provide enough in wages so that the poor don't starve while working full time.
This isn't about people starving. This is about them having to move somewhere else.
The Cost of living in USA is NOT less than India. India's cost of living if far less.
Define cost of living.
I'm not Indian and have never lived there but I am pretty sure my opinion is correct.
LOL. Well, it's not an opinion. It's a fact.
Rent may seem high but how about everything else?
Rent is the vast majority of the cost of living.
Food, for example, is FAR cheaper over there.
Depends on what type of food, and where in the United States you live.
A bread costs $1 here and it probably costs 10cents over there.
You can make your own bread here for less than 10 cents. I've done it before. Homemade bread tastes better, and doesn't have all those nasty preservatives anyway.
Public transportation costs $2 here while it might cost 50 cents there.
Again, depends on the location. But transportation isn't really part of the cost of living. Use a bike, or a motorcycle. Both are very cheap for transportation.
I agree with you that Americans are used to better lifestyle. However, that doesn't change the cost of living.
You're going to have to define cost of living, then.
Then again, you can not protect them from then being outcompeted by foreign companies not under such restrictions.
Sure you can, you can tax imports.
Either way the jobs will eventually go to those who will perform them with the most bang per buck.
Not necessarily. The United States has a strong workforce with a lot of intelligent people. Other countries are going to recognize that and be willing to deal with us on a fair basis. We don't want all the jobs in the world. Just enough to employ our citizens. I'm not suggesting that we ban all US companies from hiring foreigners, I'm just suggesting that we level the playing field. There needs to be certain standards of employment across all employees of US companies. Frankly I'm surprised there isn't already. The federal government has more authority over US companies engaging in foreign trade than over a US company local to a single state anyway.
But in the major metropolitan areas the prevailing minimum wage simply doesn't come close to providing a bare minimum poverty subsistance.
So don't live in a major metropolitan area. When I lost my job, I didn't move to New York City. I moved to Trenton, New Jersey.
Which is why a minimum wage indexed to local cost of living and inflation might serve service industry and blue collar workers better than the current system.
Well, I don't agree. I think if you can't afford to live where you live, you should move. Otherwise, I'd expect a big influx of people moving to the nicest areas of the country. It's not self-sustaining. I know I'd move to NYC if I could afford it. It's a great city, and I've known others who have lived there during the dot com boom and left after losing their jobs. But I can't move there. Not until I have more money, anyway.
If your goal is to use law to prevent US based companies using outsourced labor, why not pass specific laws saying (for example) you may not employ non-US citizens at offices outside of the US.
Because sometimes employment of non-US citizens at offices outside of the US is beneficial to the US.
That way, you get what you want (no outsourcing) without the risk of screwing the Indian job market to hell.
I didn't say I wanted no outsourcing. And I couldn't care less about the Indian job market. If India wants to make a trade agreement to protect the Indian job market which is in the best interests of both countries, then that is an option, of course.
What you are suggesting is passing a law where you hope the side effect will be your actual desired goal. That is dangerous.
What I want is to equalize the playing field. Such a law would have that as a direct result, not a side effect. And actually, I think the best way to equalize the playing field would be to eliminate the federal minimum wage, which is unconstitutional anyway.
If enough people like you ran the world, we'd still be making textiles by hand on wooden looms, because mechanization cost jobs to the textile industry. This is a natural if painful, but necessary part of the labor cycle.
No, I think you're confusing the issue. Sure, there's situations where progress forces you to lay people off. And in those situations someone like me would do so, at least after offering the opportunity to retrain those employees, and giving adequate notice for the employee to get another job. But his isn't a matter of inevitable progress. This is pure greed, and it's shortsighted greed at that.
They'll reap what they sow. If they don't have any loyalty to their employees, they're not going to get any loyalty back. That's pretty much where the country has headed anyway, at least in the tech sector, so maybe it's inevitable.
Sony has also profited greatly from the American people. Is it also their responsibility to support them with jobs? Or is their only responsibility, in fact, to their shareholders?
Both. Their responsibility is to both.
If they can get quality labor for cheaper elsewhere, why should they support a bloated, overpriced labor market?
Because that's The HP Way.
That's from David Packard, the friggen co-founder of Hewlett Packard, in the book "The HP Way" which was given to all employees (when I worked there, anyway). I doubt Fiorina even read it, though.
But this is certainly better than enforcing a single minimum wage, unlivable in any major metropolitan area and much too high in the poorest rural areas of the world.
True, but that argument is used equally well right here in the United States. The descrepancy between the cheapest and most expensive places to live domestically is about as much as the descrepancy between here and abroad.
Yes, the minimum wage needs to be equalized if you're going to have fair trade between the two countries, but it makes just as much sense to lower the minimum wage here as to raise it there. There are many places in the United States where you can live off minimum wage. Especially if you are willing to do away with so many of the conveniences which Americans deem to be necessities. Live in a house with your extended family, don't eat at resturants, abandon your cable television with 10 thousand channels of crap, make long distance phone calls sparingly, get rid of your cell phone, turn off the air conditioner.
Gee, it seems there isn't really such a big "cost of living" difference after all.
You can't just impose your standards on other countries - it makes a mess.
However, you can impose your standards on corporations which are based in your own country.
And the only mess it would make is that it would move the vast majority of the jobs back to the United States. Low level call centre techs wouldn't be outsourced any more, because the cost savings would disappear.
If the cost of living in the US were the same as India, I'd be willing to be paid the same as an Indian software engineer. Guess what, it's significantly more expensive to live in the US.
Nonsense. The cost of living in the US is actually less than that of India. People in the US are just used to better lifestyles than those in India.
Rental prices in Bangalore are about $600/month, not very different from many places in the United States. And in Bangalore you generally have to pay a housing deposit of up to 10 months rent! If you want an equivalent lifestyle to that which you're used to in the United States, you're not going to pay less, in fact, you're probably going to pay more.
No. Wrong. Completely. People don't get to choose to pay taxes or not. There's no choice, they live in the US, they pay taxes.
Let's talk specifically about income taxes. I live in the US, but I don't pay income taxes.
People choose voluntarily to purchase, or not, Microsoft software.
Likewise people choose voluntarily to get a job, or not to get a job.
It's almost not worth arguing with someone like you who is so stubborn about staying ignorant.
It's not worth arguing because I am right. If you're going to say that the United States uses force to collect taxes, then you have to admit that Microsoft also uses force to collect licensing fees.
Fine then, taxpayers pay taxes voluntarily.
Oh, and phone books are NOT public domain.
Read the Feist decision and then try again.
Why do I waste my time arguing with trolls?
And as you said, the breach of contract is based on the code being copied without permission.
I said that "Copying code would be a breach of contract, which is what SCO's legal case is based upon." "Which" refers to "breach of contract," not "copying code."
That's a copyright violation, whether NewSCO is suing over it or not.
Not if the code is not copyrighted!
Hey, that was my point. Shenanigans.
No, your point was that SCO will lose if the code is not copyrighted. My point was that copyright law and contract law are two completely different animals.
Coercion is not voluntary association. Most people pay their taxes "voluntarily" if you're going to call it that.
They may not use force directly, but they use the threat of force. Same as the government.
How, then, are laws free as in freedom?
They're public domain. Geez. I already said that.
And as you said, the breach of contract is based on the code being copied without permission.
I didn't say that.
That's a copyright violation, whether NewSCO is suing over it or not.
Not if the code is not copyrighted!
Actuaries aren't Mathematicians.
Fine, I'm not going to argue against that. I don't know enough about what actuaries do.
But I might argue [Slashdot employees] are paid to operate a website;
I assume there are some employees who are paid to operate the website, and others who are paid to write software for the website.
for this they need software which they must write;
The company needs software which they must hire someone to write.
Hence, some software developers are paid to write free software. There is no requirement that free software be created for no cost.
But I do want to get paid to write software, and I don't consider writing non-open software unethical. I might be able to get paid to write open software, but at present it is a lot easier to get paid if I'm not so picky.
That's fine. I didn't mean to get into what you should or shouldn't do. You brought it up, and I stated my opinion. Right now it's basically impossible to make as much money writing free software as you can make writing proprietary software. The state sponsored monopoly the government offers you is sometimes just too tempting.
Hopefully copyleft will be able to attract people back to writing free software, by providing them with a base on which they can more easily create free software. That's what Stallman is talking about. You can go ahead and create your non-free software, but the free software community shouldn't be bending over backwards to help you. "To free the citizens of cyberspace, we have to replace those non-free programs, not accept them. They are not contributions to our community, they are temptations to settle for continuing non-freedom."
My point was that Microsoft produces its wealth through force.