But paying programmers at $80k per year is outdated and unnecessary and not producing value when you can get the same work for $10k per year.
By advocating that we force employers to pay local workers a premium wage when there's a lower cost wage available somewhere else, you are saying the exact same thing as forcing consumers to purchase groceries from a grocer who charges 5-8 times as much for the same quality.
Everytime you choose a lower priced ANYTHING you are threatening the job of the higher priced person. You don't get to have it both ways. If you want the freedom to choose lower prices, you have to provide that freedom to the people who purchase from you.
The only alternative is to make choosing lower prices illegal. But if you can succeed into legally forcing your customers to buy a higher priced service from you, then the next thing that's going to happen is they're going to force their customers into the same thing. This process will repeat until all that's left of the United States is a third world country who depends on the economic success of others.
It has gone downhill since then for most people. No class warfare, huh? Well, there should be....
If you want to make comparisons over time, you have to provide data over time. Like this. Personally, I don't think that advocating class warfare is very productive. It certainly does NOT help those who are at the low end of the wage making scale. That causes them to think that they're stuck down there as a result of someone else forcing them down there and they stop looking for and taking advantage of the natural oppurtunities to move up.
The simple fact of the matter is that a rising tide lifts all boats. If your goal is to make everyone have the same income level, the only way to do that is to make everyone equally impoverished. Third world countries do a bang-up job of this. If your goal is to raise the income level of the poor, the only effective way to do this is to raise everyone's income level. Industrialized economies do this.
You have a choice: everyone can be impoverished or everyone can be richer than they were. I prefer the latter.
If we restrict the discussion to tech companies, maybe you're right. I don't know, but I'm skeptical. I would say that the book is not yet closed on the longevity of Yahoo and Google. And I would say that the strength of the tech comapanies strategies has not yet been decided.
And even though you can point out 6 counter examples, I think those are the exceptions that make the rule. I'm quite sure that, with research, I could point out 10 fold as many companies that didn't last 6 months under the leadership of 20-somethings. And this would support my claim: the vast majority of 20-somethings don't have it. There are some, and they probably gravitate towards technology. But I still think that they're rare, and you're more likely to find that kind of leadership in 40- and 50-somethings.
$.02
Re:I think Marx would shit a brick if he could see
on
What The Bubble Got Right
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
what happens when those you outsource to abscond with your R&D results and your domestic nerd base is so atrophied that they can't compete?
What has happened in the past when this exact same situation came up is that the smart people who lost there jobs became available to do other things. The same thing will happen this time around. The nerds who are no longer programming will be free to spend their brain power on something else.
...most non-economists see downsizing as a serious problem. Economists disagree. Before my introduction to economics, I certainly would have found the very notion of "benefits of downsizing" to be paradoxical. Studying economics allowed me to see that this apparent paradox is only common sense. Labor is a limited and valuable resource. When workers stay at jobs where they do little or nothing, society loses what those workers could have produced if they looked for a more productive way to spend their time. Perfect job security is the way to lock in perfect economic stagnation. Downsizing is obviously a temporary misfortune for those affected. But at root downsizing is about firms figuring out ways to achieve more with less. Without such efforts, the modern world as we know it would never have been born.
If you replace "downsizing" with "outsourcing" the sentiment is still true. It's detrimental to the economy as a whole to retain workers in the US when there are workers available elsewhere who are willing/able to do the job more efficiently. The US workers are not freed up to do something else and we (as a society) are forced to pay a premium wage for a less than efficient work force.
Each one of us outsources every day. I know of no technologist who also does all of the following:
makes all of his/her own clothes
grows or produces all of his/her own food
builds his/her own house
self insures against casualty
produces their own electricty
obtains, cleanses, and distributes their own water
etc, etc, etc.
All of those things are outsourced by individuals to someone else. No one has the time to do ALL of that AND be a technologist. So what has happened when they outsourced those activities? It freed them up to be technologists. The same thing is true when the job of technologist gets outsourced to elsewhere. Smart people are freed up to do something else.
There are a number of things that I agree with in this article. There are also some that I disagree with. But the one that stands out most to me is this:
A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC. Those require experience. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future. What will they build next? And in that department, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone.
If there's one thing that I think no 26 year old will ever have it's the ability to navigate politics. Deciding what to build next is trivial in comparison to having the gumption to stick with it to get it done. And that requires people motivation skills. That requires tuning out all of the other hype and distraction. Are 26 year olds capable of this? Of course! But the 26 year old who can do this is exceptionally rare. The VAST majority of people only learn these skills over time... and come to realize them in their 40's and 50's.
This is why there are so incredibly few successful companies lead by 20-somethings. Say what you want about corporate america, but in this case, their greed reveals them. The "old boys club" can't motivate nearly as well as the bank. The fact that there are very few 20-something CEO's indicates that, except for the very rare case, 20-somethings don't yet have what it takes. If they did, there'd be no shortage of people following them to the bank.
I'm very afraid it will screw up my credit rating so i'm hanging on by a thread to my finances.
Debt counseling should not impact your credit rating at all. Generally, what a debt counselor will do is recommend that you build a budget (if you don't already have one), then they help you modify your budget to get the debt paid off, then they recommend a strategy for sticking to the plan. Your creditors will not even know that you've been through counseling.
the religious tones are fine
In that case, I strongly recommend looking into Crown Financial. You can find information on budget counseling here or on debt counseling here. If those don't appeal to you, I would also recommend that you go to your local library and check out some books on debt. There are tons of them. You might cross reference with Amazon to see which ones get the best ratings.
no, the problem comes when the standard amount your career of choice used to make is severely decreased.
Except throughout the 200 year history of the industrial revolution TONS of people have had that exact thing happen to them. And yet, the vast majority of people have had their standard of living increased over time.
This is, of course, why saving is so important. Everyone should prepare for the time when (not if) their job is going to become obsolete, so that they can educate themselves to learn a new trade.
The problem is when you are carrying a reasonable amount of debt for your income level and then your income is forced down sharply where you cannot afford to pay it.
Again, another reason why savings is so important. There's several types of savings, and the most critical is an emergency savings plan. Figure out your total expenses for the year, then divide by 12 and save at least 6 months worth. That way you can live for 6 mos w/out a job, and your debt load won't matter because you've got enough saved to cover it.
That being said, you should be very careful with debt. There's good and bad debt. IMHO, the only acceptable debt meets the following:
it's repayable if absolutely necessary (e.g. a mortgage where you can sell the house to repay the debt)
it's invested in something in which you have a fairly high expectation of making the investment back (e.g. mortgage or educational loans).
Mortgage has an additional benefit as mechanism for lowering your taxes. Here is a good primer on controlling debt.
I think this country is going to learn the value of buying nothing on credit EVER AGAIN because there is no safe level of credit.
I couldn't agree more. If you don't pay off your credit cards at the end of each month, throw them away and use your debit card instead. This will force you to spend no more than you earn. See my sig.
Still if you're in credit card trouble, I would strongly recommend debt counseling. There are folks who can help you figure out how to get out of debt. Techniques include calling creditors, loan consolidation, etc. There is some really good advice here and here. If the religous tones don't appeal to you, ignore those parts; the advice is sound whether or not you believe the religious aspect.
And finally, I don't mean to be all "in your face" about your personal finances. I only hope to offer some tips. If they're not useful, ignore them.
I'm sorry to hear that it's not working out for you. I didn't mean to suggest that it will work out for absolutely everyone, just for most people. The alternatives - wealth redistribution - will help a small number of people, but will hurt most people. I prefer the one that helps most people, even if that means not all of them are helped.
That being said, I would also suggest that your current situation is probably too short term to be counted has being harmed by the system. I suspect that in the slightly longer term, you'll be better off.
But of course, I don't know. What I know is that overall, more people are helped by our economy over the long term than not. Overall the group with elevated incomes over time is MUCH larger than the group with stagnant or lowered incomes. I truly do hope that you find your way into the former group and out of the latter.
No. Financial audit is related to accounting. Audit in general is the process of identifying the effectiveness of controls as applied to risks. There are risks with IT. IT audit is the process of identifying how well those risks are controlled. You don't need to know accounting to be an IT auditor. You need to know IT and how to control the risks.
Right now there's a huge demand for IT auditors. A new law (Sarbanes-Oxley) came about as a result of Enron, Tyco, etc. And it's placed a huge premium on IT auditors. In the month or so since I've been out of audit, I've received 10 phone calls for IT audit positions. So, there's clearly demand. And if you've got IT skills they're certainly translatable to IT audit. Checkout monster or hotjobs.
I don't know where you live, but I'll bet that IT jobs are not the only jobs in town. If you can't find a job and you can't afford to relocate or can't convince an employer to pay for your relocation, you have to consider another occupation. In your case, I might recommend IT Audit. There are *LOTS* of IT audit jobs available as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley. It'll at least keep you in IT until you can find another IT job and it'll let you earn some level of money until you can get back into IT.
I did IT audit for the last three years and finally got back into IT just this month. I'm sympathetic to your situation, but there are lots of options.
Re:FDR was our GREATEST President
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
I definately like the fairtax proposal. But I actually prefer the "Bleeding Heart Libertarian" approach much better.
Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth.
Redistribution of wealth is the least effective mechanism for combating poverty. Robert Lucas put it this way:
"...of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production."
If you're interested in the plight of the poor, you should stop listening to those who would swindle you into believing that redistribution of wealth will work. You might need another metaphor
I hope you're not reading the Washington Post for your conclusion that the middle class is getting decimated. They've simply been misreporting the data. Because while it's true that the middle class is getting smaller, it's not because they're moving into the poor class. The data simply doesn't support that conclusion.
The "middle class squeeze" is a myth. If anything, the middle class being "squeezed" up into wealthier classes.
I'm confused by this. In the current system, the cost of advertising is so high, that we have polticians who run for office only on the strength of their campaign coffers. Opening up a scarce resource to market economics will lower the cost of that resource much more effectively than inefficient regulation of that resource, which artificially raises the price.
Maybe it's just me but this seems like a strawman point. The resource is already priced out of reach of the VAST majority of people. The spectrum is already unavailable to the most people as a conduit for free speech. I think it's time to try something else.
Because corporations always (well, with very few exceptions) choose short-term profit over long-term.
While that's true, it doesn't only apply to corporations. It applies, as a general rule, to indivduals, too. If you want an example, imagine that I gave offered to sell you two gold coins, one which you'd receive the directions to today, and one you'd recieve directions for in 10 years. By far, the higher selling price would go to the gold coin which could be had today, even though each coin is exactly the same.
But that's not my point. My point is that the market could decide in favor of digital TV if it were included in the process. The way to do that would be to allow the current spectrum holders to reuse/sell/rent the space to someone else. Right now the spectrum holders can *only* make money off of it by broadcasting TV over it because the regulations require that they only do this. This precludes a market because there's a scarcity (frequency spectrum) which no one is allowed to buy or sell.
But if the current spectrum holders were allowed to use it for whatever they thought would make the most money, don't you think Cingular would be talking to the TV stations to get that spectrum? Don't you think the TV stations would try to subsidize the cost of new digital TVs? Don't you think it could be done much more quickly and more effectively if private citizens and not the government were making the decions as to what happened to the space?
Let the current holders of the frequencies, sell/rent them to those who want it. Right now, the current holders can use it only for TV purposes. If they could rent it and take in money for it, how quickly do you think they'd transition the space? How quickly do you think they'd subsidize the cost of your new digital TV in order to get additional rent in from the cell phone providers who desparately want some of that space? Don't think they'd do this? How much do you pay for your cable box? How much did you pay for your DBS receiver? Not a penny. Why because the providers of those services know that the one time cost is worth taking in favor of the long term revenue stream.
Making this change would involve no government intervention, other than changing the current rule. This would incent the current holders to get off the space. What it wouldn't do, is turn into a windfall for the federal government who wants to collect auction dollars. Which is, of course, why no politician will ever suggest it. But it is, IMHO, the most effective way to encourage the transition to digital TV.
While I'd like to take credit for this idea, I can't. Someone WAY smarter than me came up with it:
Perhaps one solution would be for the FCC to hold another auction. In the new auction, current license owners could put their spectrum up for sale, and the spectrum could be bid on by new or existing owners. Once the spectrum has been re-auctioned, it could be used for any purpose, and it could be sold at any time.
- Arnold Kling
Personally, I wish every account that I had were on SecurID. Then I wouldn't have to change my passwords every other month. They'd change for me every 60 seconds with no input on my part.
My problem is with being discarded and unable to find a similar-paying job even though there is supposedly a skills shortage.
You have to do what everyone (including me) has had to do when this has happened to them, either:
reapply your existing skills to a different position (see prev post re: IT audit or starting a business), or
retrain to learn some new, more profitable skill, or
become a ward of the state and live off of government handouts.
These aren't terribly appealing options, but as far as I can see they're the only ones. And unfortunately, the default, if you do nothing, is #3.
Society doesn't want their jobs exported
I think that's demonstrably false. Society does want jobs exported if it means cheaper goods and services - for example in the 70's and 80's american auto workers lost their jobs in torrents as cheaper japanese cars flooded the market. Obviously, the part of society that loses their jobs do not want their jobs exported, because they have to worry about making their ends meet. But they don't represent all of society, and the rest of society chooses cheaper services with alarming regularity.
The buggy whip analogy is a flawed one since there still is a need for my skills,
I agree that there's still a need for your (and my) skills. Just not at your (and my) wages.
it's just that I can't possibly compete with third-world programmers even if their govt would allow me to work there which they don't.
So don't. Figure out a way to take advantage of the new efficiency. Maybe you don't program everything yourself. Instead, with the cheap labor for programming, you build that great big project that you've been wanting to build and sell it yourself. You should be able to do this much more economically now since the cost of programming has gone down. Or you could try and translate your programming skills into something else. IT audit is in high demand as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley. This requires programming skills and is very difficult to outsource.
Unfortunately, I hear you advocating that we stop the flow of outsourcing. The ONLY way to do that is through some form of government intervention (i.e. legislation). This is not substantially different than the government forcing americans to buy Hondas made in the US for twice the price of the same car produced in Japan (e.g. by banning the import of the cheaper japanese model). It's the exact same car, but one is produced less expensively. This will certainly save the jobs of the Honda plant in America. But it will cost jobs of someone else somewhere else. American citizens can't buy the things that they would have bought with the extra money that they would have saved. The people that produce those things will have to cut back jobs in order to support the Honda plant jobs.
The better scenario is to let people decide how they want to spend their money. By doing that, we will produce what society really wants. The things that are really wanted by society will be funded. Other things that are wanted by society will be funded less expensively, and everything else (the things that aren't wanted by society) won't be funded.
The alternative is to fund the things that society doesn't want at the expense of not funding the things that society does want. Legislate job protection and get the latter. Allow everyone (even corporations who outsource) to purchase the things they want based on their own criteria, and you get the former.
It still does not explain why those jobs being created elsewhere will help domestic workers get hired here. We simply assume that it will all work out in the end, which is a nice sentiment, but a matter of faith.
I would suggest that assuming that it's NOT going to work out is a bigger leap of faith than assuming it's going to work out. The latter assumption has history on its side. Every time some new technology or efficiency has resulted in short term loss of jobs, the naysayers have stood up and proclaimed that it would be the end of the economy and society. And every time they've been wrong. I see no reason to suspect that they won't again be wrong in this case.
So tell me again how the unemployed benefit from a more efficient economy?
Compare what life is like for the unemployed in the US compared to a third world country. In the worst possible case, the unemployed in the US are MUCH better off than the unemployed in a less economically efficient country. And that's the worst case. In the best case, the unemployed in this country are voluntarily unemployed; this is called retirement.
Like I said, it sucks for those people who lose their jobs. But your job was already the product of someone else who lost their job previously. Just as an auto worker's job directly caused the loss of jobs for buggy whip makers, programmers directly caused the loss of jobs of the people who used to have to do all of that automation manually.
As I mentioned in another post, this should be required reading for everyone prior to commenting on this phenomenon.
Slashdot Mirror
But paying programmers at $80k per year is outdated and unnecessary and not producing value when you can get the same work for $10k per year.
By advocating that we force employers to pay local workers a premium wage when there's a lower cost wage available somewhere else, you are saying the exact same thing as forcing consumers to purchase groceries from a grocer who charges 5-8 times as much for the same quality.
Everytime you choose a lower priced ANYTHING you are threatening the job of the higher priced person. You don't get to have it both ways. If you want the freedom to choose lower prices, you have to provide that freedom to the people who purchase from you.
The only alternative is to make choosing lower prices illegal. But if you can succeed into legally forcing your customers to buy a higher priced service from you, then the next thing that's going to happen is they're going to force their customers into the same thing. This process will repeat until all that's left of the United States is a third world country who depends on the economic success of others.
I don't think that's a good idea at all.
If I hadn't already commented in this thread, you'd get one of my +1 mod points.
If you want to make comparisons over time, you have to provide data over time. Like this. Personally, I don't think that advocating class warfare is very productive. It certainly does NOT help those who are at the low end of the wage making scale. That causes them to think that they're stuck down there as a result of someone else forcing them down there and they stop looking for and taking advantage of the natural oppurtunities to move up.
The simple fact of the matter is that a rising tide lifts all boats. If your goal is to make everyone have the same income level, the only way to do that is to make everyone equally impoverished. Third world countries do a bang-up job of this. If your goal is to raise the income level of the poor, the only effective way to do this is to raise everyone's income level. Industrialized economies do this.
You have a choice: everyone can be impoverished or everyone can be richer than they were. I prefer the latter.
If we restrict the discussion to tech companies, maybe you're right. I don't know, but I'm skeptical. I would say that the book is not yet closed on the longevity of Yahoo and Google. And I would say that the strength of the tech comapanies strategies has not yet been decided.
And even though you can point out 6 counter examples, I think those are the exceptions that make the rule. I'm quite sure that, with research, I could point out 10 fold as many companies that didn't last 6 months under the leadership of 20-somethings. And this would support my claim: the vast majority of 20-somethings don't have it. There are some, and they probably gravitate towards technology. But I still think that they're rare, and you're more likely to find that kind of leadership in 40- and 50-somethings.
$.02
What has happened in the past when this exact same situation came up is that the smart people who lost there jobs became available to do other things. The same thing will happen this time around. The nerds who are no longer programming will be free to spend their brain power on something else.
Byron Caplan puts it like this:
If you replace "downsizing" with "outsourcing" the sentiment is still true. It's detrimental to the economy as a whole to retain workers in the US when there are workers available elsewhere who are willing/able to do the job more efficiently. The US workers are not freed up to do something else and we (as a society) are forced to pay a premium wage for a less than efficient work force.
Each one of us outsources every day. I know of no technologist who also does all of the following:
- makes all of his/her own clothes
- grows or produces all of his/her own food
- builds his/her own house
- self insures against casualty
- produces their own electricty
- obtains, cleanses, and distributes their own water
- etc, etc, etc.
All of those things are outsourced by individuals to someone else. No one has the time to do ALL of that AND be a technologist. So what has happened when they outsourced those activities? It freed them up to be technologists. The same thing is true when the job of technologist gets outsourced to elsewhere. Smart people are freed up to do something else.If there's one thing that I think no 26 year old will ever have it's the ability to navigate politics. Deciding what to build next is trivial in comparison to having the gumption to stick with it to get it done. And that requires people motivation skills. That requires tuning out all of the other hype and distraction. Are 26 year olds capable of this? Of course! But the 26 year old who can do this is exceptionally rare. The VAST majority of people only learn these skills over time... and come to realize them in their 40's and 50's.
This is why there are so incredibly few successful companies lead by 20-somethings. Say what you want about corporate america, but in this case, their greed reveals them. The "old boys club" can't motivate nearly as well as the bank. The fact that there are very few 20-something CEO's indicates that, except for the very rare case, 20-somethings don't yet have what it takes. If they did, there'd be no shortage of people following them to the bank.
$.02
Debt counseling should not impact your credit rating at all. Generally, what a debt counselor will do is recommend that you build a budget (if you don't already have one), then they help you modify your budget to get the debt paid off, then they recommend a strategy for sticking to the plan. Your creditors will not even know that you've been through counseling.
In that case, I strongly recommend looking into Crown Financial. You can find information on budget counseling here or on debt counseling here. If those don't appeal to you, I would also recommend that you go to your local library and check out some books on debt. There are tons of them. You might cross reference with Amazon to see which ones get the best ratings.Except throughout the 200 year history of the industrial revolution TONS of people have had that exact thing happen to them. And yet, the vast majority of people have had their standard of living increased over time.
This is, of course, why saving is so important. Everyone should prepare for the time when (not if) their job is going to become obsolete, so that they can educate themselves to learn a new trade.
Again, another reason why savings is so important. There's several types of savings, and the most critical is an emergency savings plan. Figure out your total expenses for the year, then divide by 12 and save at least 6 months worth. That way you can live for 6 mos w/out a job, and your debt load won't matter because you've got enough saved to cover it.
That being said, you should be very careful with debt. There's good and bad debt. IMHO, the only acceptable debt meets the following:
- it's repayable if absolutely necessary (e.g. a mortgage where you can sell the house to repay the debt)
- it's invested in something in which you have a fairly high expectation of making the investment back (e.g. mortgage or educational loans).
Mortgage has an additional benefit as mechanism for lowering your taxes. Here is a good primer on controlling debt.I couldn't agree more. If you don't pay off your credit cards at the end of each month, throw them away and use your debit card instead. This will force you to spend no more than you earn. See my sig.
Still if you're in credit card trouble, I would strongly recommend debt counseling. There are folks who can help you figure out how to get out of debt. Techniques include calling creditors, loan consolidation, etc. There is some really good advice here and here. If the religous tones don't appeal to you, ignore those parts; the advice is sound whether or not you believe the religious aspect.
And finally, I don't mean to be all "in your face" about your personal finances. I only hope to offer some tips. If they're not useful, ignore them.
Good luck!
I'm sorry to hear that it's not working out for you. I didn't mean to suggest that it will work out for absolutely everyone, just for most people. The alternatives - wealth redistribution - will help a small number of people, but will hurt most people. I prefer the one that helps most people, even if that means not all of them are helped.
That being said, I would also suggest that your current situation is probably too short term to be counted has being harmed by the system. I suspect that in the slightly longer term, you'll be better off.
But of course, I don't know. What I know is that overall, more people are helped by our economy over the long term than not. Overall the group with elevated incomes over time is MUCH larger than the group with stagnant or lowered incomes. I truly do hope that you find your way into the former group and out of the latter.
No. Financial audit is related to accounting. Audit in general is the process of identifying the effectiveness of controls as applied to risks. There are risks with IT. IT audit is the process of identifying how well those risks are controlled. You don't need to know accounting to be an IT auditor. You need to know IT and how to control the risks.
Right now there's a huge demand for IT auditors. A new law (Sarbanes-Oxley) came about as a result of Enron, Tyco, etc. And it's placed a huge premium on IT auditors. In the month or so since I've been out of audit, I've received 10 phone calls for IT audit positions. So, there's clearly demand. And if you've got IT skills they're certainly translatable to IT audit. Checkout monster or hotjobs.
I don't know where you live, but I'll bet that IT jobs are not the only jobs in town. If you can't find a job and you can't afford to relocate or can't convince an employer to pay for your relocation, you have to consider another occupation. In your case, I might recommend IT Audit. There are *LOTS* of IT audit jobs available as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley. It'll at least keep you in IT until you can find another IT job and it'll let you earn some level of money until you can get back into IT.
I did IT audit for the last three years and finally got back into IT just this month. I'm sympathetic to your situation, but there are lots of options.
I definately like the fairtax proposal. But I actually prefer the "Bleeding Heart Libertarian" approach much better.
Redistribution of wealth is the least effective mechanism for combating poverty. Robert Lucas put it this way:
If you're interested in the plight of the poor, you should stop listening to those who would swindle you into believing that redistribution of wealth will work. You might need another metaphor
I hope you're not reading the Washington Post for your conclusion that the middle class is getting decimated. They've simply been misreporting the data. Because while it's true that the middle class is getting smaller, it's not because they're moving into the poor class. The data simply doesn't support that conclusion.
The "middle class squeeze" is a myth. If anything, the middle class being "squeezed" up into wealthier classes.
???
I'm confused by this. In the current system, the cost of advertising is so high, that we have polticians who run for office only on the strength of their campaign coffers. Opening up a scarce resource to market economics will lower the cost of that resource much more effectively than inefficient regulation of that resource, which artificially raises the price.
Maybe it's just me but this seems like a strawman point. The resource is already priced out of reach of the VAST majority of people. The spectrum is already unavailable to the most people as a conduit for free speech. I think it's time to try something else.
While that's true, it doesn't only apply to corporations. It applies, as a general rule, to indivduals, too. If you want an example, imagine that I gave offered to sell you two gold coins, one which you'd receive the directions to today, and one you'd recieve directions for in 10 years. By far, the higher selling price would go to the gold coin which could be had today, even though each coin is exactly the same.
But that's not my point. My point is that the market could decide in favor of digital TV if it were included in the process. The way to do that would be to allow the current spectrum holders to reuse/sell/rent the space to someone else. Right now the spectrum holders can *only* make money off of it by broadcasting TV over it because the regulations require that they only do this. This precludes a market because there's a scarcity (frequency spectrum) which no one is allowed to buy or sell.
But if the current spectrum holders were allowed to use it for whatever they thought would make the most money, don't you think Cingular would be talking to the TV stations to get that spectrum? Don't you think the TV stations would try to subsidize the cost of new digital TVs? Don't you think it could be done much more quickly and more effectively if private citizens and not the government were making the decions as to what happened to the space?
I do.
Making this change would involve no government intervention, other than changing the current rule. This would incent the current holders to get off the space. What it wouldn't do, is turn into a windfall for the federal government who wants to collect auction dollars. Which is, of course, why no politician will ever suggest it. But it is, IMHO, the most effective way to encourage the transition to digital TV.
While I'd like to take credit for this idea, I can't. Someone WAY smarter than me came up with it:
Personally, I wish every account that I had were on SecurID. Then I wouldn't have to change my passwords every other month. They'd change for me every 60 seconds with no input on my part.
You have to do what everyone (including me) has had to do when this has happened to them, either:
These aren't terribly appealing options, but as far as I can see they're the only ones. And unfortunately, the default, if you do nothing, is #3.
I think that's demonstrably false. Society does want jobs exported if it means cheaper goods and services - for example in the 70's and 80's american auto workers lost their jobs in torrents as cheaper japanese cars flooded the market. Obviously, the part of society that loses their jobs do not want their jobs exported, because they have to worry about making their ends meet. But they don't represent all of society, and the rest of society chooses cheaper services with alarming regularity.
I agree that there's still a need for your (and my) skills. Just not at your (and my) wages.
So don't. Figure out a way to take advantage of the new efficiency. Maybe you don't program everything yourself. Instead, with the cheap labor for programming, you build that great big project that you've been wanting to build and sell it yourself. You should be able to do this much more economically now since the cost of programming has gone down. Or you could try and translate your programming skills into something else. IT audit is in high demand as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley. This requires programming skills and is very difficult to outsource.Unfortunately, I hear you advocating that we stop the flow of outsourcing. The ONLY way to do that is through some form of government intervention (i.e. legislation). This is not substantially different than the government forcing americans to buy Hondas made in the US for twice the price of the same car produced in Japan (e.g. by banning the import of the cheaper japanese model). It's the exact same car, but one is produced less expensively. This will certainly save the jobs of the Honda plant in America. But it will cost jobs of someone else somewhere else. American citizens can't buy the things that they would have bought with the extra money that they would have saved. The people that produce those things will have to cut back jobs in order to support the Honda plant jobs.
The better scenario is to let people decide how they want to spend their money. By doing that, we will produce what society really wants. The things that are really wanted by society will be funded. Other things that are wanted by society will be funded less expensively, and everything else (the things that aren't wanted by society) won't be funded.
The alternative is to fund the things that society doesn't want at the expense of not funding the things that society does want. Legislate job protection and get the latter. Allow everyone (even corporations who outsource) to purchase the things they want based on their own criteria, and you get the former.
I would suggest that assuming that it's NOT going to work out is a bigger leap of faith than assuming it's going to work out. The latter assumption has history on its side. Every time some new technology or efficiency has resulted in short term loss of jobs, the naysayers have stood up and proclaimed that it would be the end of the economy and society. And every time they've been wrong. I see no reason to suspect that they won't again be wrong in this case.
Compare what life is like for the unemployed in the US compared to a third world country. In the worst possible case, the unemployed in the US are MUCH better off than the unemployed in a less economically efficient country. And that's the worst case. In the best case, the unemployed in this country are voluntarily unemployed; this is called retirement.
As I mentioned in another post, this should be required reading for everyone prior to commenting on this phenomenon.
History has consistantly shown that losing overpriced jobs, creates more jobs in the long run.
Oh for the love of a mod point!