The only way to combat offshoring is: a) as a US customer, demand goods and services that originate in the US; b) US gov't remove any tax benefits to a company that has X percentage of the workforce in other countries
Or c) Produce more value than offshore workers. This isn't that hard to do, not because foreign labor is inherently worse, but because of the substantial inefficiencies caused by trying to run offshore teams.
Are you suggesting that just because she did it online and under a false identity means that she shouldn't be held accountable?
Um, no. She should be punished for the harassment, not for signing up with a fake name. If the former is not actually a crime, then fix that rather than turning the latter into one. As it stands now, just about every Internet user in the US has committed a federal crime, so we should all hope we haven't annoyed any government officials lately.
And yes, if that means Lori Drew gets to walk on a technicality, so be it. She'll still be ostracized for the rest of her life, and that's less bad than opening the door to selective prosecution of anyone who's ever checked their work email from home and thereby violated the "no commercial use" clause of their ISP.
As I parent and actually remembering my teenage years that's a good thing. Why? Because if they are at home watching TV or playing video games, I know exactly where they are, what they are doing, and what they aren't doing. During my teenage years those "not socially backward" kids as you would put them would be drinking, smoking, having sex, or sometimes partying. So I'd much rather my kids be "socially backward" in that respect.
From a parent's perspective of keeping their kids out of trouble, that makes perfect sense. But you can go too far. *Most* kids left to their own devices would party too much, so society and parents try to discourage that. But there are a minority of kids (probably well represented on/.) who given the choice would spend almost all their time reading or studying or playing video games or other solitary activities. These kids should actually be nudged toward hanging out with friends and going to parties and staying out too late, because not doing those things means they miss out on developing social skills that are very important, both professionally and in their personal lives.
My computer and display and TV and DVD player already draw zero watts when off, thanks to the magic of the switch on the power strip.
TV and DVD sure, but computers are annoying to turn on and off because you (or at least I) often have substantial state to restore: open apps and files, terminal windows, etc. It's perfectly reasonable to normally use sleep or hibernate and only shut down for special circumstances.
Yes and no. Black voters were only somewhat more likely than average to vote for Proposition 8 (58% vs 52% according to your article), but they were substantially more likely to vote for it than was the average Obama voter. Still, probably not enough to swing the results.
At least part of this should be seen as the fault of a fucked-up medical system where you need to be married to a wage earner to be worthy of medical attention. Hopefully that will change in the US soon.
I wish. Unfortunately McCain was the only one who wanted to even take tiny steps away from the idiotic system of tying health insurance to employers, while Obama wants to make it more pervasive.
Great, a stimulus package that helps everyone else except for those people who happen to develop software for a living.
Do you use Apache, gcc, or Python? I don't support this stimulus, but the idea that open source software is bad for software developers in general is silly.
The GNU project put the means of production in the hands of the workers, allowing us to enjoy the fruits of our labour ourselves.
Or the invisible hand of the market lowered the price of software to its marginal cost of near-zero, resulting in maximum economic efficiency. But both versions are silly, because socialism and capitalism are sets of policies to allocate scarce resources. Open source is neither; it avoids the core problem by eliminating scarcity altogether.
The final rule, however, was that every US household was eligible for two. No other test.
Which means it would have been much more efficient to just give everyone a tax credit for $40. Arguably that's even a fairer solution; since the airwaves were theoretically owned by the public, everyone should receive a portion of the proceeds from their sale, whether or not you need to buy a converter box.
You will never decrease your tax liability by making less enough to compensate for making less, all other things being equal, even under a system as complex as the US tax code.
Probably true, and completely irrelevant. Why should I care whether Bill Gates makes $100 million or $200 million? If an economic metric can be improved by simply destroying someone's wealth or income, that metric sucks. Envy is a poor basis for policy.
average wages have declined, especially when benefits are all but disappearing.
Here's a report from the left-leaning EPI. They toss a lot of numbers around and have some screwy math (somehow a 0.1% median change for men and -0.2% change for women combines to a -1.1 median change for everyone?), and the worst they can come up with is that median compensation has been stagnant from 2003-2007, after growing from 2000-2003. If true that's not great, but it's a far cry from the doom and gloom that the left has been continuously preaching. It also fails to account for continued technological progress making things common today that were luxuries or completely unavailable 10 or 20 years ago. (Exhibit A: the Internet).
A more accurate comparison to the United States would be Britain, where protectionism, social medicine, and things like the "token" tax on stock trades have resulted in a much more equitable society.
The UK doesn't seem to do too well compared to the US here. Or is it good if everyone loses wealth, as long as the rich lose the most? At that point envy turns into spite.
People who are no longer eligible for unemployment or who's benefits have expired are not counted.
"Discouraged workers" who aren't actively looking for work aren't counted, but if your unemployment benefits have expired and you're still looking, you are counted. Here is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has to say.
Secondly, a person who is layed off from a $75,000 and regains employment at $50,000 is also not counted as "unemployed," BUT, he's making 1/3 less.
Yes, and that will show up in income statistics. It would be silly to consider him unemployed in any way.
It is a fact that automation creates jobs. It may create a loss in jobs in one sector, but it creates jobs in other sectors.
Automation does create jobs, but probably not in the way you're thinking. It is not true that if computers replace 10,000 telephone operators, that more than 10,000 jobs are created to manage those computers; if that were the case, then there would be no cost savings and no reason for phone companies to switch. Instead, the same service that used to be provided by the operators can now be provided by fewer computer technicians. This leaves the former phone operators temporarily unemployed, but they will eventually find jobs producing other things. The end result is that we produce more with the same amount of labor, and the same thing happens with offshoring. Think of China as a black box where companies send money (less than they would pay for domestic labor) and get products back. The effect is the same as if they had saved money due to automation.
Look at the current and climbing unemployment rates in the U.S.
Well, there is that recession thingy. We've had people whining about all the jobs going overseas for at least 30 years, yet the unemployment rate has been largely steady. Automation eliminates more jobs than offshoring, should we get rid of computers and robots? Think of all the accounting and assembly line jobs that would be created...
Except that it isn't a free-market health care system -- at least not 50% of it. About half the money spent in health care is Federal/State money.
Not even the other half is, because almost everybody gets coverage through their employer. This is a *terrible* system because nobody has any real incentive to control costs, and it means if you lose your job you're doubly screwed. Either an actual free market or single-payer would be better than what we have now.
I find it a little saddening that nearly everyone complains about this type of legislation while at the same time demanding that something be done about global warming.
I want to do something about global warming, and I complain about regulations like this because they're exactly the wrong approach. They attack individual symptoms, not the root causes. Make one use of energy too expensive, and people will substitute others. Prevent me from buying the big screen TV I want, and instead I'll put the money into a high end PC with a monster GPU that sucks even more power. Just apply taxes on electricity to cover the negative externalities, and you discourage *all* inefficient usage, not just the specific things you thought of at the time. (For bonus points, rebate the taxes collected equally per-capita so it's not regressive).
That's the same illogic used to rationalize driving big trucks and SUVs. It's "my" choice and if I choose to do so, then who are you to say different?
If you're able to pay for it, including the externalities, then it should be your choice. Or would you like a government inquisitor going through your residence and determining what unnecessary items you have? After all you certainly don't need that Xbox, and any CPU that uses more power than an Atom is just wasteful. Don't worry, qualified engineers can apply for special permits for high-performance computers, just fill out these forms and submit your application fee, and we'll get back to you in 6 to 8 weeks...
If people paid for everything they got, and there was no piracy -- there wouldn't be DRM.
Nope. See DVD region codes, which are used to create market segmentation and remove first sale rights. And DRM would still be used to create lock-in and artificially cripple devices so that you have to pay the provider for functionality that you could normally add yourself.
I'm not attacking you here, just the idea that Apple's doing something dumb by protecting their assets and their market. That's capitalism for better or for worse.
DRM backed up by laws like the DMCA is not capitalism; it's a removal of our property rights.
The only choice is whether to (1) run headlong into disaster (which I predict is a good description of mankind will actually do); (2) minimize the impact; or (3) counterbalance the impact. You can't simply rule out (3) on a vague generality.
Thank you. Yes, we should obviously be *very* cautious with stuff like this, but I really don't understand the prevailing opinion that it's Just Wrong. I suspect many people consider the environment to be a moral issue rather than a practical one, so any solution that doesn't require us to make substantial sacrifices is "cheating".
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to combat offshoring is: a) as a US customer, demand goods and services that originate in the US; b) US gov't remove any tax benefits to a company that has X percentage of the workforce in other countries
Or c) Produce more value than offshore workers. This isn't that hard to do, not because foreign labor is inherently worse, but because of the substantial inefficiencies caused by trying to run offshore teams.
Are you suggesting that just because she did it online and under a false identity means that she shouldn't be held accountable?
Um, no. She should be punished for the harassment, not for signing up with a fake name. If the former is not actually a crime, then fix that rather than turning the latter into one. As it stands now, just about every Internet user in the US has committed a federal crime, so we should all hope we haven't annoyed any government officials lately.
And yes, if that means Lori Drew gets to walk on a technicality, so be it. She'll still be ostracized for the rest of her life, and that's less bad than opening the door to selective prosecution of anyone who's ever checked their work email from home and thereby violated the "no commercial use" clause of their ISP.
As I parent and actually remembering my teenage years that's a good thing. Why? Because if they are at home watching TV or playing video games, I know exactly where they are, what they are doing, and what they aren't doing. During my teenage years those "not socially backward" kids as you would put them would be drinking, smoking, having sex, or sometimes partying. So I'd much rather my kids be "socially backward" in that respect.
From a parent's perspective of keeping their kids out of trouble, that makes perfect sense. But you can go too far. *Most* kids left to their own devices would party too much, so society and parents try to discourage that. But there are a minority of kids (probably well represented on /.) who given the choice would spend almost all their time reading or studying or playing video games or other solitary activities. These kids should actually be nudged toward hanging out with friends and going to parties and staying out too late, because not doing those things means they miss out on developing social skills that are very important, both professionally and in their personal lives.
Yes, I'm speaking from experience.
My computer and display and TV and DVD player already draw zero watts when off, thanks to the magic of the switch on the power strip.
TV and DVD sure, but computers are annoying to turn on and off because you (or at least I) often have substantial state to restore: open apps and files, terminal windows, etc. It's perfectly reasonable to normally use sleep or hibernate and only shut down for special circumstances.
Yes and no. Black voters were only somewhat more likely than average to vote for Proposition 8 (58% vs 52% according to your article), but they were substantially more likely to vote for it than was the average Obama voter. Still, probably not enough to swing the results.
At least part of this should be seen as the fault of a fucked-up medical system where you need to be married to a wage earner to be worthy of medical attention. Hopefully that will change in the US soon.
I wish. Unfortunately McCain was the only one who wanted to even take tiny steps away from the idiotic system of tying health insurance to employers, while Obama wants to make it more pervasive.
Great, a stimulus package that helps everyone else except for those people who happen to develop software for a living.
Do you use Apache, gcc, or Python? I don't support this stimulus, but the idea that open source software is bad for software developers in general is silly.
The GNU project put the means of production in the hands of the workers, allowing us to enjoy the fruits of our labour ourselves.
Or the invisible hand of the market lowered the price of software to its marginal cost of near-zero, resulting in maximum economic efficiency. But both versions are silly, because socialism and capitalism are sets of policies to allocate scarce resources. Open source is neither; it avoids the core problem by eliminating scarcity altogether.
The final rule, however, was that every US household was eligible for two. No other test.
Which means it would have been much more efficient to just give everyone a tax credit for $40. Arguably that's even a fairer solution; since the airwaves were theoretically owned by the public, everyone should receive a portion of the proceeds from their sale, whether or not you need to buy a converter box.
Commuting sucks. Happiness studies have shown that having a short commute is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
You will never decrease your tax liability by making less enough to compensate for making less, all other things being equal, even under a system as complex as the US tax code.
True in general, but there are cases where the working poor have effective marginal tax rates of over 100%, because they lose benefits as their income increases.
Wage disparity has grown
Probably true, and completely irrelevant. Why should I care whether Bill Gates makes $100 million or $200 million? If an economic metric can be improved by simply destroying someone's wealth or income, that metric sucks. Envy is a poor basis for policy.
average wages have declined, especially when benefits are all but disappearing.
Here's a report from the left-leaning EPI. They toss a lot of numbers around and have some screwy math (somehow a 0.1% median change for men and -0.2% change for women combines to a -1.1 median change for everyone?), and the worst they can come up with is that median compensation has been stagnant from 2003-2007, after growing from 2000-2003. If true that's not great, but it's a far cry from the doom and gloom that the left has been continuously preaching. It also fails to account for continued technological progress making things common today that were luxuries or completely unavailable 10 or 20 years ago. (Exhibit A: the Internet).
A more accurate comparison to the United States would be Britain, where protectionism, social medicine, and things like the "token" tax on stock trades have resulted in a much more equitable society.
The UK doesn't seem to do too well compared to the US here. Or is it good if everyone loses wealth, as long as the rich lose the most? At that point envy turns into spite.
Is that you Summer?
People who are no longer eligible for unemployment or who's benefits have expired are not counted.
"Discouraged workers" who aren't actively looking for work aren't counted, but if your unemployment benefits have expired and you're still looking, you are counted. Here is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has to say.
Secondly, a person who is layed off from a $75,000 and regains employment at $50,000 is also not counted as "unemployed," BUT, he's making 1/3 less.
Yes, and that will show up in income statistics. It would be silly to consider him unemployed in any way.
It is a fact that automation creates jobs. It may create a loss in jobs in one sector, but it creates jobs in other sectors.
Automation does create jobs, but probably not in the way you're thinking. It is not true that if computers replace 10,000 telephone operators, that more than 10,000 jobs are created to manage those computers; if that were the case, then there would be no cost savings and no reason for phone companies to switch. Instead, the same service that used to be provided by the operators can now be provided by fewer computer technicians. This leaves the former phone operators temporarily unemployed, but they will eventually find jobs producing other things. The end result is that we produce more with the same amount of labor, and the same thing happens with offshoring. Think of China as a black box where companies send money (less than they would pay for domestic labor) and get products back. The effect is the same as if they had saved money due to automation.
Look at the current and climbing unemployment rates in the U.S.
Well, there is that recession thingy. We've had people whining about all the jobs going overseas for at least 30 years, yet the unemployment rate has been largely steady. Automation eliminates more jobs than offshoring, should we get rid of computers and robots? Think of all the accounting and assembly line jobs that would be created...
It's just as completely "fair" to say "the hell with the rest of the world, we'll just make them locally".
Sure. Except it screws over everyone else in your country who has to pay higher prices for more inefficient production.
If Free Trade worked, Mexico, America, and Canada would be doing better today then they were in the early 1990s
Citation needed. If protectionism worked, North Korea would be the wealthiest nation on earth.
Yes, it's class warfare. But the war is over, and the middle class has lost.
Yeah, just look at all those homeless people huddling in Apple Stores.
Except that it isn't a free-market health care system -- at least not 50% of it. About half the money spent in health care is Federal/State money.
Not even the other half is, because almost everybody gets coverage through their employer. This is a *terrible* system because nobody has any real incentive to control costs, and it means if you lose your job you're doubly screwed. Either an actual free market or single-payer would be better than what we have now.
There is no bulldozer for consumption.
Sure there is: tax pollution directly, rather than trying to micromanage people's choices.
I find it a little saddening that nearly everyone complains about this type of legislation while at the same time demanding that something be done about global warming.
I want to do something about global warming, and I complain about regulations like this because they're exactly the wrong approach. They attack individual symptoms, not the root causes. Make one use of energy too expensive, and people will substitute others. Prevent me from buying the big screen TV I want, and instead I'll put the money into a high end PC with a monster GPU that sucks even more power. Just apply taxes on electricity to cover the negative externalities, and you discourage *all* inefficient usage, not just the specific things you thought of at the time. (For bonus points, rebate the taxes collected equally per-capita so it's not regressive).
That's the same illogic used to rationalize driving big trucks and SUVs. It's "my" choice and if I choose to do so, then who are you to say different?
If you're able to pay for it, including the externalities, then it should be your choice. Or would you like a government inquisitor going through your residence and determining what unnecessary items you have? After all you certainly don't need that Xbox, and any CPU that uses more power than an Atom is just wasteful. Don't worry, qualified engineers can apply for special permits for high-performance computers, just fill out these forms and submit your application fee, and we'll get back to you in 6 to 8 weeks...
Unilateral reduction in fossil fuel usage and who cares what the rest of the world thinks? That would help a lot.
Voluntarily limiting our consumption will push down energy prices, which will induce non-altruistic entities to use more.
If people paid for everything they got, and there was no piracy -- there wouldn't be DRM.
Nope. See DVD region codes, which are used to create market segmentation and remove first sale rights. And DRM would still be used to create lock-in and artificially cripple devices so that you have to pay the provider for functionality that you could normally add yourself.
I'm not attacking you here, just the idea that Apple's doing something dumb by protecting their assets and their market. That's capitalism for better or for worse.
DRM backed up by laws like the DMCA is not capitalism; it's a removal of our property rights.
We've established we can change the earth's climate when we're not trying to, so why in principle could we not purposely make desirable changes?
The only choice is whether to (1) run headlong into disaster (which I predict is a good description of mankind will actually do); (2) minimize the impact; or (3) counterbalance the impact. You can't simply rule out (3) on a vague generality.
Thank you. Yes, we should obviously be *very* cautious with stuff like this, but I really don't understand the prevailing opinion that it's Just Wrong. I suspect many people consider the environment to be a moral issue rather than a practical one, so any solution that doesn't require us to make substantial sacrifices is "cheating".