Race does not have a scientific definition, but it sure as hell has societal implications. I think it is a naive view of the world to think that you can ignore "race" and all of the problems will go away. You can't change old minds but you can influence new minds. A little change each generation is real progress.
In any case, if your organization mentions "under-represented groups" in it's charter, you probably should target those groups in your advertising!:)
I'm sorry to sound cold, but I'm asking people not to make decisions based on empathy, but instead on what is best for the bulk of Americans. My contention is that while this kind of selective immigration might make life harder for a few on the margins, it acts like a higher tide for the whole profession. We should have "safety net" programs in place so that those on the margins don't spiral into irrelevancy, but that is another discussion.
This is almost the same argument as most free trade conversations wind up being.
Orange juice is so sugary that you shouldn't be drinking enough of it to affect your health one way or another. I had some today because someone made us breakfast. I don't know where it was made and I don't care - it was a rare and tasty treat.
Before you call someone a tard, look into the issue. They, over a ten year span, are being forced to: (a) fully fund their current employees' pensions, and (b) fully fund their retirees' pensions. Some opposing politician or commentator derived a "75 years" equivalency from this, which is misleading and meant to make the law seem more ridiculous than it is.
The flaws with the law are the aggressive timetable and the lack of authorization for increased rates, not the full funding of pensions. That is a good idea, and meant to prevent a Detroit moment in the future. It is reprehensible that we allow the federal government to rack up debts in the form of promised future benefits without proper accounting, let alone funding.
The timeline was aggressive and they didn't allow for additional revenue. But let's say that and not pretend that the Post Office wasn't running a scam before. At the very least, those unfunded pensions should have been showing up on the balance sheet like the liabilities that they really were.
Why is this down-rated? Detroit is exactly what happens when pensions go unfunded - which is what the Post Office pensions were when congress passed that law.
My understanding is that the 75 years number is, in typical politician style, misleading. Congress is making the Post Office fully fund current retiree pensions as well as current employee pensions. Add those numbers together and you get the equivalent of funding pensions out 75 years - but that's not the way the law is phrased.
There's nothing wrong with funding the pensions (in fact it's the only moral choice), but I do fault the congress for not approving a rate increase or for not letting them stretch out the time a bit. We've been letting the government rack up these pension debts without proper accounting, and it has to stop.
Meh, life is like that. I have to lock my bike up, my house has an alarm, that old lady got into the 12 items or less line with double that, some fuckers knocked down some buildings with airplanes, and people STILL don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
We have car parks for city people who insist on walking around with those ridiculous toy cars, leaking all over the sidewalks and making all sorts of annoying noise. Of course, I think it is silly to use scarce open space in our parks for such frivolity, but enough people insist on having these little trophies that I'm apparently in the minority.
I don't doubt that there are plenty of examples that you could point to. However, the markets in Europe and the US are in general very open to outside tech goods. If I were making some kind of widget for the European market, I could easily make it in China so long as shipping wasn't too big of an issue. And I'm not even talking about manufacture, I'm talking about an engineering center. Even if I were making a product that had to be manufactured in the EU for some reason, I could still do the engineering in China.
Then you risk losing out on businesses who can move their operations to where properly trained people are more plentiful. Education does become a problem for society at-large when there are other societies providing it to their people. Remember that most businesses are corporations, and corporations are a construct of our government(s). I wouldn't expect you to have "sympathy" for a corporation any more than I would expect you to have sympathy for a patent. The first question should be: what do we want, and then the next question is: what is the most likely way to achieve that. H1Bs might very well be a poor way achieve a goal, but first we have to agree on what the goal is.
Personally, I want my wage to remain pretty decent. I see the rapid change in the developing world and realize that many of the traditional benefits of the US business climate are quickly eroding: access to capital has gotten much better in China. Infrastructure in China is a top priority for the government. Education in China keeps getting better, and the labor pool better educated. Manufacturing quality has gotten much better in China. Even with horrid amounts of corruption and - in the countryside - potential social unrest, it is still an attractive place to do business. While salaries have risen, and will continue to rise, they are still a fraction of US wages. I see this and wonder, what the heck will keep companies coming to the US for their technical operations? My answer is that we can leverage our historically outstanding universities and open immigration policies and cement our standing as a place to hire brains.
This is selfish, mind you. I want Chinese brains in the US. I want Indian brains in the US. I want the brightest individuals that a society can produce clamoring to work in the US. It is very much at the expense of those other societies. If I were more deluded and less cynical, I could make some justification based on the bettering of mankind overall and how a rising tide lifts all boats and blah, blah, blah, but I don't have any trouble sleeping at night so for now I'll just call it selfish:)
Very good points, but I take issue with #2 and #5.
Re #2: free trade makes this, depending on your product, nearly meaningless unless shipping is a large portion of your product's cost.
Re #5, while most states are "at will", and protections are weak compared to Europe, worker protections are much stronger in the US than in most developing countries.
I can't agree. Good schools are still good - perhaps even better. High schools are in a war to provide the highest number of AP courses. Bad schools, on the other hand, have gotten perhaps even worse - to the point where whole school districts are almost unusable. There was a "social promotion" phase in public education, but that seems to be swinging back the other way.
Yes, it is a very hard comparison to make, because living standards and product quality standards are so much higher. I agree that we are completely failing at education, especially for poorer kids. It's not so much a money issue - increase in funding correlates poorly with results, and we already spend more per pupil than almost any other country. Housing is affordable, it's just that the education system sucks where the affordable housing is - part of that at least is due to uneven funding. Cheap houses produces less in property taxes, which produces less for the schools. But as I said, it's not as simple as funding.
I'm very sorry about the experiences some people have - we really should not have a system that puts people in a form of indentured servitude, even if technically they aren't, since they can just go home. It's still not a direction I'd like the country to move in. The policy of simultaneously letting people in by skill and letting people stay by country is quite obviously broken.
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So perpetuating the ethnic fallacy is the influence you desire to have on new minds?
Quite the opposite. But there is a lot of sociological programming to overcome.
t's common knowledge that women make terrible engineers, scientists, and programmers.
Common knowledge is exactly why we need real science-based education.
Race does not have a scientific definition, but it sure as hell has societal implications. I think it is a naive view of the world to think that you can ignore "race" and all of the problems will go away. You can't change old minds but you can influence new minds. A little change each generation is real progress.
In any case, if your organization mentions "under-represented groups" in it's charter, you probably should target those groups in your advertising! :)
I'm sorry to sound cold, but I'm asking people not to make decisions based on empathy, but instead on what is best for the bulk of Americans. My contention is that while this kind of selective immigration might make life harder for a few on the margins, it acts like a higher tide for the whole profession. We should have "safety net" programs in place so that those on the margins don't spiral into irrelevancy, but that is another discussion.
This is almost the same argument as most free trade conversations wind up being.
Orange juice is so sugary that you shouldn't be drinking enough of it to affect your health one way or another. I had some today because someone made us breakfast. I don't know where it was made and I don't care - it was a rare and tasty treat.
Before you call someone a tard, look into the issue. They, over a ten year span, are being forced to: (a) fully fund their current employees' pensions, and (b) fully fund their retirees' pensions. Some opposing politician or commentator derived a "75 years" equivalency from this, which is misleading and meant to make the law seem more ridiculous than it is.
The flaws with the law are the aggressive timetable and the lack of authorization for increased rates, not the full funding of pensions. That is a good idea, and meant to prevent a Detroit moment in the future. It is reprehensible that we allow the federal government to rack up debts in the form of promised future benefits without proper accounting, let alone funding.
The timeline was aggressive and they didn't allow for additional revenue. But let's say that and not pretend that the Post Office wasn't running a scam before. At the very least, those unfunded pensions should have been showing up on the balance sheet like the liabilities that they really were.
Why is this down-rated? Detroit is exactly what happens when pensions go unfunded - which is what the Post Office pensions were when congress passed that law.
Almost... You start working at around 20, so you have until your 50th birthday. And it's not 95, but your life expectancy.
My understanding is that the 75 years number is, in typical politician style, misleading. Congress is making the Post Office fully fund current retiree pensions as well as current employee pensions. Add those numbers together and you get the equivalent of funding pensions out 75 years - but that's not the way the law is phrased.
There's nothing wrong with funding the pensions (in fact it's the only moral choice), but I do fault the congress for not approving a rate increase or for not letting them stretch out the time a bit. We've been letting the government rack up these pension debts without proper accounting, and it has to stop.
...not!
Meh, life is like that. I have to lock my bike up, my house has an alarm, that old lady got into the 12 items or less line with double that, some fuckers knocked down some buildings with airplanes, and people STILL don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
Suddenly it's hacking? Give me a break.
It would be totally awesome if language stopped changing in the 1980s. Radical, dude.
As opposed to Korea, not Boston.
We have car parks for city people who insist on walking around with those ridiculous toy cars, leaking all over the sidewalks and making all sorts of annoying noise. Of course, I think it is silly to use scarce open space in our parks for such frivolity, but enough people insist on having these little trophies that I'm apparently in the minority.
I don't doubt that there are plenty of examples that you could point to. However, the markets in Europe and the US are in general very open to outside tech goods. If I were making some kind of widget for the European market, I could easily make it in China so long as shipping wasn't too big of an issue. And I'm not even talking about manufacture, I'm talking about an engineering center. Even if I were making a product that had to be manufactured in the EU for some reason, I could still do the engineering in China.
Yes, but I haven't seen too many of such incidents in the tech fields. Farming always gets people fired up.
That's OK, I'm doing my best to beat the worst "luser" story that my current sysadmin has ever heard.
Then you risk losing out on businesses who can move their operations to where properly trained people are more plentiful. Education does become a problem for society at-large when there are other societies providing it to their people. Remember that most businesses are corporations, and corporations are a construct of our government(s). I wouldn't expect you to have "sympathy" for a corporation any more than I would expect you to have sympathy for a patent. The first question should be: what do we want, and then the next question is: what is the most likely way to achieve that. H1Bs might very well be a poor way achieve a goal, but first we have to agree on what the goal is.
Personally, I want my wage to remain pretty decent. I see the rapid change in the developing world and realize that many of the traditional benefits of the US business climate are quickly eroding: access to capital has gotten much better in China. Infrastructure in China is a top priority for the government. Education in China keeps getting better, and the labor pool better educated. Manufacturing quality has gotten much better in China. Even with horrid amounts of corruption and - in the countryside - potential social unrest, it is still an attractive place to do business. While salaries have risen, and will continue to rise, they are still a fraction of US wages. I see this and wonder, what the heck will keep companies coming to the US for their technical operations? My answer is that we can leverage our historically outstanding universities and open immigration policies and cement our standing as a place to hire brains.
This is selfish, mind you. I want Chinese brains in the US. I want Indian brains in the US. I want the brightest individuals that a society can produce clamoring to work in the US. It is very much at the expense of those other societies. If I were more deluded and less cynical, I could make some justification based on the bettering of mankind overall and how a rising tide lifts all boats and blah, blah, blah, but I don't have any trouble sleeping at night so for now I'll just call it selfish :)
Very good points, but I take issue with #2 and #5.
Re #2: free trade makes this, depending on your product, nearly meaningless unless shipping is a large portion of your product's cost.
Re #5, while most states are "at will", and protections are weak compared to Europe, worker protections are much stronger in the US than in most developing countries.
I can't agree. Good schools are still good - perhaps even better. High schools are in a war to provide the highest number of AP courses. Bad schools, on the other hand, have gotten perhaps even worse - to the point where whole school districts are almost unusable. There was a "social promotion" phase in public education, but that seems to be swinging back the other way.
Yes, it is a very hard comparison to make, because living standards and product quality standards are so much higher. I agree that we are completely failing at education, especially for poorer kids. It's not so much a money issue - increase in funding correlates poorly with results, and we already spend more per pupil than almost any other country. Housing is affordable, it's just that the education system sucks where the affordable housing is - part of that at least is due to uneven funding. Cheap houses produces less in property taxes, which produces less for the schools. But as I said, it's not as simple as funding.
I'm very sorry about the experiences some people have - we really should not have a system that puts people in a form of indentured servitude, even if technically they aren't, since they can just go home. It's still not a direction I'd like the country to move in. The policy of simultaneously letting people in by skill and letting people stay by country is quite obviously broken.
Aren't we being a bit melodramatic? Are the engineers in China really starving to death, or just making less money than me?
You must be a joy in the Caribbean.
Because they are people? People are whiny and like to get their own way. Open source is not a genetic engineering exercise.