I didn't catch that, because I'm not. I'm incredibly pissed that the promises of true capitalism (cottage industries, you can do anything you like) and true communism (the state takes care of all of your needs in exchange for a relatively minor portion of your time, and you can still do anything you want) are lies.
To your question, there is a difference: One is Communism, the other Facism
:-) I like you- you're completely correct....mine's based on effect to the average citizen, in which case there is no difference between communism and facism other than who is giving you the orders.
I have had some economics training. One of my profs used to say that he'd get interviewed on the news and to provide a balanced approach, he'd be on a panel with an absolute wing nut.
We seem to have quite the bumper crop of the later in recent years- either trying to convince you to give away more of your income in taxes in return for services, or that hard work will make you rich, neither of which is true. The services and the riches seem to never materialize.
I think that in general there are professional economists (typically with the brown cordorroy sports jacket and brown tie) and the "pundits" who dress very well. You might think that that is a shallow comment, but it speaks to the idea that some mean to describe and some mean to persuade.
The man in the suit is always trying to sell you something; else he would not be wearing a suit. Hacker's Ethic Rule #4.
The pundits are the ones who use neoclassical economics ideas and turn them into a justification for any old thing. Seen that alot in the current administration. And you know that they are not just wrong, but they are mis-applying the theories to support ideology.
Saw a lot of it in the last 3 administrations. Heck, in fact, I've seen nothing else in my conscious, adult life; and the lies go all the way back to 2nd grade for me. Work hard, and you will be rich.
Professional economists are more interested in ideas than ideology. I'd bet, for example, that most professional economists in the US would avocate socialized medicine because the costs to society as a whole are lower. A pundit would argue that consumer choice and the market place are the best way to allocate scarce resources. Nevermind that there are externalities galore, informational asymetry, and empirical evidence to support socialized medicine.
Yeah, but thanks to the pundits, I have to wonder if the excess taxes for socialized medicine will result in anything real as far as quality is concerned- or just the same set of people getting rich at our expense like in Hillarycare (I thought that was funny- they called her a Marxist, but what self-respecting Marxist would design a socialized health care system that left the HMOs in charge?).
Professional economists attempt a difficult thing: modeling real life. Pundits are paid to advocate some position. Not the same.
Yeah, but there's another thing that has been bothering me- I've yet to see any "Professional Economist" come out against Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage- DESPITE 30 years worth of real data to the contrary (it's been that long since the United States ran a trade surplus). It seems to me some parts of the model need some *serious* reworking, thanks to the pundits misusing them to destroy the middle class worldwide.
You sound like a true rareity to me- one for whom the H-1b visa did as it was advertised it was going to do. I think the keyword is right there- in sufficient time. Just about any business can sponsor a scholoarship for a graduate student to learn just about anything in America- given 4 years and $40,000. Perhaps that's what we need it to take to get an H-1b.
We hire H1B engineers because finding an experienced signal integrity engineer who wants to work in flyover country is pretty damn tough - and that's with above-industry salaries.
Have you thought about going to the local state university and funding a scholarship or two to make some homegrown ones? Or didn't it occur to you that businesses that do this get to set the cirriculum and end up with more sales as the lower achieving class members end up working retail (and knowing YOUR product!) or for your competitors (and knowing YOUR product!).
I am paying these people well above going wages ($100k+) and I am unable to hire any US citizens with their knowledge despite having tried for a year.
Did you try going to a university offering a degree in the program and sponsoring a scholarship for a graduate student to study to gain this knowledge, or did you just give up early?
When you really live in a totalitarian state, you'll know it - you won't be able to make comments like that.
I don't know about that- almost every totalitarian state I can think of has at least one person (the dictator) and usually a class of people (the ruling/oppressing party in question) who can make a comment like that with a straight face. In fact, I'd have to say, it would be incredibly hard to have a totalitarian state without a class of people who don't think the state is totalitarian.
The basic idea of a non-immigrant visa is selfish brain drain- An American corporation gets the skillset far cheaper (in terms of time and money) than training an American to do the same job *because* it is assumed that the person will be retireing back home where cost of living is much less. Subvert this by allowing in-country status change from non-immigrant to immigrant, and the cost savings will disappear upon the change; I've known several H-1bs who lost their jobs upon winning the green card "lottery" due to this fact. To me, it was the ultimate proof that the H class visas are much more about cheap labor than they are about actual skill.
And that's also why I dislike non-immigrant visas; the only protection the middle class has in this country is that an increase in skill level means an increased salary- the H* visas subvert that part of the job market directly.
To a large extent they're JUST as corrupt- the only difference is that their highest bidder is The Party instead of a Corporation. There is no difference between encouraging a totalitarian government with promises of economic freedom that are never fullfilled OR a totalitarian corporation with promises of economic freedom that are never fullfilled.
It's not that bad. If you are good enough, the company will sponsor you for permanent residency, and there are other ways too. Remember, H1-Bs sign up for it, and it is hard, but there's a reason why they want that visa.
If there is any way for them to get permanent residency, then the visa has failed in it's primary purpose as a "non-immigrant" visa. Much as I hate the entire concept of a non-immigrant visa, there most certainly should be a hard line between immigrant and non-immigrant visas; which will make it easier to limit and reduce the second.
We've been handing them out for decades, yet we seem to have near record low unemployment...
Only if you fail to include in the workforce all the people the BLS puts on "disability" to lower the unemployment numbers artificially.
Yet countries like France, which have very protectionist policies, seem to have a serious problem getting their young people into the workforce.
Actually, they don't have very good protectionist policies- they've got a huge influx of Islamic Africans and Arabs who serve the same purpose as our H* workers do here- a completely disaffected, disenfranchised workforce to keep the unemployment numbers high.
If we don't let US companies hire foreign workers in the US, the companies will move to a country where they can hire those workers.
If they're that unpatriotic- let them. But when they do, we should confiscate their assets here, and exile their C-level executives. Oh yeah- and that company should not be allowed to sell *anything* in the United States, nor provide any services. Cut such traitors off completely is what I say. Send them to India and let them try to get a job there.
Here's a pop quiz: Which company is likely to hire more US citizens, a company with offices in the US with a mixture of US and non-US employees, or a company with offices overseas?
In my experience, neither company will hire US citizens at all, because both are enemies of the United States- our competitors in the global marketplace, at war with us.
I suggest you weigh your ideas against some real life data and reconsider your position.
My actual position is this- other countries are our competitors in the global marketplace, and when a competitor threatens your market, you do whatever it takes to bring him down- including guns, bombs, and genocide.
Yeah, and the Japanese don't know how to manufacture anything that isn't junk, as we all knew back in the 1960s. OK, maybe they could make decent, cheap pocket transistor radio, but not big things like cars.
They still can't- which is why my Izuzu pickup died after less than 8 years, where my 7 year old Ford Escort still gets 50 MPG.
This is completely wrong. They send people here to make money because we live in a place where labor is dear and they live in a place where labor is cheap. The problem is that they are starting to look for work at home, because home can no compete with the US.
Let it. It's in our best interest to compete with countries that we can destroy militarily on a whim.
Furthermore, no innovator is an island. You need a people (skilled) to turn an innovation into a business.
I'd argue that if you need skilled people to turn an innovation into a business, then you don't deserve to be in business- you're not an innovator, you're a parasite.
Which is the point: you keep the skilled positions here.
Yeah, right- except for you're not, you're replacing all the skilled people with H-1b indentured servants, insuring that no American will ever be able to afford to pay for the training to become skilled.
you need infrastructure: banking, marketing and dsitribution, research institutions, venture capital etc.
Two of those 5 are infrastructure, the other three are unneeded parasites that will cause your project to fail if it is not profitable within 4 months. I wonder if you know which is which.
If the state of these things in the 1970s US was on a par with 1970s India, you wouldn't have had a computer industry develop here, no matter how many geniuses we had.
Except, at least three of those geniuses used NO venture capital, no marketing, and no banks.
Near as I can tell, economists as a class are a bunch of traitors willing to sell their research to the highest bidder. It would be a miracle for them to perscribe economic decisions that supported a middle class, let alone an economy that actually supports people instead of people as resources to be consumed by the rich.
So, if you need a Swing expert with at least 4 years of experience to be a lead on an important project, and your market has plenty of Americans with a CS degree and no experience, should you hire an inexperienced american that will not be able to perform his duties?
Either you should train that American- OR you should consider perhaps using a tool that has more of a following in the industry. OR, just perhaps, you should consider paying a large enough wage to get an American Swing Expert with 4 years of experience?
In the St Louis area, my company has had problems hiring skilled programmers. Only 1 in 10 resumes come from Americans, and those tend to be quite weak. In one occasion, after looking for 8 months we got a single qualified applicant, who just happened to be an H1-B holder. Why not hire him?
Did it ever occur to you to perhaps increase the salary to equivalent to your CEO?
Besides, some unemployment is healthy. If you've ever had an actual job, you'd probably know that there's plenty of programmers out there that are so incompetent that they create more work than they do. Those guys SHOULD be unemployed, regardless of their country of origin. Who in their right mind would want to hire a dog like that over someone with talent?
Somebody who realizes that a good programmer can be trained to do anything?
Less than 100% employment doesn't mean that companies don't have to make honest, fair offers to get good employees. Damned close to 100% of good employees are either already employed, or will be unemployed for only a very short period of time.
If that was true, stockholder profit would be 0. All the money would be going to retaining the good employees.
100% employment, however, means no incentive to better yourself as a worker. That leads to low domestic innovation, low productivity, low job satisfaction, and eventually economic decline, increased poverty, etc.. Look at the long term unemployment statistics (people in good health, but out of work for more than six months) and you'll have a pretty good ideal of how many people we've got that don't posess the attitude required to remain employed. If we stoped teaching our children that work was that crappyt thing you do between weekends of beer and football, that number would go down. If we stopped handing out H1-Bs, it wouldn't.
Unless we stop handing out H*-* visas entirely, there will be NO opportunity for our children to learn to work, because there will be no jobs available for them to learn to work IN. That applies more to H2-* visas than H1-* visas, but the idea is the same- if you give away all the entry level jobs, there will be no way to enter the workforce.
If I was going to give the corporations what they want on my terms, it would be this: A separate tax bracket for corporations with overseas offices or that buy and sell ANYTHING overseas of 75% gross proceeds tax. And that includes those who hire "illegal aliens" or "guest workers". Simply make it unprofitable to do so.
It's virtually certain that we'd be bringing in several people who will create new technologies, possibly even new industries.
The problem with that is if foreign cultures were actually capable of producing people who could innovate, they wouldn't need to send people here to make money. So therefore your theory breaks down because there *are* no "best and brightest" to come here- they're all mired down by inefficient and technologically backward cultures that produce crap.
OTOH- if we could streamline and de-corrupt the process, then it's potentially possible that all H-1bs would be filled in the first few microseconds after October 1st Federal Fiscal Year rolls around- thus lending credance to the argument that we need *better* protectionism for American Workers.
In other words- makeing the process more efficient is a positive no matter which side of the "guest worker" debate you are on- it's good news both for anti-indentured-servant activists AND cheap-labor free traitors.
I was talking about *within* the industry- where TJ types, being more mathematically oriented and more logical, are more common than in the general population.
I tend to agree with you on the legality of personality testing, but this statement:
illegal are those that reveal "protected class" status (e.g. race, sex, religion, handicap etc.)
raised the question in my mind, since my disability is directly linked to my label of having Asperger's that a psychiatrist slapped on me. Now while this is a plus (I'm a computer programmer, and when the question of personality tests come up, I go ahead and take them, and if based on MBTI, then go ahead and explain how a strong INFP makes for a good detail-oriented programmer, and one who can debug programs written by the much more common INTJ and ENTJ types, thus fitting well into a team of those types), I have to wonder if I could prove discrimination against a mental illness based on the prevalance of such tests.
The only honest position would be one of agnosticism, not atheism. Atheism makes the logical jump that a lack of evidence indicates a lack of existance, which has been shown to be false time and time again. The Panda was once considered a fairy tale, as was the colecanth, as was the Vietnamese deer, as was the Komodo Dragon. All of these animals exist.
I don't believe that the moon has an inner core made of cheese, because there is no reason to believe that. Ditto for my belief that there's a God -- actually, the latter is worse, because I can't even make out what the word "God" is supposed to refer to.
The usual definition is a force, event, or being that is a creator of the universe.
From that standpoint, the existance of an orderly universe is an argument for God- not objective evidence, but an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence.
What is legitimate to you is legitimate to you, what is legitimate to somebody else is legitimate to somebody else. How about actually using a term that has some *MEANING*, instead of an unexplained adjective?
Do believe all the stuff in deuteronomy about kidnap and rape being okay?
Worse than that- I actually believe those are laws for a given tribe of people, and that tribal law should be paramount over modern law, on the basis of the fact that we've screwed up just about everything we've ever tried to change.
whilst it's not something I've ever thought about very much,
Am I starting from an unreasonable presumption?
Yes, you're starting from the unreasonable presumption that things you haven't thought about simply don't exist because you haven't thought about them. How do you expect to know whether there is evidence for something (or not), until you've thought about examining the evidence (or not)?
Logic is about consistency between claims. Now a body of claims can be entirely consistent with eachother and still - as a body - be false, but ultimately scientific claims have a logical link to observable reality -- we can observe that computers work, airplanes fly, etc.
Every religion on the planet claims a logical link to observable reality- usually in the lives and acomplishments of their followers. They pick and choose the success stories- airplanes fly, SOMETIMES they crash. Computers work, but SOMETIMES they lock up. Nothing is perfect. Catholic marriages are supposed to be divorce-free; but 49% end up in annulment.
Regardless of one's worldview, we must all accept that computers work. Without machines that use hardcore logic, you and I would not be able to communicate about logic and epistemology.
And sometimes we can't- because the machines don't work in all situations, do they?
The bodies of religious claims on the other hand not only conflict with one another, but also each have only dubious logical links to measurable reality. The official stories about pivotal events are not only sketchy, but also conflict with one another.
Same with science. It just depends what you take as evidence, and how choosy you are about the meanings of objective and subjective.
The only real "leap of faith" in this particular area is following the chain of logic into an area that is no longer measurable. However, it's still the best tool for the job and better than using an arbitrary story of thousands of years ago made up in a time when people thought the earth was flat.
OTOH, the arbitrary story has lasted for thousands of years- because it was useful for those thousands of years. I can't say the same for many theories of science- partially because science is so young yet; partially because the situations where scientific theories are true are so narrowly defined that reality leaves them quickly. Back to your example of airplanes- they may not be flying much longer. The fuel needed for them is running out, and the competitors to that fuel don't provide the power neccessary to lift off say, a 747. I have no doubt we'll figure out something to replace it eventually- but even that won't have the utility, say, of the Bali Rice God, who kept rice production in balance with food needs on the island for 3000 years until modern "science" intervened and screwed things up rather spectacularily.
Utility alone isn't enough to call something "fact" in the end analysis; that's only enough to say that something is useful within the worldview that created it; if one of a million other variables comes in that is outside of the model, the model will still cease to predict reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Just joking really!
I didn't catch that, because I'm not. I'm incredibly pissed that the promises of true capitalism (cottage industries, you can do anything you like) and true communism (the state takes care of all of your needs in exchange for a relatively minor portion of your time, and you can still do anything you want) are lies.
To your question, there is a difference: One is Communism, the other Facism
:-) I like you- you're completely correct....mine's based on effect to the average citizen, in which case there is no difference between communism and facism other than who is giving you the orders.
I have had some economics training. One of my profs used to say that he'd get interviewed on the news and to provide a balanced approach, he'd be on a panel with an absolute wing nut.
We seem to have quite the bumper crop of the later in recent years- either trying to convince you to give away more of your income in taxes in return for services, or that hard work will make you rich, neither of which is true. The services and the riches seem to never materialize.
I think that in general there are professional economists (typically with the brown cordorroy sports jacket and brown tie) and the "pundits" who dress very well. You might think that that is a shallow comment, but it speaks to the idea that some mean to describe and some mean to persuade.
The man in the suit is always trying to sell you something; else he would not be wearing a suit. Hacker's Ethic Rule #4.
The pundits are the ones who use neoclassical economics ideas and turn them into a justification for any old thing. Seen that alot in the current administration. And you know that they are not just wrong, but they are mis-applying the theories to support ideology.
Saw a lot of it in the last 3 administrations. Heck, in fact, I've seen nothing else in my conscious, adult life; and the lies go all the way back to 2nd grade for me. Work hard, and you will be rich.
Professional economists are more interested in ideas than ideology. I'd bet, for example, that most professional economists in the US would avocate socialized medicine because the costs to society as a whole are lower. A pundit would argue that consumer choice and the market place are the best way to allocate scarce resources. Nevermind that there are externalities galore, informational asymetry, and empirical evidence to support socialized medicine.
Yeah, but thanks to the pundits, I have to wonder if the excess taxes for socialized medicine will result in anything real as far as quality is concerned- or just the same set of people getting rich at our expense like in Hillarycare (I thought that was funny- they called her a Marxist, but what self-respecting Marxist would design a socialized health care system that left the HMOs in charge?).
Professional economists attempt a difficult thing: modeling real life. Pundits are paid to advocate some position. Not the same.
Yeah, but there's another thing that has been bothering me- I've yet to see any "Professional Economist" come out against Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage- DESPITE 30 years worth of real data to the contrary (it's been that long since the United States ran a trade surplus). It seems to me some parts of the model need some *serious* reworking, thanks to the pundits misusing them to destroy the middle class worldwide.
in sufficient time
You sound like a true rareity to me- one for whom the H-1b visa did as it was advertised it was going to do. I think the keyword is right there- in sufficient time. Just about any business can sponsor a scholoarship for a graduate student to learn just about anything in America- given 4 years and $40,000. Perhaps that's what we need it to take to get an H-1b.
We hire H1B engineers because finding an experienced signal integrity engineer who wants to work in flyover country is pretty damn tough - and that's with above-industry salaries.
Have you thought about going to the local state university and funding a scholarship or two to make some homegrown ones? Or didn't it occur to you that businesses that do this get to set the cirriculum and end up with more sales as the lower achieving class members end up working retail (and knowing YOUR product!) or for your competitors (and knowing YOUR product!).
I am paying these people well above going wages ($100k+) and I am unable to hire any US citizens with their knowledge despite having tried for a year.
Did you try going to a university offering a degree in the program and sponsoring a scholarship for a graduate student to study to gain this knowledge, or did you just give up early?
When you really live in a totalitarian state, you'll know it - you won't be able to make comments like that.
I don't know about that- almost every totalitarian state I can think of has at least one person (the dictator) and usually a class of people (the ruling/oppressing party in question) who can make a comment like that with a straight face. In fact, I'd have to say, it would be incredibly hard to have a totalitarian state without a class of people who don't think the state is totalitarian.
The basic idea of a non-immigrant visa is selfish brain drain- An American corporation gets the skillset far cheaper (in terms of time and money) than training an American to do the same job *because* it is assumed that the person will be retireing back home where cost of living is much less. Subvert this by allowing in-country status change from non-immigrant to immigrant, and the cost savings will disappear upon the change; I've known several H-1bs who lost their jobs upon winning the green card "lottery" due to this fact. To me, it was the ultimate proof that the H class visas are much more about cheap labor than they are about actual skill.
And that's also why I dislike non-immigrant visas; the only protection the middle class has in this country is that an increase in skill level means an increased salary- the H* visas subvert that part of the job market directly.
What about about Marxist Economists then?
To a large extent they're JUST as corrupt- the only difference is that their highest bidder is The Party instead of a Corporation. There is no difference between encouraging a totalitarian government with promises of economic freedom that are never fullfilled OR a totalitarian corporation with promises of economic freedom that are never fullfilled.
It's not that bad. If you are good enough, the company will sponsor you for permanent residency, and there are other ways too. Remember, H1-Bs sign up for it, and it is hard, but there's a reason why they want that visa.
If there is any way for them to get permanent residency, then the visa has failed in it's primary purpose as a "non-immigrant" visa. Much as I hate the entire concept of a non-immigrant visa, there most certainly should be a hard line between immigrant and non-immigrant visas; which will make it easier to limit and reduce the second.
We've been handing them out for decades, yet we seem to have near record low unemployment...
Only if you fail to include in the workforce all the people the BLS puts on "disability" to lower the unemployment numbers artificially.
Yet countries like France, which have very protectionist policies, seem to have a serious problem getting their young people into the workforce.
Actually, they don't have very good protectionist policies- they've got a huge influx of Islamic Africans and Arabs who serve the same purpose as our H* workers do here- a completely disaffected, disenfranchised workforce to keep the unemployment numbers high.
If we don't let US companies hire foreign workers in the US, the companies will move to a country where they can hire those workers.
If they're that unpatriotic- let them. But when they do, we should confiscate their assets here, and exile their C-level executives. Oh yeah- and that company should not be allowed to sell *anything* in the United States, nor provide any services. Cut such traitors off completely is what I say. Send them to India and let them try to get a job there.
Here's a pop quiz: Which company is likely to hire more US citizens, a company with offices in the US with a mixture of US and non-US employees, or a company with offices overseas?
In my experience, neither company will hire US citizens at all, because both are enemies of the United States- our competitors in the global marketplace, at war with us.
I suggest you weigh your ideas against some real life data and reconsider your position.
My actual position is this- other countries are our competitors in the global marketplace, and when a competitor threatens your market, you do whatever it takes to bring him down- including guns, bombs, and genocide.
Yeah, and the Japanese don't know how to manufacture anything that isn't junk, as we all knew back in the 1960s. OK, maybe they could make decent, cheap pocket transistor radio, but not big things like cars.
They still can't- which is why my Izuzu pickup died after less than 8 years, where my 7 year old Ford Escort still gets 50 MPG.
This is completely wrong. They send people here to make money because we live in a place where labor is dear and they live in a place where labor is cheap. The problem is that they are starting to look for work at home, because home can no compete with the US.
Let it. It's in our best interest to compete with countries that we can destroy militarily on a whim.
Furthermore, no innovator is an island. You need a people (skilled) to turn an innovation into a business.
I'd argue that if you need skilled people to turn an innovation into a business, then you don't deserve to be in business- you're not an innovator, you're a parasite.
Which is the point: you keep the skilled positions here.
Yeah, right- except for you're not, you're replacing all the skilled people with H-1b indentured servants, insuring that no American will ever be able to afford to pay for the training to become skilled.
you need infrastructure: banking, marketing and dsitribution, research institutions, venture capital etc.
Two of those 5 are infrastructure, the other three are unneeded parasites that will cause your project to fail if it is not profitable within 4 months. I wonder if you know which is which.
If the state of these things in the 1970s US was on a par with 1970s India, you wouldn't have had a computer industry develop here, no matter how many geniuses we had.
Except, at least three of those geniuses used NO venture capital, no marketing, and no banks.
Near as I can tell, economists as a class are a bunch of traitors willing to sell their research to the highest bidder. It would be a miracle for them to perscribe economic decisions that supported a middle class, let alone an economy that actually supports people instead of people as resources to be consumed by the rich.
So, if you need a Swing expert with at least 4 years of experience to be a lead on an important project, and your market has plenty of Americans with a CS degree and no experience, should you hire an inexperienced american that will not be able to perform his duties?
Either you should train that American- OR you should consider perhaps using a tool that has more of a following in the industry. OR, just perhaps, you should consider paying a large enough wage to get an American Swing Expert with 4 years of experience?
In the St Louis area, my company has had problems hiring skilled programmers. Only 1 in 10 resumes come from Americans, and those tend to be quite weak. In one occasion, after looking for 8 months we got a single qualified applicant, who just happened to be an H1-B holder. Why not hire him?
Did it ever occur to you to perhaps increase the salary to equivalent to your CEO?
Besides, some unemployment is healthy. If you've ever had an actual job, you'd probably know that there's plenty of programmers out there that are so incompetent that they create more work than they do. Those guys SHOULD be unemployed, regardless of their country of origin. Who in their right mind would want to hire a dog like that over someone with talent?
Somebody who realizes that a good programmer can be trained to do anything?
In other words, an indentured servant with no hope of citizenship without losing their job.
Less than 100% employment doesn't mean that companies don't have to make honest, fair offers to get good employees. Damned close to 100% of good employees are either already employed, or will be unemployed for only a very short period of time.
If that was true, stockholder profit would be 0. All the money would be going to retaining the good employees.
100% employment, however, means no incentive to better yourself as a worker. That leads to low domestic innovation, low productivity, low job satisfaction, and eventually economic decline, increased poverty, etc.. Look at the long term unemployment statistics (people in good health, but out of work for more than six months) and you'll have a pretty good ideal of how many people we've got that don't posess the attitude required to remain employed. If we stoped teaching our children that work was that crappyt thing you do between weekends of beer and football, that number would go down. If we stopped handing out H1-Bs, it wouldn't.
Unless we stop handing out H*-* visas entirely, there will be NO opportunity for our children to learn to work, because there will be no jobs available for them to learn to work IN. That applies more to H2-* visas than H1-* visas, but the idea is the same- if you give away all the entry level jobs, there will be no way to enter the workforce.
If I was going to give the corporations what they want on my terms, it would be this: A separate tax bracket for corporations with overseas offices or that buy and sell ANYTHING overseas of 75% gross proceeds tax. And that includes those who hire "illegal aliens" or "guest workers". Simply make it unprofitable to do so.
It's virtually certain that we'd be bringing in several people who will create new technologies, possibly even new industries.
The problem with that is if foreign cultures were actually capable of producing people who could innovate, they wouldn't need to send people here to make money. So therefore your theory breaks down because there *are* no "best and brightest" to come here- they're all mired down by inefficient and technologically backward cultures that produce crap.
OTOH- if we could streamline and de-corrupt the process, then it's potentially possible that all H-1bs would be filled in the first few microseconds after October 1st Federal Fiscal Year rolls around- thus lending credance to the argument that we need *better* protectionism for American Workers.
In other words- makeing the process more efficient is a positive no matter which side of the "guest worker" debate you are on- it's good news both for anti-indentured-servant activists AND cheap-labor free traitors.
I was talking about *within* the industry- where TJ types, being more mathematically oriented and more logical, are more common than in the general population.
I tend to agree with you on the legality of personality testing, but this statement:
illegal are those that reveal "protected class" status (e.g. race, sex, religion, handicap etc.)
raised the question in my mind, since my disability is directly linked to my label of having Asperger's that a psychiatrist slapped on me. Now while this is a plus (I'm a computer programmer, and when the question of personality tests come up, I go ahead and take them, and if based on MBTI, then go ahead and explain how a strong INFP makes for a good detail-oriented programmer, and one who can debug programs written by the much more common INTJ and ENTJ types, thus fitting well into a team of those types), I have to wonder if I could prove discrimination against a mental illness based on the prevalance of such tests.
The only honest position would be one of agnosticism, not atheism. Atheism makes the logical jump that a lack of evidence indicates a lack of existance, which has been shown to be false time and time again. The Panda was once considered a fairy tale, as was the colecanth, as was the Vietnamese deer, as was the Komodo Dragon. All of these animals exist.
I don't believe that the moon has an inner core made of cheese, because there is no reason to believe that. Ditto for my belief that there's a God -- actually, the latter is worse, because I can't even make out what the word "God" is supposed to refer to.
The usual definition is a force, event, or being that is a creator of the universe.
From that standpoint, the existance of an orderly universe is an argument for God- not objective evidence, but an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence.
Yeah, well, how about some legitimate evidence?
What is legitimate to you is legitimate to you, what is legitimate to somebody else is legitimate to somebody else. How about actually using a term that has some *MEANING*, instead of an unexplained adjective?
Do believe all the stuff in deuteronomy about kidnap and rape being okay?
Worse than that- I actually believe those are laws for a given tribe of people, and that tribal law should be paramount over modern law, on the basis of the fact that we've screwed up just about everything we've ever tried to change.
whilst it's not something I've ever thought about very much,
Am I starting from an unreasonable presumption?
Yes, you're starting from the unreasonable presumption that things you haven't thought about simply don't exist because you haven't thought about them. How do you expect to know whether there is evidence for something (or not), until you've thought about examining the evidence (or not)?
Logic is about consistency between claims. Now a body of claims can be entirely consistent with eachother and still - as a body - be false, but ultimately scientific claims have a logical link to observable reality -- we can observe that computers work, airplanes fly, etc.
Every religion on the planet claims a logical link to observable reality- usually in the lives and acomplishments of their followers. They pick and choose the success stories- airplanes fly, SOMETIMES they crash. Computers work, but SOMETIMES they lock up. Nothing is perfect. Catholic marriages are supposed to be divorce-free; but 49% end up in annulment.
Regardless of one's worldview, we must all accept that computers work. Without machines that use hardcore logic, you and I would not be able to communicate about logic and epistemology.
And sometimes we can't- because the machines don't work in all situations, do they?
The bodies of religious claims on the other hand not only conflict with one another, but also each have only dubious logical links to measurable reality. The official stories about pivotal events are not only sketchy, but also conflict with one another.
Same with science. It just depends what you take as evidence, and how choosy you are about the meanings of objective and subjective.
The only real "leap of faith" in this particular area is following the chain of logic into an area that is no longer measurable. However, it's still the best tool for the job and better than using an arbitrary story of thousands of years ago made up in a time when people thought the earth was flat.
OTOH, the arbitrary story has lasted for thousands of years- because it was useful for those thousands of years. I can't say the same for many theories of science- partially because science is so young yet; partially because the situations where scientific theories are true are so narrowly defined that reality leaves them quickly. Back to your example of airplanes- they may not be flying much longer. The fuel needed for them is running out, and the competitors to that fuel don't provide the power neccessary to lift off say, a 747. I have no doubt we'll figure out something to replace it eventually- but even that won't have the utility, say, of the Bali Rice God, who kept rice production in balance with food needs on the island for 3000 years until modern "science" intervened and screwed things up rather spectacularily.
Utility alone isn't enough to call something "fact" in the end analysis; that's only enough to say that something is useful within the worldview that created it; if one of a million other variables comes in that is outside of the model, the model will still cease to predict reality.