China covers the entire range of 20-50N, covering the entire range from Hawaii (18N) to north of Hokkaido (46N). Baikonur is at 46 degrees, which is less than three degrees north of Shenyang and south of Harbin. Florida is roughly at 25N.
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
I'm sure the astronauts currently living on the station are quite thankful for this as the United States does not have another vehicle and they would all be dead if Russia could not reach them now that the shuttle has been grounded for a year. Should China and/or Japan enter into this endeavor from a launch vehicle point of view, being accessible is hardly a detriment to the utility of the station.
Clearly, the utility of being able to reach the station from Asia for existing missions far outweighs the utility of using the station as a departure point for missions that have yet to be defined. Besides, the station design is that of a scientific laboratory, not of an orbital drydock. Having already ruled out refueling, can you imagine constructing a transport vehicle in the middle of that tangle of trusses and solar panels? If both construction and refueling are out of the picture, what's left? A snack bar? Seriously, that thing isn't even designed to handle an espresso machine.
There is nothing absurd about setting documentation standards. Half of all policies and procedures sound silly until you imagine an organization running without them. Suddenly your legislation turns up on perfumed pink antique laid with MS Script type instead of Times Roman on white bond.
"Perhaps because we've seen over a million jobs lost just after granting a roughly equal number of H1-B visas in one industry followed by our trade deficit doubling in less than two years. Yeah, that might be it."
That was my statement that has gotten you in all in a tussle. I'm not blaming immigrants in that statement. In case you haven't noticed, the H1-B issue was rushed through congress and DOUBLED for the sake of diluting our IT labor market on the fallacy that we had too many computer programmers. THAT IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That we have allowed our trade deficit to double IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That we have six million people unemployed IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That all of these are in a very tight causal relationship IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. Addressing those political issues does not mean someone hates foreigners.
Look, My family runs primary schools in rural India. I've lived in fscking rural Africa where "public housing" means dropping off a pile of bricks. I've gone on humanitarian missions to the middle of Mexico where people live houses made of dirt and straw. I've clocked more miles of world travel than most presidents. I'm well aware of the plight of people a HELL of a lot worse off than software engineers in Bangalore and frankly it's almost sickening to hear people going on about the plight of the top 0.00001% of Indians who have standards of living higher than most Americans--often greater in certain terms than American software engineers (do you have full-time live-in servants?). This is misplaced pity. It's the other 99.9999% of the population in that country that people should be worried about.
Christ, I GET IT, OKAY? DO YOU? You know the phrase "think globally, act locally?" Well, the people I see locally are one day away from homelessness and have advanced degrees. That I am concerned more about those people at the moment does not mean I don't give a shit, or worse that I hate, Indians or any other nationality of people. It just means that I don't like seeing my own people starve. What the hell is wrong with that?
On the one hand, in a VERY abstract sense it is not the fault of someone in India who is offered a work visa. GREATLY on the other hand is that the government of India has lobbied our government to favor their country in terms of visas and has heavily promoted outsourcing with the express intention of taking existing jobs on a 1:1 ratio--not creating new jobs. They have literally said "we can replace that employee" not "we can produce that product better. They are taking even the most run-of-the-mill office jobs down to clerical work and answering the phone. There IS a human side in the United States that the Indian government is utterly conscious of--THEY JUST DON'T CARE.
How is it that we should hold ourselves to ethical standards, but we must hold India ethically blind? That reduces every argument about India to nothing more than a juvenile tautology. The government of India, the business owners in India and the front companies in the United States that proxy for them are NOT without blame. They know EXACTLY what they are doing every bit as the Wal*Mart that comes to town with the express intention fo driving all of the local business owners into poverty.
The question was posed "why are Americans so paranoid." That is the answer to the question--without making any value judgment on the fact, it remains a fact that our net jobs lost stand in striking parallel to our doubled trade deficit. Every billion in increased trade deficit represents roughly 30,000 jobs. Do the math. 6 million jobs lost. Trade deficit increases by $200B. Coincidence? Most of us don't seem to think so.
From that point, yes, people are drawing the rather obvious conclusion that jobs have disappeared and reading the corporate press releases, we know where they are going. It may be a small piece of the economy, but for those who relied on it for their livings, it was a pretty damned important piece.
Personall, I *have* sent my opinion on this to my house representative--who, incidentally, is strongly on the side of labor--and both of my Senators. The fact that anyone does that or not is not an excuse to stop the debate. People are rightfully pissed off. If you're not, fine, but when someone asks the question "why are all of you so pissed off and paranoid" don't expect people to roll over and play dead. That there does seem to be that expectation is rather telling.
It's pretty dreadful. It has gotten to the point where slamming Americans for being anti-India (which is really just anti-outsourcing, it wouldn't matter if it was Burkina Faso) gets modded up and posts that do nothing but quote and reference the economic statistics to back up the negative effects get modded "troll" or "flamebait."
This all appears to be a recent backlash to the "hey, my job just went to India and now I'm losing my house" (I already lost mine, thanks) where now every justification for why outsourcing is great and dandy someone counter the factual economic effects that are documented every day. Do a quick check of the articles in the last few weeks. There's an odd increase in the number of pro-India fluff pieces. It's grass-roots public relations. Take it at face value.
Perhaps because we've seen over a million jobs lost just after granting a roughly equal number of H1-B visas in one industry followed by our trade deficit doubling in less than two years. Yeah, that might be it.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean no one is out to get you.
Perhaps that is why nerds are viewed as out of touch with reality.
You don't have to be obsessed with personalities, but being aware of what they are doing is essential to understanding what the hell is going on in the world.
Of the 200 million adult americans, 14 million have advanced degrees, two million of those are over 65 years old. Limiting to those with a master's or higher effectively cuts out 94% of the population. I'd say that makes it "hard." Even including bachelor's degrees brings it to 44 million, which cuts out 78% of the adult population. The term "educated elite" wasn't coined without reason...
Pre-arranged employment is a great idea, but try getting that for moving across your own country before thinking you'll be able to do it to another country. I spent six months trying to get responses from the east coast while living in Los Angeles. People just don't want to talk to you unless you're already settled--often they will say exactly that in the vacancy announcements. I imagine if the immigration office was added to the equation, you'd have a snowball's chance in hell. In the end, I just blindly moved.
If you just want to "explore," go be a language tutor in Prague or something. That's one industry where getting the necessary sponsorship is comparatively easy because it is in the job description.
I have a bachelor's degree. I have over a decade of work experience in my field, which is on the list. I am fluent in English I have a basic grasp of French
I scored 69 points. Take away my French (not a bad idea as it is so minimal) and I'd get the minimum passing score.
That's pretty tight. The financial figure was from memory when I looked into it a year ago, but I ran the test today. The bottom line is that without pre-arranged employment, it's a pretty tight squeeze.
First, the executive branch is only ceremonially elected by the populace--as should be ABUNDANTLY clear after the last showpiece we ran. Responding to individuals is not exactly to be expected as it would interfere with the duties of the job. There are something like 170 million voters. You ever see "Bruce Almighty?" Yeah, "god's inbox." Roughly equivalent.
Second, Senators represent state governments, not the populace, directly anyway.
Now, if your House rep is ignoring you, it's time to slap him/her around. Listening and responding to constituents IS their job. Show up at their office if you have to. It's all in the job description.
As for acid. It's not very atomic. It certainly isn't consistent. It isn't isolated, but it certainly is durable. Of all the components, they sure nailed the one most contingent on the rest.
But, that's the problem. Because the whole pile of shit DOES fail the ACID test, horribly so, dismantling it is impossible.
The only solution at this point, barring a complete retooling of the entire economy, is damage control.
I just added up mine and it's 26% and that's in the District of Columbia.
We _ARE_ getting ripped off, no illusions about it. You know, we spend a TRILLION dollars per year on Social Security and Medicare. That's $3,389 for every breathing human being in the country and something ridiculous like 45 million have _zero_ health coverage. That doesn't mean "no private insurance" either. That means "no private insurance AND the government won't pay their medical bills if they end up in the hospital."
One year, when I got laid off, I missed the deadline to continue my $400/month insurance by three days. Figuring, I'm 29 at the time, not a HUGE risk, I'll shop around. I ended up on that third day in cardiac care to the tune of $27,000--and completely ineligible for any government subsidy because my previous year's income was too high. No matter that I had NO income at the time and that in the prior two years my tax bill was, ironically, $27,000, the government paid ZERO. I had been paying JUST TO MEDICARE over $4,000 per year in taxes.
Of course, the hospitals have to provide service regardless of ability to pay, so in the end it comes off their taxes and they make up the difference by raising their charges into the stratosphere--you know, the $400/month premium for a single 29yo male with no "pre-existing conditions" who has never spent a single day in any hospital as anything but a visitor.
The United States also has arrested in excess of one million illegal aliens--and as high as 1.7 million--every single year since 1980. Between 1991-2002, we expelled 13.5 million illegal aliens. In the last twenty years, we have deported more illegal aliens than Australia has citizens today and since 1971, as many as the current population of Canada, or, say, California. On top of that, we admit an equal number of legal immigrants.
Oh, we're being SO miserly with immigration only dealing with an annual immigrant inflow equal to the entire population of Alberta. If we didn't deport all the illegal immigrants since 1990, we would have had total immigration exceeding the current population of Canada....and yes, we've been counting since 1820. The total is now over 68 million, not counting the ones we sent back.
Then again, the LDS do a pretty handy job of playing Gestapo with most of the population of Utah already, so not much is changing here. They also have the most comprehensive genealogical database on any population in the world. If that's being considered... oy vey, kommt hier das Rassenamt.
...and yet, I knew a guy from Christchurch who waltzed straight-away into the states, got a job as a fscking CAR SALESMAN for godssake, oh we've really got a shortage of those, god help us if we don't import them from friggen Waitangi. Got his permanent residency. I seem to recall it had something to do with being a religious refugee. Oh, then got thrown out for buggering a 14 year-old. I can forgive him for that indiscretion as the New Zealand government doesn't mind as much if you bugger small boys, but still. Didn't follow that old "when in Rome" bit, I guess.
Perhaps when he said we were "anally retentive" there was some alternate Kiwi definition we're not in on...
But yes, New Zealand is a beautiful place...especially if you like buggery...or sheep... or both... or rugby, which is sort of them same thing, but with snappy uniforms.
No, not 3.1% total, 3.1% per year (a very rough average for the last 20 years). To get what a wage at some point in time raise the annual rate by the number of years.
WAGE * (1.031^N)
A more precise calculation can be made here:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
For a real eye-opener, in 1974 the California minimum wage was $2.00 per hour. In 2003 dollars, that's $8.29. The current CA minimum wage is $6.75--a loss in purchasing power of $3,203 per year in 2003 dollars from 1974. That's equivalent to 474 hours, or 11.85 weeks at the current wage! That is to say, to have the same standard of living as a minimum wage earner working 2080 hours per year in 1974, you would have to work an additional 474 hours to live that well today.
Play with it a little bit. 1968: $1.65 minimum = $8.72 in 2003-- a loss of $4,097.60 in purchasing power--roughly 607 hours more work at the current wage to reach the same potential as the bottom of the barrel in 1968. Even between 2002 and 2003, minimum wage earners lost $312 in purchasing power. That's how quickly this adds up. What is insidious about this isn't the recent trend, it is that once you go earlier than 1980, the standard of living of the bottom of the barrel was significantly better. If you start pulling back the figures to compare, say, the 1990's to 1980, for a great while the standard of living was 20-30% less at minimum wage than in 1980. If you compare, say, 1974 to 1957, minimum wage earners were actually 15% ahead and 25% ahead of 1952--that is 15-25% ahead after adjusting for inflation--they had that much more buying power.
The point is, a reversal has happened and we are driving the standard of living down for the poorest people. We spent decades IMPROVING the lot of the poor, now over the last 25 years we've been actively making life WORSE for them. In my book, that ain't cool, not the least because the minimum wage is the baseline for all other wages. When the minimum wage earners get the shaft, eventually my COLA gets smaller and eventually I get the shaft, thus it's not a bad idea to make sure the guy washing the dishes is getting a fair shake.
...and yes, I was paid better than average for a high school student. However, although a pretty modest job, I did have to purchase and dry clean my own suits, provide my own transportation and do a little more than ask "you want fries with that?" so a little more gravy on my potatoes was appropriate. At the end of the day, probably equivalent to a pizza delivery boy earning tips.
...and that is exactly how the questions should be posed.
The knee-jerk reaction seems to be "oh my god, the information is out there and shouldn't be." Well, that's long since gone and there's little chance of going back. It took a murder trial and a huge amount of PR to get the DMV records locked up. HIPPA is another step. The information has perfectly reasonable uses and even data mining is reasonable--in limited cases. If there is a person or group presenting a real threat, sure, a means of nailing them might be acceptable, whether it is terrorists or Enron executives. But unless people start forming the question in that way, instead of just coming off like luddite lunatics who are hell-bent on "being off the grid" or whatever, the ears of those in the political offices with the power to reign this in will never listen.
Funny, America is going through the same thing. I made $15/hour in high school video taping weddings. That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years of inflation, which has averaged 3.1%, would make that job worth $23/hour today. How many high school students today are making $23/hour doing anything, much less something that simple? I've seen jobs at otherwise respected institutions paying CS engineers with Master's degrees $18.50 per hour today. It's definitely happening on both sides. Seems people's memories don't go back further than last week on this.
People also don't seem to notice what has happened to the balance of trade. In 1980, it was 11 billion in surplus. In 1990, it was seventy billion in deficit. In 2000, it was 355 billion in deficit--an increase of more than 500% from 1990. Today, it is half a trillion in deficit. Nah, move along. Nothing to see here.
Under NAFTA, you get a work permit, but you don't get permanent residency. Your work must be pre-arranged and it must be temporary. You may not be self-employed. It is granted for one year increments only and will trigger an investigation if it appears you are trying to permanently reside in Canada without actually immigrating.
NAFTA is NOT an immigration wild card for Americans.
No THEY'RE NOT! For Canada, if you have a bachelor's degree, the most desirable age (21-49) the maximum employment history and the highest english fluency -- you will get 67 points, which is the absolute lowest you may score to be granted a Visa. If you are deficient, even slightly in any of these, say, you're aged 50, or your english is merely "good", YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN A RESIDENCE VISA.
Besides, between 1991-2002 we admitted 11,223,467 as permanent residents. That's four times the population of New Zealand, 60% the population of Australia and 1/3 the population of Canada. 11.2 Million new residents in 11 years. Sounds like we're really being difficult about it.
Slashdot Mirror
China covers the entire range of 20-50N, covering the entire range from Hawaii (18N) to north of Hokkaido (46N). Baikonur is at 46 degrees, which is less than three degrees north of Shenyang and south of Harbin. Florida is roughly at 25N.
Look at a map lately?
"And did you know that to accomodate the Russians, the space station is in an orbit that makes it almost useless as a jumping off point to anywhere?"
I'm sure the astronauts currently living on the station are quite thankful for this as the United States does not have another vehicle and they would all be dead if Russia could not reach them now that the shuttle has been grounded for a year. Should China and/or Japan enter into this endeavor from a launch vehicle point of view, being accessible is hardly a detriment to the utility of the station.
Clearly, the utility of being able to reach the station from Asia for existing missions far outweighs the utility of using the station as a departure point for missions that have yet to be defined. Besides, the station design is that of a scientific laboratory, not of an orbital drydock. Having already ruled out refueling, can you imagine constructing a transport vehicle in the middle of that tangle of trusses and solar panels? If both construction and refueling are out of the picture, what's left? A snack bar? Seriously, that thing isn't even designed to handle an espresso machine.
There is nothing absurd about setting documentation standards. Half of all policies and procedures sound silly until you imagine an organization running without them. Suddenly your legislation turns up on perfumed pink antique laid with MS Script type instead of Times Roman on white bond.
"Perhaps because we've seen over a million jobs lost just after granting a roughly equal number of H1-B visas in one industry followed by our trade deficit doubling in less than two years. Yeah, that might be it."
That was my statement that has gotten you in all in a tussle. I'm not blaming immigrants in that statement. In case you haven't noticed, the H1-B issue was rushed through congress and DOUBLED for the sake of diluting our IT labor market on the fallacy that we had too many computer programmers. THAT IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That we have allowed our trade deficit to double IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That we have six million people unemployed IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. That all of these are in a very tight causal relationship IS A POLITICAL ISSUE. Addressing those political issues does not mean someone hates foreigners.
Look, My family runs primary schools in rural India. I've lived in fscking rural Africa where "public housing" means dropping off a pile of bricks. I've gone on humanitarian missions to the middle of Mexico where people live houses made of dirt and straw. I've clocked more miles of world travel than most presidents. I'm well aware of the plight of people a HELL of a lot worse off than software engineers in Bangalore and frankly it's almost sickening to hear people going on about the plight of the top 0.00001% of Indians who have standards of living higher than most Americans--often greater in certain terms than American software engineers (do you have full-time live-in servants?). This is misplaced pity. It's the other 99.9999% of the population in that country that people should be worried about.
Christ, I GET IT, OKAY? DO YOU? You know the phrase "think globally, act locally?" Well, the people I see locally are one day away from homelessness and have advanced degrees. That I am concerned more about those people at the moment does not mean I don't give a shit, or worse that I hate, Indians or any other nationality of people. It just means that I don't like seeing my own people starve. What the hell is wrong with that?
On the one hand, in a VERY abstract sense it is not the fault of someone in India who is offered a work visa. GREATLY on the other hand is that the government of India has lobbied our government to favor their country in terms of visas and has heavily promoted outsourcing with the express intention of taking existing jobs on a 1:1 ratio--not creating new jobs. They have literally said "we can replace that employee" not "we can produce that product better. They are taking even the most run-of-the-mill office jobs down to clerical work and answering the phone. There IS a human side in the United States that the Indian government is utterly conscious of--THEY JUST DON'T CARE.
How is it that we should hold ourselves to ethical standards, but we must hold India ethically blind? That reduces every argument about India to nothing more than a juvenile tautology. The government of India, the business owners in India and the front companies in the United States that proxy for them are NOT without blame. They know EXACTLY what they are doing every bit as the Wal*Mart that comes to town with the express intention fo driving all of the local business owners into poverty.
They're called Patriots, didn't you get the memo?
Why do you hate America?
*slap*
Oh, how nice it would be to be kidding. Yikes.
The question was posed "why are Americans so paranoid." That is the answer to the question--without making any value judgment on the fact, it remains a fact that our net jobs lost stand in striking parallel to our doubled trade deficit. Every billion in increased trade deficit represents roughly 30,000 jobs. Do the math. 6 million jobs lost. Trade deficit increases by $200B. Coincidence? Most of us don't seem to think so.
From that point, yes, people are drawing the rather obvious conclusion that jobs have disappeared and reading the corporate press releases, we know where they are going. It may be a small piece of the economy, but for those who relied on it for their livings, it was a pretty damned important piece.
Personall, I *have* sent my opinion on this to my house representative--who, incidentally, is strongly on the side of labor--and both of my Senators. The fact that anyone does that or not is not an excuse to stop the debate. People are rightfully pissed off. If you're not, fine, but when someone asks the question "why are all of you so pissed off and paranoid" don't expect people to roll over and play dead. That there does seem to be that expectation is rather telling.
Much like Western Civilization, it remains a good idea. It's the execution of the concept that sucks.
It's pretty dreadful. It has gotten to the point where slamming Americans for being anti-India (which is really just anti-outsourcing, it wouldn't matter if it was Burkina Faso) gets modded up and posts that do nothing but quote and reference the economic statistics to back up the negative effects get modded "troll" or "flamebait."
This all appears to be a recent backlash to the "hey, my job just went to India and now I'm losing my house" (I already lost mine, thanks) where now every justification for why outsourcing is great and dandy someone counter the factual economic effects that are documented every day. Do a quick check of the articles in the last few weeks. There's an odd increase in the number of pro-India fluff pieces. It's grass-roots public relations. Take it at face value.
Perhaps because we've seen over a million jobs lost just after granting a roughly equal number of H1-B visas in one industry followed by our trade deficit doubling in less than two years. Yeah, that might be it.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean no one is out to get you.
Perhaps that is why nerds are viewed as out of touch with reality.
You don't have to be obsessed with personalities, but being aware of what they are doing is essential to understanding what the hell is going on in the world.
Of the 200 million adult americans, 14 million have advanced degrees, two million of those are over 65 years old. Limiting to those with a master's or higher effectively cuts out 94% of the population. I'd say that makes it "hard." Even including bachelor's degrees brings it to 44 million, which cuts out 78% of the adult population. The term "educated elite" wasn't coined without reason...
Refugee status helps.
Pre-arranged employment is a great idea, but try getting that for moving across your own country before thinking you'll be able to do it to another country. I spent six months trying to get responses from the east coast while living in Los Angeles. People just don't want to talk to you unless you're already settled--often they will say exactly that in the vacancy announcements. I imagine if the immigration office was added to the equation, you'd have a snowball's chance in hell. In the end, I just blindly moved.
If you just want to "explore," go be a language tutor in Prague or something. That's one industry where getting the necessary sponsorship is comparatively easy because it is in the job description.
I did the calculation.
I have a bachelor's degree.
I have over a decade of work experience in my field, which is on the list.
I am fluent in English
I have a basic grasp of French
I scored 69 points. Take away my French (not a bad idea as it is so minimal) and I'd get the minimum passing score.
That's pretty tight. The financial figure was from memory when I looked into it a year ago, but I ran the test today. The bottom line is that without pre-arranged employment, it's a pretty tight squeeze.
First, the executive branch is only ceremonially elected by the populace--as should be ABUNDANTLY clear after the last showpiece we ran. Responding to individuals is not exactly to be expected as it would interfere with the duties of the job. There are something like 170 million voters. You ever see "Bruce Almighty?" Yeah, "god's inbox." Roughly equivalent.
Second, Senators represent state governments, not the populace, directly anyway.
Now, if your House rep is ignoring you, it's time to slap him/her around. Listening and responding to constituents IS their job. Show up at their office if you have to. It's all in the job description.
As for acid. It's not very atomic. It certainly isn't consistent. It isn't isolated, but it certainly is durable. Of all the components, they sure nailed the one most contingent on the rest.
But, that's the problem. Because the whole pile of shit DOES fail the ACID test, horribly so, dismantling it is impossible.
The only solution at this point, barring a complete retooling of the entire economy, is damage control.
I just added up mine and it's 26% and that's in the District of Columbia.
We _ARE_ getting ripped off, no illusions about it. You know, we spend a TRILLION dollars per year on Social Security and Medicare. That's $3,389 for every breathing human being in the country and something ridiculous like 45 million have _zero_ health coverage. That doesn't mean "no private insurance" either. That means "no private insurance AND the government won't pay their medical bills if they end up in the hospital."
One year, when I got laid off, I missed the deadline to continue my $400/month insurance by three days. Figuring, I'm 29 at the time, not a HUGE risk, I'll shop around. I ended up on that third day in cardiac care to the tune of $27,000--and completely ineligible for any government subsidy because my previous year's income was too high. No matter that I had NO income at the time and that in the prior two years my tax bill was, ironically, $27,000, the government paid ZERO. I had been paying JUST TO MEDICARE over $4,000 per year in taxes.
Of course, the hospitals have to provide service regardless of ability to pay, so in the end it comes off their taxes and they make up the difference by raising their charges into the stratosphere--you know, the $400/month premium for a single 29yo male with no "pre-existing conditions" who has never spent a single day in any hospital as anything but a visitor.
Yeah. Ripped off. BIG time.
The United States also has arrested in excess of one million illegal aliens--and as high as 1.7 million--every single year since 1980. Between 1991-2002, we expelled 13.5 million illegal aliens. In the last twenty years, we have deported more illegal aliens than Australia has citizens today and since 1971, as many as the current population of Canada, or, say, California. On top of that, we admit an equal number of legal immigrants.
...and yes, we've been counting since 1820. The total is now over 68 million, not counting the ones we sent back.
Oh, we're being SO miserly with immigration only dealing with an annual immigrant inflow equal to the entire population of Alberta. If we didn't deport all the illegal immigrants since 1990, we would have had total immigration exceeding the current population of Canada.
You've obviously never gone through customs at Heathrow or been sprayed with insecticide by New Zealand and/or Australia.
Then again, the LDS do a pretty handy job of playing Gestapo with most of the population of Utah already, so not much is changing here. They also have the most comprehensive genealogical database on any population in the world. If that's being considered... oy vey, kommt hier das Rassenamt.
...and yet, I knew a guy from Christchurch who waltzed straight-away into the states, got a job as a fscking CAR SALESMAN for godssake, oh we've really got a shortage of those, god help us if we don't import them from friggen Waitangi. Got his permanent residency. I seem to recall it had something to do with being a religious refugee. Oh, then got thrown out for buggering a 14 year-old. I can forgive him for that indiscretion as the New Zealand government doesn't mind as much if you bugger small boys, but still. Didn't follow that old "when in Rome" bit, I guess.
Perhaps when he said we were "anally retentive" there was some alternate Kiwi definition we're not in on...
But yes, New Zealand is a beautiful place...especially if you like buggery...or sheep... or both... or rugby, which is sort of them same thing, but with snappy uniforms.
WAGE * (1.031^N)
A more precise calculation can be made here:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
For a real eye-opener, in 1974 the California minimum wage was $2.00 per hour. In 2003 dollars, that's $8.29. The current CA minimum wage is $6.75--a loss in purchasing power of $3,203 per year in 2003 dollars from 1974. That's equivalent to 474 hours, or 11.85 weeks at the current wage! That is to say, to have the same standard of living as a minimum wage earner working 2080 hours per year in 1974, you would have to work an additional 474 hours to live that well today.
Play with it a little bit. 1968: $1.65 minimum = $8.72 in 2003-- a loss of $4,097.60 in purchasing power--roughly 607 hours more work at the current wage to reach the same potential as the bottom of the barrel in 1968. Even between 2002 and 2003, minimum wage earners lost $312 in purchasing power. That's how quickly this adds up. What is insidious about this isn't the recent trend, it is that once you go earlier than 1980, the standard of living of the bottom of the barrel was significantly better. If you start pulling back the figures to compare, say, the 1990's to 1980, for a great while the standard of living was 20-30% less at minimum wage than in 1980. If you compare, say, 1974 to 1957, minimum wage earners were actually 15% ahead and 25% ahead of 1952--that is 15-25% ahead after adjusting for inflation--they had that much more buying power.
The point is, a reversal has happened and we are driving the standard of living down for the poorest people. We spent decades IMPROVING the lot of the poor, now over the last 25 years we've been actively making life WORSE for them. In my book, that ain't cool, not the least because the minimum wage is the baseline for all other wages. When the minimum wage earners get the shaft, eventually my COLA gets smaller and eventually I get the shaft, thus it's not a bad idea to make sure the guy washing the dishes is getting a fair shake.
Especially considering that commonwealth citizens have almost instantaneous permanent residency in any other member state. Whoopee.
...and that is exactly how the questions should be posed.
The knee-jerk reaction seems to be "oh my god, the information is out there and shouldn't be." Well, that's long since gone and there's little chance of going back. It took a murder trial and a huge amount of PR to get the DMV records locked up. HIPPA is another step. The information has perfectly reasonable uses and even data mining is reasonable--in limited cases. If there is a person or group presenting a real threat, sure, a means of nailing them might be acceptable, whether it is terrorists or Enron executives. But unless people start forming the question in that way, instead of just coming off like luddite lunatics who are hell-bent on "being off the grid" or whatever, the ears of those in the political offices with the power to reign this in will never listen.
Funny, America is going through the same thing. I made $15/hour in high school video taping weddings. That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years of inflation, which has averaged 3.1%, would make that job worth $23/hour today. How many high school students today are making $23/hour doing anything, much less something that simple? I've seen jobs at otherwise respected institutions paying CS engineers with Master's degrees $18.50 per hour today. It's definitely happening on both sides. Seems people's memories don't go back further than last week on this.
People also don't seem to notice what has happened to the balance of trade. In 1980, it was 11 billion in surplus. In 1990, it was seventy billion in deficit. In 2000, it was 355 billion in deficit--an increase of more than 500% from 1990. Today, it is half a trillion in deficit. Nah, move along. Nothing to see here.
Under NAFTA, you get a work permit, but you don't get permanent residency. Your work must be pre-arranged and it must be temporary. You may not be self-employed. It is granted for one year increments only and will trigger an investigation if it appears you are trying to permanently reside in Canada without actually immigrating.
NAFTA is NOT an immigration wild card for Americans.
No THEY'RE NOT! For Canada, if you have a bachelor's degree, the most desirable age (21-49) the maximum employment history and the highest english fluency -- you will get 67 points, which is the absolute lowest you may score to be granted a Visa. If you are deficient, even slightly in any of these, say, you're aged 50, or your english is merely "good", YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN A RESIDENCE VISA.
Besides, between 1991-2002 we admitted 11,223,467 as permanent residents. That's four times the population of New Zealand, 60% the population of Australia and 1/3 the population of Canada. 11.2 Million new residents in 11 years. Sounds like we're really being difficult about it.