Ask the labor unions to explain how they can reconcile their push for high wages and benefits which are completely non-competitive with foreign workers, and then have the audacity to complain about outsourcing
How about asking CEO's to explain why they outsourced to lower labor costs while consuming those savings in labor costs through increased executive compensation? Sometimes far outdoing the savings through their own bloated compensation packages!
Aren't CEO's the hired help to run a company? Why are boards not asking these questions of their CEO's? Why have shareholders rolled over and accepted take-over of their companies by a bunch of executive employees?
The greatest accomplishment of the elite ruling class is that they got the masses to believe that elite goals are the goals of the nation. What really scares the crap out of me is your follow-up statement that, "It's just going to happen." because this aborts any gestating solutions to the problem.
The core of the problem is that a solution for 10,000 people who may march in protest to a policy is not going to get the same attention as a single phone call from a prominent donor to his congressman.
When was the last time you could call your congressman or have him over for dinner to listen to your problems?
Ask yourself, "Did I really want free trade as defined by elites?" If your answer is yes, then you have come to love big brother.
It would be interesting to watch the movie with a negative filter on. You would only see the sex and violence. Kind of like the ending to Cinema Paradisio when the guy finds cuts of all the kisses he could never see as a kid.
Ethanol is NOT a net loss as a fuel. 15-20 years ago it was, but modern ethanol plants are energy positive (a little bit).
Really? Has this taken into account soil depletion and erosion? Do you have any sources because this contradicts Richard Heinberg in "The Party's Over" which has done a credible job comparing alternatives.
The only technology that appears to have a chance at extending our fossil fuel driven age of technology and science is thermal depolymerization (TDP). That's only because we can actually recapture a lot of energy currently going into recycling and garbage dumps. TDP has the potential to turn retired dumps into new sources of energy. Of course, the limit is TDP'ing all of our waste.
The problem with renewables is that you're either energy negative (not an actual energy source) or you can't bottle it up (hydro, solar, wind, etc) and use it to power an airplane capable of carrying commercial cargo.
Yes, I know about hydrogen, so now inform me of a hydrogen powered engine applicable to commercial flight.
I don't even follow the main story links anymore, but look for a google cache post in the discussion section. Wouldn't it be easier to simply offer a google cache link in the story itself?
Would slashdot have the bandwidth to carry a cache of the pages they link to for at least the first 24hours that a story is out?
Yes, because we need to limit this discussion to the scope of personal problems in order to draw attention away from political ones lest we find a solution on that level.
We can't have people questioning their elites with respect to the country's direction.
The Soviet Union and former Communist block countries had a very high level of education but there was no money in it, so you found people with PhD's driving taxis and such. In the US however, the individual is responsible for financing higher education, so imagine when you graduate college and find that your ROI isn't what you thought it would be.
Flipping burgers is 21st century's debtor's prison.
The FBI says it will give the movie, music, and software industries a digital anti-price-fixing seal.
Joined by execs from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Software and Information Industry Association, and the Entertainment Software Association, FBI officials said during a Thursday press conference that the seal not only will deter corporations engaging in price-fixing, but that it would aid in the prosecution of price-fixing rings by ensuring a particular work's status having a free market price could not be disputed.
The seal would enable the music and movie industries to deliver on their stated belief that education is as important as enforcement in combating collusion much as it is in fighting piracy.
This is a pretty rediculous use of statistics [referring to your "real family income" graph].
First, the graph includes 89-93 which were Bush years as post Reagan years. Second, it fails to include 96-99 which were Clinton years. Third, the period of 81-89 saw the creation of a massive public debt which has been slowing the economy ever since. Fourth, income gap between the lowest to highest quintile was largest during 81-89, meaning that most of this debt went to finance the rich getting richer. Fifth, the period of 73-81 started with the OPEC oil embargo which sent a shockwave of adaptation through the US economy. Finally, this graph is directly at odds with data from the BLS and OEA which shows median wages corrected for inflation actually being stagnant throughout 81-89. Real wage growth didn't wake up until the late 90's.
Please obey dogma leash laws in the future.
The fact that Microsoft has gained the dominant share of the OS market with mediocre products, has made many people rich including the richest man on earth and succesfully neutralized antitrust efforts would kind of hint that they have a clue.
If their lawyers were not occasionally defeated in pursuit of Microsoft's interests, it would show that they're not doing all they can. Perhaps this is one of those cases or perhaps they will win and further expand their scope of legal action.
A better use of your frustration against "the world as it is" would be to expend effort into making "the world as it should be".
they'd actually comply with the entirely reasonable demands that they cease their war against China.
The whole point of being in Manchuria was to have access to natural resources which could sustain Japanese industrialization. The US had made its MO explicitly clear to the Japanese when Perry's black ships sailed into Edo Bay. The message was, "Force or the threat of force gets you places."
Complience with demands associated with the oil emargo was at odds with Japanese ambitions to continue economic growth. It would have given them access to the US oil market at the price of losing access to an entire array of resources available all around the pacific rim. It would also have left them at the whim of US foreign policy with respect to other trading partners in the region.
The Japanese, in pursuit of an autonomous destiny, did what any nation presented with resource barriers does. Note the recent invasion of Iraq.
In the end the victor writes history and this seems to explain your account of Pearl Harbor today. You can remain a flag waving nationalist or you can come to terms with reality. It's your choice.
Problem is, it's increasingly difficult to see where these new opportunities are going to open up.
There are numerous areas where American ingenuity is creating jobs for Americans (or Mexicans) in America. This list is far from exhaustive but gives you a good start in thinking about your future profession:
Fashion trends are straining hair stylist skills. New highly skilled and educated hair stylists and barbers will be needed to maintain Americans' cutting edge looks.
New trends in architecture are completely reshaping the American home. Factory and building site automation cannot keep up with this innovation curve. Only skills and education can fill this widening gap which is creating highly paid jobs in construction. Further, construction subsidies in many locations, such as Phoenix for example, are fueling this wage inflating frenzy.
An ever increasing volume of ultra-confounding legislation is pouring out of state assemblies and congress every day. A new breed of highly educated attorney will be needed to keep the country running. Even as current legal professionals fill these roles, they leave highly paying run of the mill type legal positions vacant.
While Indians may be getting lucrative jobs to program for embedded car systems, it is still up to the American mechanic to deal with these vehicles on American roads. Skills in de-compiling, re-coding and re-compiling machine code in today's advanced automobiles has completely revamped the wage structure of this profession
American health care costs are skyrocketing. The government and corporations are handing over these costs to consumers at an unheard of rate. This has unlocked health care spending from its typically managed state and made desperate people's money available to this growing market. Everyone knows that doctors make a lot of money but there are many health care professionals that also earn a lot. The nation's nursing shortage can only be solved by the market dynamic of rising wages. Soon, Americans may be able to earn money hand over fist simply by taking care of themselves.
The proliferation of patents and copyrights as well as their indefinite extensions and a new corporate vigor in enforcing these over individuals has added another strain on the already beleaguered legal industry.
Demands for faster fast food have created service positions that can only be handled by those highly skilled in food service arts and educated in nutritional science. Today's fast food chains are buckling under new demands and restructuring their low skilled service labor force as never before. Today, these restaurants are often staffed by graduates of prestigious technical colleges and this trend is only just beginning to pick up steam.
Corporate restructuring and state government budget crises have created a new industry in job placement. Today's placement firms cannot get by with yesterday's skills. A higher level of innovation is required.
New corporate accounting standards have created the need for professions with liberal arts backgrounds. Professional accountants that are not constrained by yesterday's rules. Many existing accountants, comptrollers and finance professionals will need to re-educated and re-skill themselves just to keep up with their changing industry. This also creates a lot of new potential for high paying positions.
Tax cuts for the wealthy have created luxury spending as never before. These items of ultra-status need care and maintenance. But unlike the gilded age of the past, where status symbols included yachts and palacial summer escapes, today's super rich are buying up super computer clusters and advanced world domination gear. These super tech toys require highly skilled and educated minions for support creating a vast new spring of high wage employment.
With recent progress by the federal government to open up national wildlife refuges to resource extraction, and "save our forest" legislation restarting the US timber industry, many high skilled jobs in both of these industries will come online.
Pan-Am did not even exist in 2001 let alone make Kubrick's space station shuttle a reality. What we're left with today are airlines that are mostly hub-and-spoke with a small fraction of point-to-point service. It's pretty evident that hub-and-spoke is here to stay. Just because somebody makes a plane that can fly directly between Atlanta Georgia and Tokyo Japan, doesn't mean I want to be on it for 16 hours.
It's interesting that The Economist, a magazine that just recently had an issue devoted to "The end of the Oil Age", would go and propose widespread use of technologies that are only made possible by plentiful access to ultra-cheap oil.
It is ridiculous that these high energy density, no memory effect, zero recharge time and very long self-discharge time devices are only being targetted to provide 6-8 hours of PDA run time. An Apple Newton can run on the order of a week with present 2000mAh NiMH batteries as an example.
As much as progress may benefit from free markets, this is an area where it is being confined to increments just slightly better than currently available products in order to derive maximum profit. This is a revolution that is being constrained to an evolutionary time table.
Several interesting things to note.
progress is not coming from present day battery manufacturers.
why don't these devices have self-discharge times equal to fuel shelf life?
why is all talk focused on fuel being the run-time limiting factor? why can't fuel be in excess and say the solution be the limit? so a recharge would mean putting more tap water in.
at this early stage of the game, nobody wants to show their cards. i'm sure serious volume customers see this data and potential projections in lots more detail.
Innovation in robotics is not happening in other countries mainly because none have the fear of gaijin as do the Japanese. Lack of a labor shortage leads to a lack in robotics innovation. The financial pathway to building robots does not exist if service labor can be imported ala Mexicans in America or manufacturing labor can be readily exported ala Chinese.
Technology alone can not solve social problems. Therefore, robotics can not create some 10 hour work week utopia for the average human.
"All wealth is power, so power must infallibly draw wealth to it by some means or another." Edmunde Burke, 1780 as found in Kevin Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy"
How does replacing an American who earns $7.50/hour with benefits with an illegal immigrant who earns $5/hour whithout benefits create demand in either the job market or consumer market?
It's not that immigrants don't need homes, food, transportation, etc. it's just that at their earnings level, they can afford less of it than Americans. This translates to decreased consumer demand.
Job market demand is not affected by this switch in the short term but job market supply is immediately increased. State and federal governments lose out because a person who was previously contributing tax revenue is now on unemployment. Even if the illegal immigrant pays taxes (sales and so on), they cannot possibly make up for the lost job because they make less!
Also, jobs filled by illegal immigrants are not newly created jobs. Nobody says, "we'll build a brand new factory for illegal immigrants." Well, maybe Tyson does, but my point is that these are jobs which were previously occupied by Americans. Hence, your "by filling jobs, you create jobs" statement does not apply.
Illegal immigrants cost Americans jobs. They depress wages and hence keep inflation in check. They decrease labor cost and labor safety without immediately having an impact upon product prices. They erode America's economy and security.
How is it possible to be patriotic and at the same time feel that fellow Americans should earn less at the expense of exploited illegals?
What you are missing is that illegal immigrants are also depressing wages in higher skilled or higher educated job markets by forcing Americans to retrain and educate themselves (those that have the means to do so). So now that return on your education investment is harder to come by because more people are climbing the job ladder and creating more supply in those job markets.
The aforementioned example of trash collectors is a good one. It shows that although these jobs are not desirable in themselves, they are jobs that Americans want because of their compensation. It may not suit people's professional fulfillment, but it certainly suits people's economic fulfillment. Illegal immigrants prevent that from happening much to the delight of employers.
Slashdot Mirror
They have fixed it. The results you see are the solution. It may not be your solution, but it works for those in power.
How about asking CEO's to explain why they outsourced to lower labor costs while consuming those savings in labor costs through increased executive compensation? Sometimes far outdoing the savings through their own bloated compensation packages!
Aren't CEO's the hired help to run a company? Why are boards not asking these questions of their CEO's? Why have shareholders rolled over and accepted take-over of their companies by a bunch of executive employees?
The greatest accomplishment of the elite ruling class is that they got the masses to believe that elite goals are the goals of the nation. What really scares the crap out of me is your follow-up statement that, "It's just going to happen." because this aborts any gestating solutions to the problem.
The core of the problem is that a solution for 10,000 people who may march in protest to a policy is not going to get the same attention as a single phone call from a prominent donor to his congressman.
When was the last time you could call your congressman or have him over for dinner to listen to your problems?
Ask yourself, "Did I really want free trade as defined by elites?" If your answer is yes, then you have come to love big brother.
It would be interesting to watch the movie with a negative filter on. You would only see the sex and violence. Kind of like the ending to Cinema Paradisio when the guy finds cuts of all the kisses he could never see as a kid.
The only technology that appears to have a chance at extending our fossil fuel driven age of technology and science is thermal depolymerization (TDP). That's only because we can actually recapture a lot of energy currently going into recycling and garbage dumps. TDP has the potential to turn retired dumps into new sources of energy. Of course, the limit is TDP'ing all of our waste.
The problem with renewables is that you're either energy negative (not an actual energy source) or you can't bottle it up (hydro, solar, wind, etc) and use it to power an airplane capable of carrying commercial cargo.
Yes, I know about hydrogen, so now inform me of a hydrogen powered engine applicable to commercial flight.
Would slashdot have the bandwidth to carry a cache of the pages they link to for at least the first 24hours that a story is out?
They're only threatening to sue. It's the difference between french farmers being disgruntled and actually pouring manure on street intersections.
We can't have people questioning their elites with respect to the country's direction.
You'd make a great pet.
There are entire villages in India going DEEP on to the guru level right now. Ever heard of the India Institute of Technology?
Just googled for this and here's what it turned up.
Thanks for playing, please try again.
Flipping burgers is 21st century's debtor's prison.
Where would those spaces be oh wise one?
I thought of working for an unemployment office but it appears that states are also outsourcing services. D'oh.
Back to bellyaching.
Joined by execs from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Software and Information Industry Association, and the Entertainment Software Association, FBI officials said during a Thursday press conference that the seal not only will deter corporations engaging in price-fixing, but that it would aid in the prosecution of price-fixing rings by ensuring a particular work's status having a free market price could not be disputed.
The seal would enable the music and movie industries to deliver on their stated belief that education is as important as enforcement in combating collusion much as it is in fighting piracy.
see anti-piracy article
This is a pretty rediculous use of statistics [referring to your "real family income" graph]. First, the graph includes 89-93 which were Bush years as post Reagan years. Second, it fails to include 96-99 which were Clinton years. Third, the period of 81-89 saw the creation of a massive public debt which has been slowing the economy ever since. Fourth, income gap between the lowest to highest quintile was largest during 81-89, meaning that most of this debt went to finance the rich getting richer. Fifth, the period of 73-81 started with the OPEC oil embargo which sent a shockwave of adaptation through the US economy. Finally, this graph is directly at odds with data from the BLS and OEA which shows median wages corrected for inflation actually being stagnant throughout 81-89. Real wage growth didn't wake up until the late 90's. Please obey dogma leash laws in the future.
If their lawyers were not occasionally defeated in pursuit of Microsoft's interests, it would show that they're not doing all they can. Perhaps this is one of those cases or perhaps they will win and further expand their scope of legal action.
A better use of your frustration against "the world as it is" would be to expend effort into making "the world as it should be".
Why hasn't this post been mod'd up yet? It may be a repeat but it sure is damn insightful and on topic.
The whole point of being in Manchuria was to have access to natural resources which could sustain Japanese industrialization. The US had made its MO explicitly clear to the Japanese when Perry's black ships sailed into Edo Bay. The message was, "Force or the threat of force gets you places."
Complience with demands associated with the oil emargo was at odds with Japanese ambitions to continue economic growth. It would have given them access to the US oil market at the price of losing access to an entire array of resources available all around the pacific rim. It would also have left them at the whim of US foreign policy with respect to other trading partners in the region.
The Japanese, in pursuit of an autonomous destiny, did what any nation presented with resource barriers does. Note the recent invasion of Iraq.
In the end the victor writes history and this seems to explain your account of Pearl Harbor today. You can remain a flag waving nationalist or you can come to terms with reality. It's your choice.
There are numerous areas where American ingenuity is creating jobs for Americans (or Mexicans) in America. This list is far from exhaustive but gives you a good start in thinking about your future profession:
It's interesting that The Economist, a magazine that just recently had an issue devoted to "The end of the Oil Age", would go and propose widespread use of technologies that are only made possible by plentiful access to ultra-cheap oil.
Isn't life about the big picture?
As much as progress may benefit from free markets, this is an area where it is being confined to increments just slightly better than currently available products in order to derive maximum profit. This is a revolution that is being constrained to an evolutionary time table.
Several interesting things to note.
here's the most detail i could find.
Technology alone can not solve social problems. Therefore, robotics can not create some 10 hour work week utopia for the average human.
"All wealth is power, so power must infallibly draw wealth to it by some means or another." Edmunde Burke, 1780 as found in Kevin Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy"
It's not that immigrants don't need homes, food, transportation, etc. it's just that at their earnings level, they can afford less of it than Americans. This translates to decreased consumer demand.
Job market demand is not affected by this switch in the short term but job market supply is immediately increased. State and federal governments lose out because a person who was previously contributing tax revenue is now on unemployment. Even if the illegal immigrant pays taxes (sales and so on), they cannot possibly make up for the lost job because they make less!
Also, jobs filled by illegal immigrants are not newly created jobs. Nobody says, "we'll build a brand new factory for illegal immigrants." Well, maybe Tyson does, but my point is that these are jobs which were previously occupied by Americans. Hence, your "by filling jobs, you create jobs" statement does not apply.
Illegal immigrants cost Americans jobs. They depress wages and hence keep inflation in check. They decrease labor cost and labor safety without immediately having an impact upon product prices. They erode America's economy and security.
How is it possible to be patriotic and at the same time feel that fellow Americans should earn less at the expense of exploited illegals?
The aforementioned example of trash collectors is a good one. It shows that although these jobs are not desirable in themselves, they are jobs that Americans want because of their compensation. It may not suit people's professional fulfillment, but it certainly suits people's economic fulfillment. Illegal immigrants prevent that from happening much to the delight of employers.
Is it not?