You have little to no understanding of the topic of discussion, which is not surprising since you say you don't care and consider it all "mental masturbation".
Where do our desires come from? If they come from the our bodies and ultimately the universe, then that's determinism. If they come from nothingness, then you have free will. It is not a false dichotomy. There is either causality or there is not.
Interesting that you would attempt to play both sides for an imaginary middle. There is either free will or determinism. One or the other. There are no shades of gray like so many other topics. There is no middle ground. People either have a choice or they don't.
Wages are tied to economic growth. If we make decisions that slow down our growth we also slow down wage growth. In other words if we are less wealthy, we pay less.
Wages are more concretely tied to those who have jobs. Send the jobs away and wages go down. Simple supply and demand.
Why does protectionism slow down economic growth? Because of the economic theory of "Comparative Advantage", which states that everyone wins if each country specializes.
You don't have to put comparative advantage in quotes for me. I have a bachelor in business management to go with my bachelor of computer science. I took microeconomics, macroeconomices, labor economics, etc and know the concept.
There are several problems with using simplistic models like comparative advantage in arguments such as this. One which I mentioned previously is that you don't want to give away your production capability in things like manufacturing and technology. Both of those fields contribute directly to military technology and production. You give those away and you give away the ability to defend the country. We won WW2 partially based on the fact that we could out-produce our enemies. It was actually a good thing that we didn't listen to specialization ideas like this prior to that war. Germans made superior tanks. Japan made superior fighters. If we specialized and bought those items from them, we would have been toast when the war started.
Move the low paying jobs out, the jobs we don't want (migrant Mexican labor is proof that agriculture is a field desperately looking to be outsourced), while specializing in higher paying, higher quality jobs.
That's a bunch of crap. The mantra for free trade used to be that we get rid of the low-end manufacturing jobs and all take high-end jobs in IT. Instead, what you get are places like India and China deciding they don't really want low-end manufacturing jobs either and going after our high-end IT jobs instead. And of course, the companies that previously said these jobs would go to Americans are completely happy going back on their word and cutting the Americans out of the picture.
Of course this isn't easy; sound economic and fiscal policy doesn't easily translate into sound personal choices. People want things to be easy.
Interesting that you would label the free-trade policies as "sound". We didn't have these policies during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, during which time the US became an economic powerhouse. Then, the free traders started taking over in the 70s. At that time, we started running a trade deficit, wages started declining, Reagan came in and we started running a budget deficit. Thirty years later, wages are still lower on an inflation-adjusted basis than they were in 1968 and we're STILL running a trade deficit while the government is about 8.6 TRILLION dollars in debt. Free trade has been an abysmal failure except for those in the top 0.5% of US households. Everyone else has gotten screwed. That hardly sounds "sound" to me.
Get out of your ivory tower and look around. Things aren't as peachy as the economists say.
If keeping jobs in America means:
1) Lower wages, higher prices
2) Technical disadvantage
Where's the lower wages? If you force companies to keep product production here, then wages stay the same or increase. You might get higher prices, but then you might not since you're not sending products thousands of miles from where they are produced.
Further, where is the technical disadvantage? We actually keep and employ technical people here instead of places like China, whose military is not friendly with us. The instant all of our technical work is done outside the country, then we will lose any technical advantage we have.
What is the advantage of keeping jobs here?
God, that is a stupid question not worthy of an answer, let alone consideration.
What does protectionism give us, except disadvantages?
Then tell me, why do corporations push protectionism in the form of complex intellectual, patent, and copyright protections if protectionism only provides disadvantages?
No, I do not think it is wrong for the government to institute policies forcing companies to keep jobs here in America despite the potential of higher-priced goods. And no, I do not think it is wrong for the government to tell companies that dumping their cheap, overseas products on the American market is wrong. Both of those were the message of the Reagan administration when they told Toyota that we would limit foreign-built imports. Both of those were also the right message to send.
It's like the government implementing protectionist policies to raise the price of iPods so people buy Zunes instead.
That doesn't make any sense unless the iPods are made in China and the Zunes made in the US. Even so, forcing Apple to build iPods in the US may raise it's price. But, it would level the playing field, putting our manufacturers on an equal footing while still keeping Americans employed. Further, it would not force anyone to buy Zune over iPod since everyone knows the Zune is a piece of shit at any price.
By outsourcing old technologies it frees us up to do new technologies.
Take a look around. By outsourcing technology, we've provided no incentive for our students to enter the technology field. The only students that believe they have a future in technology are from India and China. We've traded our future in order to save a few bucks now.
Me:
There is the idea out there that if we all trade and become dependent upon each other, there will never be war again. That is just wishful thinking considering it hasn't been true even in the last hundred years. Germany and Great Britain were each other's largest trading partners before the start of World War I.
You: This isn't wishful thinking, this has mostly been shown.
No, it has NOT been shown. In fact, the counter example of England and Germany prior to WW1 was shown.
The last time the US took a isolationist stance we ended up with WWII.
Yes, and if the US had traded with Japan or Hitler, what would have changed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing would have changed, excluding that our trade would have strengthened their fascist regimes - much like our trade with China is strengthening them.
China and India are going to take our manufacturing whether the US wants them to or not. It's impossible to stop.
Bullshit. When Reagan limited the number of imported automobiles in the 80's, that forced the Japanese automakers to set up shop here. The free traitors called that a victory for two decades, even though that was a protectionist move.
You forget that we the people control the government and our government controls business. We just need people like you to stop making us give up our control.
No, the threat of war is not reduced by trade. That was why I brought up the fact that England and Germany were each other's largest trading partners prior to WW1. Further, if China started producing all our military hardware, then while we may hesitate to start a war with them, they wouldn't hesitate to start a war with us. Outsourcing any one sector of our economy to another country makes us vulnerable to that country.
Globalization is no more a natural phenomena than the stock market. Both are manmade constructs.
Toyota has been in the US since the eighties. And the reason they were put there were because of "protectionist" policies of Reagan that limited the number of imported automobiles.
...they can afford more interesting things, like stuff YOU make
Hahahaha... Yes, all those factory workers making $0.25 per hour that we outsourced our manufacturing jobs to in China are now going to rush out and purchase iPods and Dell Notebooks and Ford Mustangs. And now that we signed a free trade deal with Vietnam, all our manufacturers will rush out and hire those people, who will of course reciprocate by buying all of our goods, just like the Chinese.
Hey Dummy, the US has run a TRADE DEFICIT with the rest of the world for 30 YEARS! All this "free market" crap DOES NOT WORK! And the reason is precisely because of shit like outsourcing. We are taking our wealth and PISSING it away!
However, it's great to be able to code my 8-10 hours, check-in to SVN, and let my developer in India code for his 8-10 hours. It lets us make progress in a way that wouldn't be possible for a local employee.
I'm amazed at stupid statements like this. Eight hours of work is eight hours of work, regardless of what time of the day it occurs.
Nothing would be worse if this guy were in the same time zone. Of course then, you could actually have meetings with him and be able to whiteboard issues. Oh, and when he had a question regarding his work, it wouldn't take a day of emailing and waiting to get a response, making everyone's work progress faster.
If China creates the next super bomber, do we not lose when they use it to bomb us?
If Russia creates a space-based laser, do we not lose when they shoot down our satellites?
You forget that we are talking about different nations with different cultures and differing agendas. And nations are not always friendly all of the time. You can see how many nations went from loving us to hating us just over the last 5 years since 9/11 because of the policies of one man, George Bush.
There is the idea out there that if we all trade and become dependent upon each other, there will never be war again. That is just wishful thinking considering it hasn't been true even in the last hundred years. Germany and Great Britain were each other's largest trading partners before the start of World War I.
The more dependent we become upon the likes of China or India, the more vulnerable we are as a nation. We may be a super power now, but that doesn't mean we will stay so in the future. We certainly will NOT stay a super power by handing over our manufacturing to China and our technology to India.
There really is only one choice there. If you choose safety instead of freedom, then you lose both as the government quickly spirals into a police state.
I just knew that would be the response before I clicked on it. I too have dealt with Napoleonic IT departments before. That kind of knee-jerk reaction reminds me more of someone jealously guarding their turf than someone with a legitimate business interest to test patching.
Yes, there are some good reasons for letting the IT department deploy patches and not the users. But those are not good enough reasons for leaving a whole company's worth of computers on 24/7. That is a huge waste of electricity. The company may or may not care about the environment, but it certainly cares about it's bank account. A company can find a better way of patching rather than scheduling everything to run automatically at 3am.
Further, just because you get that job now, doesn't mean you'll keep it. There's an army of potential H1-B workers itching to come to America, undercut your salary, and take your job from you.
Further, that $45K, $55K, or $65K of salary is peanuts compared to the money that doctors, lawyers, and businessmen make.
So, much profession would a smart student, capable of great achievement in any field, choose? The profession with H1-Bs beating down our doors, keeping its wages low, and making it questionable whether it offers lifetime employment? Or the profession where they can make a fortune over a lifetime of guaranteed employment? Hmmm, I don't know...
From the statistics, fewer and fewer students are choosing CS. That answers my question for us. Love only goes so far.
Don't forget that doctors can work right up to retirement. But engineers over the age of 50 are constantly replaced by new engineers coming out of school.
Yeah, and how many good people who love CS instead chose another career path over the last six years because of the lack of jobs? How badly did that hurt us?
How many truly smart people who would be good at anything chose to go into law, medicine, or business school instead of CS? How badly did that hurt us?
Yeah, sure, you get a lot of talentless hacks who go into a field when salaries go up. But, you also miss some great people as well.
And no, this isn't all about greed and money. This is about providing for their families, bringing home the bacon, and affording American pie. You can't live in this country without a job.
Outsourcing started long before 1998. Manufacturing has been offshoring jobs since the 70's. It was done then to save money and it is done now to save money. However, up until the last year or two, we were the number one manufacturing country in the world. Right now, we're still number two behind China. Why didn't we lose that position twenty years ago? Why aren't we number twenty or thirty on that list? Because there are business advantages to staying and producing in the home market.
Not all jobs will be offshored. That is true in manufacturing and that's true in IT. There are significant business reasons to have a set of engineers right here, right now, who know the society for which they are designing products, who truly know the problems they are trying to fix, and know the appropriate measures with which to fix them. It doesn't matter how expensive their work is, companies will NEVER offshore these jobs. However, companies certainly can and will bolster their ranks with foreign H1-Bs.
But, bringing in H1-Bs lowers wages for everyone in IT. That's an incontrovertible truth. That's supply and demand at it's finest. Bringing in H1-Bs and lowering wages for IT workers discourages US college students from studying CS. You can certainly attempt to argue that point, but the evidence from the last six years would go against you. You want to see more US students in CS? Then, raise the wages and get rid of the H1-Bs. It's very simple.
Despite your insult on my education, you are the one who hasn't thought this through.
There will always be a need to have engineers right here doing the work. That's because the engineers who actually live here know this market and write better software for this market than someone living half a world away. The only question is: who will do the work here? Americans or foreigners? Reducing the workforce by reducing the number of H1-Bs will not make these companies leave the US. No, that'll make these companies pay more for the fewer amount of workers.
We're screwing ourselves in the long term by using H1-Bs. That shows domestic college students that CS is not a good career path, reducing the number going into CS, and increasing our reliance on foreign labor. Further, those H1-Bs then learn all about our industry and practices, making it far easier for them to return home and companies to offshore our work. The H1-B program enables offshoring.
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The illusion of free will is not the same as free will. What you are talking about is determinism.
You have little to no understanding of the topic of discussion, which is not surprising since you say you don't care and consider it all "mental masturbation".
Where do our desires come from? If they come from the our bodies and ultimately the universe, then that's determinism. If they come from nothingness, then you have free will. It is not a false dichotomy. There is either causality or there is not.
Interesting that you would attempt to play both sides for an imaginary middle. There is either free will or determinism. One or the other. There are no shades of gray like so many other topics. There is no middle ground. People either have a choice or they don't.
Funny.
Wages are tied to economic growth. If we make decisions that slow down our growth we also slow down wage growth. In other words if we are less wealthy, we pay less.
Wages are more concretely tied to those who have jobs. Send the jobs away and wages go down. Simple supply and demand.
Why does protectionism slow down economic growth? Because of the economic theory of "Comparative Advantage", which states that everyone wins if each country specializes.
You don't have to put comparative advantage in quotes for me. I have a bachelor in business management to go with my bachelor of computer science. I took microeconomics, macroeconomices, labor economics, etc and know the concept.
There are several problems with using simplistic models like comparative advantage in arguments such as this. One which I mentioned previously is that you don't want to give away your production capability in things like manufacturing and technology. Both of those fields contribute directly to military technology and production. You give those away and you give away the ability to defend the country. We won WW2 partially based on the fact that we could out-produce our enemies. It was actually a good thing that we didn't listen to specialization ideas like this prior to that war. Germans made superior tanks. Japan made superior fighters. If we specialized and bought those items from them, we would have been toast when the war started.
Move the low paying jobs out, the jobs we don't want (migrant Mexican labor is proof that agriculture is a field desperately looking to be outsourced), while specializing in higher paying, higher quality jobs.
That's a bunch of crap. The mantra for free trade used to be that we get rid of the low-end manufacturing jobs and all take high-end jobs in IT. Instead, what you get are places like India and China deciding they don't really want low-end manufacturing jobs either and going after our high-end IT jobs instead. And of course, the companies that previously said these jobs would go to Americans are completely happy going back on their word and cutting the Americans out of the picture.
Of course this isn't easy; sound economic and fiscal policy doesn't easily translate into sound personal choices. People want things to be easy.
Interesting that you would label the free-trade policies as "sound". We didn't have these policies during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, during which time the US became an economic powerhouse. Then, the free traders started taking over in the 70s. At that time, we started running a trade deficit, wages started declining, Reagan came in and we started running a budget deficit. Thirty years later, wages are still lower on an inflation-adjusted basis than they were in 1968 and we're STILL running a trade deficit while the government is about 8.6 TRILLION dollars in debt. Free trade has been an abysmal failure except for those in the top 0.5% of US households. Everyone else has gotten screwed. That hardly sounds "sound" to me.
Get out of your ivory tower and look around. Things aren't as peachy as the economists say.
If keeping jobs in America means:
1) Lower wages, higher prices
2) Technical disadvantage
Where's the lower wages? If you force companies to keep product production here, then wages stay the same or increase. You might get higher prices, but then you might not since you're not sending products thousands of miles from where they are produced.
Further, where is the technical disadvantage? We actually keep and employ technical people here instead of places like China, whose military is not friendly with us. The instant all of our technical work is done outside the country, then we will lose any technical advantage we have.
What is the advantage of keeping jobs here?
God, that is a stupid question not worthy of an answer, let alone consideration.
What does protectionism give us, except disadvantages?
Then tell me, why do corporations push protectionism in the form of complex intellectual, patent, and copyright protections if protectionism only provides disadvantages?
No, I do not think it is wrong for the government to institute policies forcing companies to keep jobs here in America despite the potential of higher-priced goods. And no, I do not think it is wrong for the government to tell companies that dumping their cheap, overseas products on the American market is wrong. Both of those were the message of the Reagan administration when they told Toyota that we would limit foreign-built imports. Both of those were also the right message to send.
It's like the government implementing protectionist policies to raise the price of iPods so people buy Zunes instead.
That doesn't make any sense unless the iPods are made in China and the Zunes made in the US. Even so, forcing Apple to build iPods in the US may raise it's price. But, it would level the playing field, putting our manufacturers on an equal footing while still keeping Americans employed. Further, it would not force anyone to buy Zune over iPod since everyone knows the Zune is a piece of shit at any price.
By outsourcing old technologies it frees us up to do new technologies.
Take a look around. By outsourcing technology, we've provided no incentive for our students to enter the technology field. The only students that believe they have a future in technology are from India and China. We've traded our future in order to save a few bucks now.
Me: There is the idea out there that if we all trade and become dependent upon each other, there will never be war again. That is just wishful thinking considering it hasn't been true even in the last hundred years. Germany and Great Britain were each other's largest trading partners before the start of World War I.
You: This isn't wishful thinking, this has mostly been shown. No, it has NOT been shown. In fact, the counter example of England and Germany prior to WW1 was shown.
The last time the US took a isolationist stance we ended up with WWII.
Yes, and if the US had traded with Japan or Hitler, what would have changed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing would have changed, excluding that our trade would have strengthened their fascist regimes - much like our trade with China is strengthening them.
China and India are going to take our manufacturing whether the US wants them to or not. It's impossible to stop.
Bullshit. When Reagan limited the number of imported automobiles in the 80's, that forced the Japanese automakers to set up shop here. The free traitors called that a victory for two decades, even though that was a protectionist move.
You forget that we the people control the government and our government controls business. We just need people like you to stop making us give up our control.
No, the threat of war is not reduced by trade. That was why I brought up the fact that England and Germany were each other's largest trading partners prior to WW1. Further, if China started producing all our military hardware, then while we may hesitate to start a war with them, they wouldn't hesitate to start a war with us. Outsourcing any one sector of our economy to another country makes us vulnerable to that country.
Globalization is no more a natural phenomena than the stock market. Both are manmade constructs.
Toyota has been in the US since the eighties. And the reason they were put there were because of "protectionist" policies of Reagan that limited the number of imported automobiles.
...they can afford more interesting things, like stuff YOU make
Hahahaha... Yes, all those factory workers making $0.25 per hour that we outsourced our manufacturing jobs to in China are now going to rush out and purchase iPods and Dell Notebooks and Ford Mustangs. And now that we signed a free trade deal with Vietnam, all our manufacturers will rush out and hire those people, who will of course reciprocate by buying all of our goods, just like the Chinese.
Hey Dummy, the US has run a TRADE DEFICIT with the rest of the world for 30 YEARS! All this "free market" crap DOES NOT WORK! And the reason is precisely because of shit like outsourcing. We are taking our wealth and PISSING it away!
However, it's great to be able to code my 8-10 hours, check-in to SVN, and let my developer in India code for his 8-10 hours. It lets us make progress in a way that wouldn't be possible for a local employee.
I'm amazed at stupid statements like this. Eight hours of work is eight hours of work, regardless of what time of the day it occurs.
Nothing would be worse if this guy were in the same time zone. Of course then, you could actually have meetings with him and be able to whiteboard issues. Oh, and when he had a question regarding his work, it wouldn't take a day of emailing and waiting to get a response, making everyone's work progress faster.
If China creates the next super bomber, do we not lose when they use it to bomb us?
If Russia creates a space-based laser, do we not lose when they shoot down our satellites?
You forget that we are talking about different nations with different cultures and differing agendas. And nations are not always friendly all of the time. You can see how many nations went from loving us to hating us just over the last 5 years since 9/11 because of the policies of one man, George Bush.
There is the idea out there that if we all trade and become dependent upon each other, there will never be war again. That is just wishful thinking considering it hasn't been true even in the last hundred years. Germany and Great Britain were each other's largest trading partners before the start of World War I.
The more dependent we become upon the likes of China or India, the more vulnerable we are as a nation. We may be a super power now, but that doesn't mean we will stay so in the future. We certainly will NOT stay a super power by handing over our manufacturing to China and our technology to India.
It's not a zero-sum game... we might, JUST MIGHT even out the worlds wealth distribution a little.
Oh my god. I can't believe you actually said these two things just sentences apart from each other.
If you are taking from us to give to them then it IS a zero-sum game!
There really is only one choice there. If you choose safety instead of freedom, then you lose both as the government quickly spirals into a police state.
I just knew that would be the response before I clicked on it. I too have dealt with Napoleonic IT departments before. That kind of knee-jerk reaction reminds me more of someone jealously guarding their turf than someone with a legitimate business interest to test patching.
Yes, there are some good reasons for letting the IT department deploy patches and not the users. But those are not good enough reasons for leaving a whole company's worth of computers on 24/7. That is a huge waste of electricity. The company may or may not care about the environment, but it certainly cares about it's bank account. A company can find a better way of patching rather than scheduling everything to run automatically at 3am.
Yes, $45K if you can land a job.
Further, just because you get that job now, doesn't mean you'll keep it. There's an army of potential H1-B workers itching to come to America, undercut your salary, and take your job from you.
Further, that $45K, $55K, or $65K of salary is peanuts compared to the money that doctors, lawyers, and businessmen make.
So, much profession would a smart student, capable of great achievement in any field, choose? The profession with H1-Bs beating down our doors, keeping its wages low, and making it questionable whether it offers lifetime employment? Or the profession where they can make a fortune over a lifetime of guaranteed employment? Hmmm, I don't know...
From the statistics, fewer and fewer students are choosing CS. That answers my question for us. Love only goes so far.
I know it's hard to pay attention when you're stupid. Just go back a few posts or two. I've already outlined it.
Don't forget that doctors can work right up to retirement. But engineers over the age of 50 are constantly replaced by new engineers coming out of school.
No, they follow supply and demand, sunshine. Reduce the number of workers, and companies will pay more.
Yeah, and how many good people who love CS instead chose another career path over the last six years because of the lack of jobs? How badly did that hurt us?
How many truly smart people who would be good at anything chose to go into law, medicine, or business school instead of CS? How badly did that hurt us?
Yeah, sure, you get a lot of talentless hacks who go into a field when salaries go up. But, you also miss some great people as well.
And no, this isn't all about greed and money. This is about providing for their families, bringing home the bacon, and affording American pie. You can't live in this country without a job.
Outsourcing started long before 1998. Manufacturing has been offshoring jobs since the 70's. It was done then to save money and it is done now to save money. However, up until the last year or two, we were the number one manufacturing country in the world. Right now, we're still number two behind China. Why didn't we lose that position twenty years ago? Why aren't we number twenty or thirty on that list? Because there are business advantages to staying and producing in the home market.
Not all jobs will be offshored. That is true in manufacturing and that's true in IT. There are significant business reasons to have a set of engineers right here, right now, who know the society for which they are designing products, who truly know the problems they are trying to fix, and know the appropriate measures with which to fix them. It doesn't matter how expensive their work is, companies will NEVER offshore these jobs. However, companies certainly can and will bolster their ranks with foreign H1-Bs.
But, bringing in H1-Bs lowers wages for everyone in IT. That's an incontrovertible truth. That's supply and demand at it's finest. Bringing in H1-Bs and lowering wages for IT workers discourages US college students from studying CS. You can certainly attempt to argue that point, but the evidence from the last six years would go against you. You want to see more US students in CS? Then, raise the wages and get rid of the H1-Bs. It's very simple.
Yeah, 4 different people said the exact same thing!
No, the Orwellian system would rather keep the populace uneducated. Yes, that means your comment is the Orwellian one.
Despite your insult on my education, you are the one who hasn't thought this through.
There will always be a need to have engineers right here doing the work. That's because the engineers who actually live here know this market and write better software for this market than someone living half a world away. The only question is: who will do the work here? Americans or foreigners? Reducing the workforce by reducing the number of H1-Bs will not make these companies leave the US. No, that'll make these companies pay more for the fewer amount of workers.
We're screwing ourselves in the long term by using H1-Bs. That shows domestic college students that CS is not a good career path, reducing the number going into CS, and increasing our reliance on foreign labor. Further, those H1-Bs then learn all about our industry and practices, making it far easier for them to return home and companies to offshore our work. The H1-B program enables offshoring.