Except no coup has been staged. Yanukovych was kicked out by a similarly elected branch of government using the procedure of impeachment with a majority of 73% voting to oust him.
This was an entirely democratic act against a single individual who granted himself more powers than the people wanted him to have and no longer was representing the people. That's how it promotes freedom - by giving the majority what they want.
So I'll turn the question around on you, how does allowing Yanukovych to stay in power amongst the will of the majority and allowing Russia to lock down Crimea holding guns to people's heads, taking over the airways and spreading propaganda promote freedom in your mind?
This has been brewing since 2004 when Russia poisoned Yanukovych's competitor in the race for president and the Ukrainian people voted for a Western facing government back then. Russia has been meddling and forcing Ukraine against it's will back towards it since then, and you're surprised that after 10 years of that the people finally take matters into their own hands and the parliament votes in favour of the will of the people and you call that a coup? What fucking planet do you live on, Planet Putin by any chance?
That's great, but whilst Putin IS in charge of Russia, the Ukrainians want fuck all to do with it, so stop insisting they should just sit under Putin and put up with him.
Sure bigotry is commonplace, but there are different levels of it in different societies and some have a clearly much higher level of social acceptability of it than others. In terms of homosexuality as an example whilst much of the West has been moving towards more equality such as legalising gay marriage some states like Uganda and Russia have been going backwards and making some things related to homosexuality illegal so there is a disparity and some cultures most definitely can be called out as more bigoted than others.
"but at this rate Russia has a better track record than you, one mistake over a multi-decade long feud with a neighboring country of whom have had a complicated past to say the least is almost understandable in comparison."
That's cutting the truth a bit thin, Georgia? Litvinenko? Russia doesn't exactly have a rosy past decade to point to either. Not to mention Russia's feud with the Ukraine has been entirely it's own doing, such as poisoning Yushchenko, Yanukovych's competitor way back in 2004 when Russia tried to defy the democratic will of the Ukrainian people even back then.
For 10 years Ukrainians have been trying to break away from Russia and for 10 years Putin has been doing everything he can including assassination attempts through to death squads to install Yanukovych in power and keep him in power as a puppet, just like Lukashenko in Belarus. Putin needs to accept no matter how long he tries to keep the game going, he has already lost.
Normally I like to not try and blame the people for the actions of their leadership, but frankly I've lost all faith in the ability for the majority of the Russian populace to engage in any kind of rational thinking at this point. They are part the problem.
A couple of years back they were out in protest against Putin rigging the vote to put himself back in power and I thought hey, finally, the Russian people are taking responsibility for their state, and trying to deal with their dictator.
Now two years on, an Olympic games, a bit of propaganda, creating a hate target in homosexuals to blame societies ills on (just as Hitler did with the Jews etc.), an attempted annexation of Crimea, and the resurrection of Stalin as a popular deity and suddenly Putin has 70% approval ratings again.
So whilst there are clearly a good number of Russians that still want him out, at this point they're a minority by quite a stretch. It really is the Russian people that are the problem - you might as well just alias the nation as Dumbfuckland now, because it really is a nation mostly full of dumb fucks given the approval they're now giving Putin based on his fascist, dictatorial policies. I thought it was bad enough that my nation, the UK is full of people so easily swayed by populism, bigotry, and general ignorance peddled by the media, but the idiocy of many of my countrymen appears to pale compared to those in Russia. At least whilst our population recently argued against striking Syria by a decent margin. In contrast, the Russians positively support annexing the whole of the Ukraine, not just Crimea with about 59% support on latest polls.
I wouldn't put your faith in the Russian people, they mostly seem to be an extremely fickle, easily swayed bunch and Putin controls the media, so swaying them his way appears trivial.
Oh don't be so stupid. I'm no fan of the NSA's surveillance either but pretending that has any bearing this is complete nonsense.
About the only connection is that Putin's Russia is a warning about how bad it can get, so yes the NSA and CIA need to be reigned in somewhat, but the US isn't exactly as bad as Russia where the KGB, sorry, "FSB" as they prefer to be called nowadays, have their man in charge and basically run the entire show. At least there's still some semblance of separation between US intelligence agencies, the courts and the people who run the country still. In Russia it's all one big completely KGB orchestrated machine. The very fact the CIA had to try and meddle with the senate in itself shows they don't have that level of control over them yet, in Putin's Russia they'd have just had Feinstein and co. arrested on some trumped up charges and that would be the end of it.
So yes, whilst the US has lost it's right to preach on some issues (i.e. bitching at China for hacking) this is at least one area where it's hardly reached Putin-esque levels of dictatorship.
Stalking and being harassed even if that were happening on a widespread scale to all critics (it's not, people are still free to criticise - that's what you're doing for fucks sake and I doubt anyone is stalking or harassing you) is even then still a far cry from being beaten senseless and chucked in jail, or just outright assassinated with a bullet to the head by an assailant that never gets found (because they don't want to find him).
I don't think he's referring simply to rate of change to humanity, you're showing a clear lack of understanding of evolutionary timescales in your original post.
At the rate climate change is occuring we're seeing a mass extinction event. This is because whilst yes, nature can quite happily have a thriving ecosystem in warmer climates, it takes time for that to evolve - millions of years in fact. What we're seeing here is nature being forced to adapt in as little as 100 years, it cannot do that because there just aren't physically enough generations of most species to adapt in an evolutionary manner in that timeframe.
As species go extinct and biodiversity decreases (it wont increase again in our lifetime, or that of many tens of thousands of years of our ancestors) you see a chain effect - the loss of one specific pollinator means the loss of a plant, the loss of a plant means the loss of a couple of herbivores, the loss of a couple of herbivores may mean the loss of tens of carnivores for example.
When biodiversity decreases it also becomes less able to adapt so you see a positive feedback loop of ever declining amounts of species as they become less varies to out-evolve disease etc.
Long story short the end result is also less resources for us - if plants can't get pollinated and the amount of potential food species also decreases then we all suffer.
Actually I don't think that's even right, the US ratified the international covenant on human rights which is the legal implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 12 states:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Now I don't know what procedures the US has in place for dealing with breaches of these provisions, but certainly if nothing else the US has agreed to bind itself legally by these articles as a result of it's ratification of the respective covenants. The issue seems to arise from the fact that breaches aren't enforced however, so is it a problem of enforcement? although the constitution says "You can't do this" does it specify at all what should happen if you do do whatever it is the constitution says not to? How does the constitution cater for enforcement?
Either way, legally they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, how that's enforced is a different question.
There's bound to be some hit, but the hit will be so utterly negligible that it's not enough to care. You shouldn't let it be a concern because it's too small to matter.
Hate to break it to you but just because a majority of Crimea are ethnic Russian still doesn't mean they want to be part of Russia. 58% are ethnic Russians but many of those still identify themselves as being of Ukrainian nationality despite their ethnic origin.
If the referendum was free and fair it's almost certainly the case that Crimea would not vote to be part of Russia, in fact, a poll was done on exactly this before this shit even kicked off as it has now:
Even in Crimea, the most Russian leaning part of Ukraine support for joining Russia was at only 41% - not enough to win a referendum.
If you can't see why Russia has shut down movement in and out of Crimea, if you can't see why it's denying access to international observers, if you can't see why it has plastered billboards in pro-Russian propaganda and seized radio and TV transmitters, and if you can't see why it installed a pro-Russian administration in Crimea kicking out the previously democratically elected one then I probably can't help you understand what's going on here, but I figure it's worth trying. Russia is annexing Crimea, not because the people there want it but because Putin both wants it and wants to send a message to any other nation considering breaking away from his control that it wont be painless.
If the people of Crimea genuinely wanted to break away from the Ukraine do you not think a referendum with international observers would be sufficient? Why the propaganda campaign? why the hijacking of TV and radio to shut out information from the rest of the country? why the presence of Russian troops and the isolation of Ukrainian military to their bases so they can't communicate with the populace? Why is all this necessary if Crimeans would vote yes for independence anyway?
Russia has been playing a game in Ukraine for some time that would make even the CIA look like amateurs - even during the protests we had protesters being dragged off by kidnappings that could only be the work of state-sponsored organisation and beaten and left in the forest to die with one or two surviving against the odds to state that the people who did it spoke with actual Russian accents (yes, you've got it, Russia had death squads in the Ukraine during the protests). You had eyewitness accounts from both protesters and the police that snipers were shooting at both police AND protesters to try and provoke a bigger confrontation between the two.
So wake up and smell the coffee, Russia has been playing games for years in the Ukraine, those games are finally just coming to the light and there's no way the referendum on joining Russia can be considered the slightest bit free and fair whilst Russian troops and propaganda are controlling every bit of information in and out of the territory right now. Even if the people made up their own mind, how would you possibly prove the Russian troops aren't just changing the ballots? with no international observers confirming the fairness and legitimacy of the vote you might as well just make up the results right now and have done with it - it'll be no more or no less legitimate.
If the Democrats sent the military into Texas and blocked all communication and access in and out, took over the TV and radio transmitters there and plastered Democrat propaganda on every billboard whilst making up things about the Republicans, beat up pro-Republican journalists and so forth and then went on to win Texas with a landslide would you really, genuinely call that an acceptable outcome? a fair election? a legitimate election? That's exactly what's happening in Crimea.
My point was nothing more than a suggestion that a simple increase of supply inherently results in a reduction of pricing in the labour market is false.
If it were true then wages would be on a permanent downward spiral for nothing other than the simple fact of natural population growth even without immigration. It's not though, real terms wages have been increasing consistently for decades, despite the fact that the size of the labour market has also been growing, that in itself is direct evidence that the labour market does not follow a simplistic view of supply and demand as the original poster was claiming as there is no way to reconcile this lack of correlation with the idea that it does.
You don't have to start a war when you send troops in. We should've put a stop to this in Georgia, we should've deployed vast amounts of equipment and troops and rolled them right up to Russia's border with Georgia to make a point way back in 2008. We should do the same now.
We should be matching their deployment in Crimea with our own in Ukraine along Russia's borders and give them a far more simple option - we'll back off and withdraw, if you back off and withdraw. Right now just letting them take Crimea without question means they'll keep on doing it, just as they saw they got away with it in Georgia.
Even if not the Ukraine, we should be bordering troops around the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast with an explicit threat that annexation of Crimea will be met by Western annexation of Kaliningrad Oblast.
Right now Putin has nothing to love because our counter-threats are pathetic. Make it clear that for every bit of territory he gains through annexation he will lose some somewhere else and it's a much more clear cut choice for him.
We don't have to start a shooting war, we just have to match his non-shooting tactics in kind such that in the same way nuclear weapons and the MAD principle make nuclear war meaningless, threatening to match each Russian annexation with a Western annexation would make annexation pointless.
It doesn't take long before all those small territories we just let him have start to stack up as much larger land masses. Let him take Crimea and Eastern Ukraine will be next.
"If America DOES go in either we open up yet another front in our war, and this time against someone a little more sophisticated then the Taliban."
How much more sophisticated? Russia got it's ass handed to them by them in the late 80s, and collapsed shortly after. Their military then went through over 15 years of disrepair and lack of training until they invaded Georgia in 2008 and got their ass handed to them more badly than expected by an inferior opponent (they lost 40 armoured vehicles and 70 soldiers against the Georgians in 9 days), whilst Georgia suffered more that was largely because of air strikes which they didn't have such effective defence against - the Russians were completely outplayed in ground to ground fighting.
They've undergone some modernisation since then but it's a long slow process and still have an extremely long way to go.
Their strength of numbers alone makes them a dangerous threat, but Russia's military is not the toe-to-toe competitor it could've been at the height of the USSR. It's second rate at best, and whilst the US would suffer sizeable losses, Russia would still come off far far worse. Even relatively small Britain and France were spending more each per year on their military than Russia up until about 2008 and both have had consistently more active and effective training programs in place especially with international partners.
Even China's military is better funded, better equipped, and better trained nowadays. The residual threat of the USSR is almost entirely from nukes nowadays rather than anything else. In conventional warfare they'd suffer a slaughter - one that'd most definitely come at a heavy cost to the West, but a slaughter all the same.
I'm not convinced Russia would try it though, China would love nothing more than a Russia distracted fighting the West to annex parts of Eastern Russia for itself - especially where Russian-Chinese border disputes already exist. Even China's leaders are now calling on Russia not to annex Crimea suggesting that if push came to shove, even China would now probably be more likely to ally with the West than Russia. Worse, even Russia's closest allies like Belarus are showing signs they're uneasy with Putin's actions and if a puppet dictatorship like Belarus shows concerns you know Putin is pretty fucking isolated. About the only backing Putin has is from Assad as a thank you for preventing Western bombs toppling his regime there.
No, you should pursue training in parallel, but you can't train everything - sometimes other countries have exceptional talents in some areas that the US simply does not, when that's the case you want to get those guys over, possibly even to be the ones that do the training in the first place.
I'm absolutely 100% for training, but it's not a magical cure that prevents other countries getting ahead with some particular talent, it's something that has to be done alongside being able to bring over the best of other nations.
"The wages of tech workers are less than pre-recession levels and are increasing at a rate lower than inflation."
Sure but as I say, tech workers is a pretty broad term - it includes both development and support, and whilst development salaries have increased, support salaries have decreased. That's why I was intrigued to know what specific IT profession has seen it's pay drop by over a half.
"The big boys are definitely hiring the most H1B visas. Whether or not that is driving down their wages is debatable."
Sure but as I said, if you look through the raw data (available at the US DoL) those firms are also the ones that are paying far more people above the national average salary for the professions in question than below. The salary information is included in the H1-B visa data.
I've had a further look though and I think you're right in your later assertion - it's companies like WiPro that seem to be abusing the H1-B system to pay below average. Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple etc. are not - they're raising the average with H1-B but like you say, it looks like some of the other players are taking the piss a bit.
Perhaps the solution therefore is to crack down on such companies, or simply agree to an increase in H1-B cap that MS etc. are asking for on the agreement that no one can be paid less than the national average salary for the profession? This would allow the likes of Microsoft et. al. to keep using H1-B properly (because they're already paying above the average for nearly all the H1-B positions they use) whilst making it expensive for the likes of exploitative outsourcing firms like WiPro to take the piss with it?
You seem to think that every developer can do every other developer's job. That is simply false.
There are developers doing certain areas of brand new research pursuing ideas that no one is and who can hence develop things that no one else can.
It's possible that such a person has such a talent outside America that no one inside America has, it's possible that Apple wants this skill for a future product before anyone else gets it so is willing to pay for it.
The reason you're failing to grasp the situation is because you think every developer is interchangeable, they're not. Your argument is akin to the idea that the greatest basketball player in the world can be replaced by some fat extremely unfit guy at your local bar.
"Why would Apple go through the expensive and time-consuming process to "hire" an H1-B, when there's a guy within five miles of their HQ who has better skills and will work for less?"
Why are you so certain? Are you saying no one outside of America could possibly have a skillset that no American has, or that no American that's not already getting paid more has? You really believe that someone from outside the US couldn't possibly be better than an American for a particular role?
"Because the H1-B process can be gamed and manipulated, and the local guy can't. The end.
P.S. All of those numbers are pure horseshit."
So you are claiming fraud? That the Department of Labor is illegally manipulating it's records on this issue? Do you have proof of this rather extraordinary claim?
You say it like this is a new thing though. It's not.
For reference, look at the distaste of kids of some Jewish immigrants falling in love with and/or marrying non-Jews and how that has ended in a similar manner in decades gone by.
The problem has always been there, but fringe cases of parents carrying out honour killings are just that - fringe cases that make headlines. I agree it's sick, I agree it's a problem, I agree it needs to be dealt with, but it's not new.
It's not a coincidence that parts of America are a little Irish, Italian, or French - it's just they've been that way so long people have learnt to accept it. Hell, I swear St. Patricks day is more vibrantly celebrated in parts of America than it is much of Ireland nowadays even but do people complain about those damn Irish refusing to fit in? Italian-American gangster killings were as much an export of the ideas of the Italian mafia to the US in the 30s as Pakistani honour killings are today. Different eras, different problems, but same underlying issue - integration takes time.
"Apple is paying a 50% premium in wages? On what planet does that make sense when they can recruit worldwide?"
Sometimes it's worth paying for the best. That same site will show you many others paid the same as or not far off of that.
Instead of jumping to the conclusion that it must be some conspiracy theory involving fraudulent record keeping have you stopped to think that maybe it's simply just that you're wrong and weren't aware of the salaries being paid to some H1-B hires? Just a thought.
None of which changes the fact that you can't simplistically apply a basic interpretation of supply and demand to the jobs market and expect it to be accurate.
But it's a competitive world - countries don't sit in isolation now for years at a time. If your country applies restrictions to stop companies getting what they want now, another country will not and they'll take those technological advances from you. Whilst you're spending a number of years training up those people the other more dynamic country will have built a whole new market and guess where those trainees you developed will fuck off to when they're done training? The country that's already developed that technology that you put off developing whilst you spent a few years training those folks up.
End result, you're out of a new market, you're out of your new talent, and you're all in your country economically worse off as a result, all because you didn't want to let any foreigners in and missed out on the income of a whole new market. Is that really worth it?
If you didn't understand my original post I'm not sure you're really smart enough, but I'll try and explain it you in perhaps more simplistic terms.
Mr Apple seller has 10 customers, his sale price has reached $1 per Apple after reaching equilibrium under the laws of supply and demand. He sells 1 Apple to each customer a week and so makes $10 a week from his Apples. Mr immigrant comes along with his wife and 3 children. They also buy Apples at $10. The price doesn't need to change because Mr Apple seller has plenty of Apples and was just throwing them away - he can't limit supply because his Apple tree grows hundreds each year and he would actually have to spend money to counter that. Mr Apple seller now makes another $5 a week from Mr Immigrant and his family. Mr Apple seller now makes $15 a week and everyone still has Apples. It's win-win for everyone.
Any use for seeing why supply and demand isn't some perfect absolute or do you need pictures? The problem is that you're trying to apply an extremely simplistic law to a far more complex market. You're ignoring the fact that employees can out and out create whole new markets or simply grow old markets. So yes, one good employee from abroad may well keep wages stagnant for that profession, but what if he creates a new market with his product that results in employment of many more people? How does your simplistic view of supply and demand factor that harder to quantify worth into the equation?
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Except no coup has been staged. Yanukovych was kicked out by a similarly elected branch of government using the procedure of impeachment with a majority of 73% voting to oust him.
This was an entirely democratic act against a single individual who granted himself more powers than the people wanted him to have and no longer was representing the people. That's how it promotes freedom - by giving the majority what they want.
So I'll turn the question around on you, how does allowing Yanukovych to stay in power amongst the will of the majority and allowing Russia to lock down Crimea holding guns to people's heads, taking over the airways and spreading propaganda promote freedom in your mind?
This has been brewing since 2004 when Russia poisoned Yanukovych's competitor in the race for president and the Ukrainian people voted for a Western facing government back then. Russia has been meddling and forcing Ukraine against it's will back towards it since then, and you're surprised that after 10 years of that the people finally take matters into their own hands and the parliament votes in favour of the will of the people and you call that a coup? What fucking planet do you live on, Planet Putin by any chance?
That's great, but whilst Putin IS in charge of Russia, the Ukrainians want fuck all to do with it, so stop insisting they should just sit under Putin and put up with him.
It's also a driving force behind Putin's ideology that you seem to be defending.
Sure bigotry is commonplace, but there are different levels of it in different societies and some have a clearly much higher level of social acceptability of it than others. In terms of homosexuality as an example whilst much of the West has been moving towards more equality such as legalising gay marriage some states like Uganda and Russia have been going backwards and making some things related to homosexuality illegal so there is a disparity and some cultures most definitely can be called out as more bigoted than others.
"but at this rate Russia has a better track record than you, one mistake over a multi-decade long feud with a neighboring country of whom have had a complicated past to say the least is almost understandable in comparison."
That's cutting the truth a bit thin, Georgia? Litvinenko? Russia doesn't exactly have a rosy past decade to point to either. Not to mention Russia's feud with the Ukraine has been entirely it's own doing, such as poisoning Yushchenko, Yanukovych's competitor way back in 2004 when Russia tried to defy the democratic will of the Ukrainian people even back then.
For 10 years Ukrainians have been trying to break away from Russia and for 10 years Putin has been doing everything he can including assassination attempts through to death squads to install Yanukovych in power and keep him in power as a puppet, just like Lukashenko in Belarus. Putin needs to accept no matter how long he tries to keep the game going, he has already lost.
Normally I like to not try and blame the people for the actions of their leadership, but frankly I've lost all faith in the ability for the majority of the Russian populace to engage in any kind of rational thinking at this point. They are part the problem.
A couple of years back they were out in protest against Putin rigging the vote to put himself back in power and I thought hey, finally, the Russian people are taking responsibility for their state, and trying to deal with their dictator.
Now two years on, an Olympic games, a bit of propaganda, creating a hate target in homosexuals to blame societies ills on (just as Hitler did with the Jews etc.), an attempted annexation of Crimea, and the resurrection of Stalin as a popular deity and suddenly Putin has 70% approval ratings again.
So whilst there are clearly a good number of Russians that still want him out, at this point they're a minority by quite a stretch. It really is the Russian people that are the problem - you might as well just alias the nation as Dumbfuckland now, because it really is a nation mostly full of dumb fucks given the approval they're now giving Putin based on his fascist, dictatorial policies. I thought it was bad enough that my nation, the UK is full of people so easily swayed by populism, bigotry, and general ignorance peddled by the media, but the idiocy of many of my countrymen appears to pale compared to those in Russia. At least whilst our population recently argued against striking Syria by a decent margin. In contrast, the Russians positively support annexing the whole of the Ukraine, not just Crimea with about 59% support on latest polls.
I wouldn't put your faith in the Russian people, they mostly seem to be an extremely fickle, easily swayed bunch and Putin controls the media, so swaying them his way appears trivial.
Oh don't be so stupid. I'm no fan of the NSA's surveillance either but pretending that has any bearing this is complete nonsense.
About the only connection is that Putin's Russia is a warning about how bad it can get, so yes the NSA and CIA need to be reigned in somewhat, but the US isn't exactly as bad as Russia where the KGB, sorry, "FSB" as they prefer to be called nowadays, have their man in charge and basically run the entire show. At least there's still some semblance of separation between US intelligence agencies, the courts and the people who run the country still. In Russia it's all one big completely KGB orchestrated machine. The very fact the CIA had to try and meddle with the senate in itself shows they don't have that level of control over them yet, in Putin's Russia they'd have just had Feinstein and co. arrested on some trumped up charges and that would be the end of it.
So yes, whilst the US has lost it's right to preach on some issues (i.e. bitching at China for hacking) this is at least one area where it's hardly reached Putin-esque levels of dictatorship.
Stalking and being harassed even if that were happening on a widespread scale to all critics (it's not, people are still free to criticise - that's what you're doing for fucks sake and I doubt anyone is stalking or harassing you) is even then still a far cry from being beaten senseless and chucked in jail, or just outright assassinated with a bullet to the head by an assailant that never gets found (because they don't want to find him).
I don't think he's referring simply to rate of change to humanity, you're showing a clear lack of understanding of evolutionary timescales in your original post.
At the rate climate change is occuring we're seeing a mass extinction event. This is because whilst yes, nature can quite happily have a thriving ecosystem in warmer climates, it takes time for that to evolve - millions of years in fact. What we're seeing here is nature being forced to adapt in as little as 100 years, it cannot do that because there just aren't physically enough generations of most species to adapt in an evolutionary manner in that timeframe.
As species go extinct and biodiversity decreases (it wont increase again in our lifetime, or that of many tens of thousands of years of our ancestors) you see a chain effect - the loss of one specific pollinator means the loss of a plant, the loss of a plant means the loss of a couple of herbivores, the loss of a couple of herbivores may mean the loss of tens of carnivores for example.
When biodiversity decreases it also becomes less able to adapt so you see a positive feedback loop of ever declining amounts of species as they become less varies to out-evolve disease etc.
Long story short the end result is also less resources for us - if plants can't get pollinated and the amount of potential food species also decreases then we all suffer.
Actually I don't think that's even right, the US ratified the international covenant on human rights which is the legal implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 12 states:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Now I don't know what procedures the US has in place for dealing with breaches of these provisions, but certainly if nothing else the US has agreed to bind itself legally by these articles as a result of it's ratification of the respective covenants. The issue seems to arise from the fact that breaches aren't enforced however, so is it a problem of enforcement? although the constitution says "You can't do this" does it specify at all what should happen if you do do whatever it is the constitution says not to? How does the constitution cater for enforcement?
Either way, legally they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, how that's enforced is a different question.
There's bound to be some hit, but the hit will be so utterly negligible that it's not enough to care. You shouldn't let it be a concern because it's too small to matter.
Hate to break it to you but just because a majority of Crimea are ethnic Russian still doesn't mean they want to be part of Russia. 58% are ethnic Russians but many of those still identify themselves as being of Ukrainian nationality despite their ethnic origin.
If the referendum was free and fair it's almost certainly the case that Crimea would not vote to be part of Russia, in fact, a poll was done on exactly this before this shit even kicked off as it has now:
http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...
Even in Crimea, the most Russian leaning part of Ukraine support for joining Russia was at only 41% - not enough to win a referendum.
If you can't see why Russia has shut down movement in and out of Crimea, if you can't see why it's denying access to international observers, if you can't see why it has plastered billboards in pro-Russian propaganda and seized radio and TV transmitters, and if you can't see why it installed a pro-Russian administration in Crimea kicking out the previously democratically elected one then I probably can't help you understand what's going on here, but I figure it's worth trying. Russia is annexing Crimea, not because the people there want it but because Putin both wants it and wants to send a message to any other nation considering breaking away from his control that it wont be painless.
If the people of Crimea genuinely wanted to break away from the Ukraine do you not think a referendum with international observers would be sufficient? Why the propaganda campaign? why the hijacking of TV and radio to shut out information from the rest of the country? why the presence of Russian troops and the isolation of Ukrainian military to their bases so they can't communicate with the populace? Why is all this necessary if Crimeans would vote yes for independence anyway?
Russia has been playing a game in Ukraine for some time that would make even the CIA look like amateurs - even during the protests we had protesters being dragged off by kidnappings that could only be the work of state-sponsored organisation and beaten and left in the forest to die with one or two surviving against the odds to state that the people who did it spoke with actual Russian accents (yes, you've got it, Russia had death squads in the Ukraine during the protests). You had eyewitness accounts from both protesters and the police that snipers were shooting at both police AND protesters to try and provoke a bigger confrontation between the two.
So wake up and smell the coffee, Russia has been playing games for years in the Ukraine, those games are finally just coming to the light and there's no way the referendum on joining Russia can be considered the slightest bit free and fair whilst Russian troops and propaganda are controlling every bit of information in and out of the territory right now. Even if the people made up their own mind, how would you possibly prove the Russian troops aren't just changing the ballots? with no international observers confirming the fairness and legitimacy of the vote you might as well just make up the results right now and have done with it - it'll be no more or no less legitimate.
If the Democrats sent the military into Texas and blocked all communication and access in and out, took over the TV and radio transmitters there and plastered Democrat propaganda on every billboard whilst making up things about the Republicans, beat up pro-Republican journalists and so forth and then went on to win Texas with a landslide would you really, genuinely call that an acceptable outcome? a fair election? a legitimate election? That's exactly what's happening in Crimea.
My point was nothing more than a suggestion that a simple increase of supply inherently results in a reduction of pricing in the labour market is false.
If it were true then wages would be on a permanent downward spiral for nothing other than the simple fact of natural population growth even without immigration. It's not though, real terms wages have been increasing consistently for decades, despite the fact that the size of the labour market has also been growing, that in itself is direct evidence that the labour market does not follow a simplistic view of supply and demand as the original poster was claiming as there is no way to reconcile this lack of correlation with the idea that it does.
You don't have to start a war when you send troops in. We should've put a stop to this in Georgia, we should've deployed vast amounts of equipment and troops and rolled them right up to Russia's border with Georgia to make a point way back in 2008. We should do the same now.
We should be matching their deployment in Crimea with our own in Ukraine along Russia's borders and give them a far more simple option - we'll back off and withdraw, if you back off and withdraw. Right now just letting them take Crimea without question means they'll keep on doing it, just as they saw they got away with it in Georgia.
Even if not the Ukraine, we should be bordering troops around the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast with an explicit threat that annexation of Crimea will be met by Western annexation of Kaliningrad Oblast.
Right now Putin has nothing to love because our counter-threats are pathetic. Make it clear that for every bit of territory he gains through annexation he will lose some somewhere else and it's a much more clear cut choice for him.
We don't have to start a shooting war, we just have to match his non-shooting tactics in kind such that in the same way nuclear weapons and the MAD principle make nuclear war meaningless, threatening to match each Russian annexation with a Western annexation would make annexation pointless.
It doesn't take long before all those small territories we just let him have start to stack up as much larger land masses. Let him take Crimea and Eastern Ukraine will be next.
"If America DOES go in either we open up yet another front in our war, and this time against someone a little more sophisticated then the Taliban."
How much more sophisticated? Russia got it's ass handed to them by them in the late 80s, and collapsed shortly after. Their military then went through over 15 years of disrepair and lack of training until they invaded Georgia in 2008 and got their ass handed to them more badly than expected by an inferior opponent (they lost 40 armoured vehicles and 70 soldiers against the Georgians in 9 days), whilst Georgia suffered more that was largely because of air strikes which they didn't have such effective defence against - the Russians were completely outplayed in ground to ground fighting.
They've undergone some modernisation since then but it's a long slow process and still have an extremely long way to go.
Their strength of numbers alone makes them a dangerous threat, but Russia's military is not the toe-to-toe competitor it could've been at the height of the USSR. It's second rate at best, and whilst the US would suffer sizeable losses, Russia would still come off far far worse. Even relatively small Britain and France were spending more each per year on their military than Russia up until about 2008 and both have had consistently more active and effective training programs in place especially with international partners.
Even China's military is better funded, better equipped, and better trained nowadays. The residual threat of the USSR is almost entirely from nukes nowadays rather than anything else. In conventional warfare they'd suffer a slaughter - one that'd most definitely come at a heavy cost to the West, but a slaughter all the same.
I'm not convinced Russia would try it though, China would love nothing more than a Russia distracted fighting the West to annex parts of Eastern Russia for itself - especially where Russian-Chinese border disputes already exist. Even China's leaders are now calling on Russia not to annex Crimea suggesting that if push came to shove, even China would now probably be more likely to ally with the West than Russia. Worse, even Russia's closest allies like Belarus are showing signs they're uneasy with Putin's actions and if a puppet dictatorship like Belarus shows concerns you know Putin is pretty fucking isolated. About the only backing Putin has is from Assad as a thank you for preventing Western bombs toppling his regime there.
Neither did Iran, Syria, and North Korea due to years of crippling sanctions but they all managed to pursue nuclear weapons programs.
No, you should pursue training in parallel, but you can't train everything - sometimes other countries have exceptional talents in some areas that the US simply does not, when that's the case you want to get those guys over, possibly even to be the ones that do the training in the first place.
I'm absolutely 100% for training, but it's not a magical cure that prevents other countries getting ahead with some particular talent, it's something that has to be done alongside being able to bring over the best of other nations.
"The wages of tech workers are less than pre-recession levels and are increasing at a rate lower than inflation."
Sure but as I say, tech workers is a pretty broad term - it includes both development and support, and whilst development salaries have increased, support salaries have decreased. That's why I was intrigued to know what specific IT profession has seen it's pay drop by over a half.
"The big boys are definitely hiring the most H1B visas. Whether or not that is driving down their wages is debatable."
Sure but as I said, if you look through the raw data (available at the US DoL) those firms are also the ones that are paying far more people above the national average salary for the professions in question than below. The salary information is included in the H1-B visa data.
I've had a further look though and I think you're right in your later assertion - it's companies like WiPro that seem to be abusing the H1-B system to pay below average. Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple etc. are not - they're raising the average with H1-B but like you say, it looks like some of the other players are taking the piss a bit.
Perhaps the solution therefore is to crack down on such companies, or simply agree to an increase in H1-B cap that MS etc. are asking for on the agreement that no one can be paid less than the national average salary for the profession? This would allow the likes of Microsoft et. al. to keep using H1-B properly (because they're already paying above the average for nearly all the H1-B positions they use) whilst making it expensive for the likes of exploitative outsourcing firms like WiPro to take the piss with it?
You seem to think that every developer can do every other developer's job. That is simply false.
There are developers doing certain areas of brand new research pursuing ideas that no one is and who can hence develop things that no one else can.
It's possible that such a person has such a talent outside America that no one inside America has, it's possible that Apple wants this skill for a future product before anyone else gets it so is willing to pay for it.
The reason you're failing to grasp the situation is because you think every developer is interchangeable, they're not. Your argument is akin to the idea that the greatest basketball player in the world can be replaced by some fat extremely unfit guy at your local bar.
LOL paranoid much?
"Why would Apple go through the expensive and time-consuming process to "hire" an H1-B, when there's a guy within five miles of their HQ who has better skills and will work for less?"
Why are you so certain? Are you saying no one outside of America could possibly have a skillset that no American has, or that no American that's not already getting paid more has? You really believe that someone from outside the US couldn't possibly be better than an American for a particular role?
"Because the H1-B process can be gamed and manipulated, and the local guy can't. The end.
P.S. All of those numbers are pure horseshit."
So you are claiming fraud? That the Department of Labor is illegally manipulating it's records on this issue? Do you have proof of this rather extraordinary claim?
You say it like this is a new thing though. It's not.
For reference, look at the distaste of kids of some Jewish immigrants falling in love with and/or marrying non-Jews and how that has ended in a similar manner in decades gone by.
The problem has always been there, but fringe cases of parents carrying out honour killings are just that - fringe cases that make headlines. I agree it's sick, I agree it's a problem, I agree it needs to be dealt with, but it's not new.
It's not a coincidence that parts of America are a little Irish, Italian, or French - it's just they've been that way so long people have learnt to accept it. Hell, I swear St. Patricks day is more vibrantly celebrated in parts of America than it is much of Ireland nowadays even but do people complain about those damn Irish refusing to fit in? Italian-American gangster killings were as much an export of the ideas of the Italian mafia to the US in the 30s as Pakistani honour killings are today. Different eras, different problems, but same underlying issue - integration takes time.
"Yes. That person is imaginary."
So you're accusing Apple of fraud? You can also get the raw data direct from the US Department of Labor if you prefer?
http://www.foreignlaborcert.do...
"Apple is paying a 50% premium in wages? On what planet does that make sense when they can recruit worldwide?"
Sometimes it's worth paying for the best. That same site will show you many others paid the same as or not far off of that.
Instead of jumping to the conclusion that it must be some conspiracy theory involving fraudulent record keeping have you stopped to think that maybe it's simply just that you're wrong and weren't aware of the salaries being paid to some H1-B hires? Just a thought.
Right, because this person for example is imaginary?
http://www.immihelp.com/h1b-sp...
None of which changes the fact that you can't simplistically apply a basic interpretation of supply and demand to the jobs market and expect it to be accurate.
But it's a competitive world - countries don't sit in isolation now for years at a time. If your country applies restrictions to stop companies getting what they want now, another country will not and they'll take those technological advances from you. Whilst you're spending a number of years training up those people the other more dynamic country will have built a whole new market and guess where those trainees you developed will fuck off to when they're done training? The country that's already developed that technology that you put off developing whilst you spent a few years training those folks up.
End result, you're out of a new market, you're out of your new talent, and you're all in your country economically worse off as a result, all because you didn't want to let any foreigners in and missed out on the income of a whole new market. Is that really worth it?
If you didn't understand my original post I'm not sure you're really smart enough, but I'll try and explain it you in perhaps more simplistic terms.
Mr Apple seller has 10 customers, his sale price has reached $1 per Apple after reaching equilibrium under the laws of supply and demand. He sells 1 Apple to each customer a week and so makes $10 a week from his Apples. Mr immigrant comes along with his wife and 3 children. They also buy Apples at $10. The price doesn't need to change because Mr Apple seller has plenty of Apples and was just throwing them away - he can't limit supply because his Apple tree grows hundreds each year and he would actually have to spend money to counter that. Mr Apple seller now makes another $5 a week from Mr Immigrant and his family. Mr Apple seller now makes $15 a week and everyone still has Apples. It's win-win for everyone.
Any use for seeing why supply and demand isn't some perfect absolute or do you need pictures? The problem is that you're trying to apply an extremely simplistic law to a far more complex market. You're ignoring the fact that employees can out and out create whole new markets or simply grow old markets. So yes, one good employee from abroad may well keep wages stagnant for that profession, but what if he creates a new market with his product that results in employment of many more people? How does your simplistic view of supply and demand factor that harder to quantify worth into the equation?