"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times."
That senator, is where you are wrong. America is not a fraternity. Microsoft is not a public works program. Microsoft is a private corporation. Once upon a time, republicans understood the difference.
"That senator, is where you are wrong." (Okay, calm down Keith Olberman.)
No, the United States is not a fraternity; I think a better metaphor is that it is the biggest baddest street gang there is. It should be no surprise that we are inclined to look after our own first.
I agree that Microsoft has no obligation other than following the rules and paying its protection money.
But America has an obligation to protect American workers ("by the people and for the people" remember?) "by putting them first during these difficult economic times".
So, they should change immigration law. And populist talk like this is often the first step towards that end.
In the end, I don't think it is meaningful to label this idea conservatism or liberalism. It is simply political pragmatism.
"And populist talk like this is often the first step towards that end."
As usual, it will backfire in the most predictable way: Microsoft will close offices in the US and invest in hiring skilled people for its foreign offices. And so will all major US corporations that feel the heat from this kind of misguided discourse.
If MS did not gain an advantage from using H1B's in the US it would not go though the trouble of getting H1B's. The level of corruption in India is a significant problem and MS would much rather do business in the US but they don't want to pay market rates for US workers. So they try and have their cake and eat it two by transporting workers to the US system.
I agree, bu there is a point beyond which it no longer makes sense to take the pain of getting an H1B compared to the pain to open up an office, say, in Singapore.
And even relocate some of your US workers over there.
Moving labor overseas has consequences. The labor pool here will begin ignoring Microsoft (more than we already now, but that's besides the point), since there aren't any US offices. This leads to the further development of competing infrastructure.
Next, you find Microsoft's products will take much longer to get certified for government use. Now that the core developers of the OS aren't U.S. workers, what's to say there aren't "backdoors" inserted by Chinese/Indian nationals? Oracle products sometimes lag for a year and a half because of its "development in every time zone model" when it comes to certifying it for our Defense Infrastructure.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is echo'd by "The market's are that simple". As HP's CEO said when "globalization" was a "new concept" it cannot be ignored if you want to remain competitive. But in actuality that means being competitive in job markets globally, and that can be done with H1-Bs.
"But America has an obligation to protect American workers"
Classic make-work fallacy. American interests are best served when corporations (Microsoft in this case) are as efficient as possible. If that means immigrant workers, then so be it. If MS (and other corps) are forced to hire less-qualified or more expensive American workers then the cost of these measures is paid by their customers who are ... Americans and in lost market share which results in a cost to MS' investors who are ... Americans. The difference is that the plight of the unemployed programmers is obvious and easy to see while the plight of the customer and investors is obscured but that does not change the loss that they experience.
Lets imagine for a moment we throw open the borders and allow the domestic labor market to reach equilibrium with the the world market, will we not have a lot of new Americans? and will we all not be much poorer in the near future?
Lets imagine for a moment we allow the free trade phenomenon of American exogenously financed consumerism to continue to global equilibrium, how much wealth will the country have left?
Many prominent American investors; notably Warren Buffet, George Soros, and Jim Rogers; vocally oppose these ideas.
Academic theories are good fun, but we ought to slow down and act pragmatically. A perfectly free market is just too ugly.
One wise measure of pragmatism may be to adjust the H-1B quota downward as the domestic labor market contracts to maintain the status quo (as far as I can tell this is what the discussion is really about.)
edit: Also, I feel the immigration question is more nuanced than the "classic make-work fallacy," which is a lot closer to breaking something with a hammer and feeling good about creating a job for the guy who glues it back together.
Another classic fallacy: trade is not zero-sum. Will we have a lot of new Americans? Probably.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Probably not. More Americans means more workers to produce and thus, more to go around.
Also, adjusting the H1B quota downwards is a luaghable proposition. As it is, the quota runs out in less than 3 months. Your suggestion would just lead to more outsourcing (which is often not as efficient as immigration) and higher prices.
Globalization will make America more like the rest of the world -- with a very wealthy elite and terminally poor servant class with low class mobility. I appreciate economic freedom within the borders, but only because of the safeguards and investments we have made and will continue to make.
I'd say we're already there, and have never really left it. In my opinion. the noble/serf arrangement has always been in place in America.
I did a bike ride across the country about 10 years ago, and it was eye opening. Much different than what I saw everyday in Orange County, CA. It's easy to keep the blinders on in our everyday lives.
No slums like bombay or Sao Palo or mexico city. Thankfully, our poor (even our rural poor) are spared the intense and catastrophic destitution of such places. America is not a classless society, but we have maintained a large and healthy middl class (that is less true now than it once was,) and as previously mentioned, our poor are better off than their counterparts around the world.
Another classic fallacy: trade is more complicated than the basic picture of comparative advantage you got in Econ 101. If America had kept pursuing its comparative advantage, we would still be trading beaver skins to the British for manufactured goods. Instead we took a protectionist stance and allowed our fledging industry a shield from foreign competition so that it could develop. This is what every industrialized nation has done, even all of the "Asian Tigers." The only places that haven't done so have been forced into "free-trade" under colonialism or quasi-colonialism, where they get to do great things like send all of the countries bananas out to another power in exchange for a few luxury cars for the elite ruling few. Back when Ireland was in a colonial type situation, it had the distinction of being a net exporter of food during The Great Potato Famine.
This is a tiresome argument, but more people = viewer resources per person. And, if history is a guide, different people = political squabbling, and sometimes political disaster.
The US could support a far higher number of people with the resources it has. This is just more incorrect zero sum thinking. Which is why, by and large, the population of the planet now is better off or at least as well off as it was 2000 years ago, when there were vastly fewer people.
" American interests are best served when corporations (Microsoft in this case) are as efficient as possible."
That simply doesn't pan out. It is in the capital-owner's best interest when their holdings operate as efficiently as possible. Most americans are not capital-holders.
Look again at how your pension fund is invested. Most americans have an interest in the stock market (Exxon, GE, Walmart, and index funds are particularly polular among large pension funds like CALPERS). Furthermore, all Americans are capital holders in the sense that they own (some) US dollars which can be used to buy from the US economy. If the economy becomes more efficient, they can buy more and therefore, are aided by the increased efficiency. That is, until the dollar is devalued even more.
Since (I imagine) that you advocate free movement of capital & free trade, it really doesn't make sense to point to Americans making up losses as consumers and/or investors. Unless the 'loss' is pretty negligible, which I don't think you can really argue.
The theoretical replaced workers themselves are worse off. They are in less demand & lost their theoretical job. If you assumed they made the best decision for themselves & that was MS, then taking that option off the table disadvantages them.
Since trade & investment are relatively free while immigration is relatively restricted, investors & consumers are international citizens while employees are Americans. The US is huge, so that's obscured. But try to think of this from the perspective of a European mid-size State.
*Anyway, I agree with your overall point. Economic arguments against immigration are equivalent to economic arguments against trade or investment. The losses are local & very visible. The gains while greater, are international & often hidden. There is a net gain & it is spread around by reciprocation.
Since immigration is so restricted today, the greatest 'free' market gains to be made are through freeing immigration, not investment or trade.
I don't have a pension and I don't invest all that much money in the US stock market. I am perfectly happy to invest in other countries and changes to US corporate law would have little impact on my finances.
So Americans enjoy no better standing than Canadians, whose pensions funds such as CPP also invest heavily in the US stock market, and Salvadorans, who run their economy in US dollars?
Pension fund? Oh, you mean that ponzi scheme of Social Security?
Also, most Americans are in more debt than they have assets. They are not capital holders. Don't conflate holding some currency with controlling the means of production.
If every sector of the economy were equally unregulated, this might work. But the problem is that as a programmer
...when I send my kid to school, I have to deal with a member of the teacher's union
...when I need a prescription, I have to deal with a member of the AMA
...when I get sued, I have to hire a member of the State Bar
...when I want a drink served to me on the plane, I have to deal with a member of a flight attendants union
...when I pay my taxes, I don't get to use the most efficient system - I am obligated to use the 50K+ page US tax code
...but when any of these people want to hire a programmer, they can bring someone in on an H1B
If you can find me a free market, let me know, because I would genuinely love to participate. But until then, if the US subjects Americans who become engineers to much more intense competition from foreign workers than they'd experience in other fields, we must not be surprised when young Americans prefer to become lawyers or mortgage brokers.
This seems to be the choice we've made as a nation. However, I see this as an (unintended?) consequence of government policy, rather than a natural occurrence in free labor markets.
Err... services are localized, other professions aren't, at least to the same degree. That's part and parcel of the job one chooses to do. If people aim to become lawyers because they don't think they can compete, that's their business. Maybe some bright American engineer will find a way to outsource lawyering to India:-)
<If people aim to become lawyers because they don't think they can compete, that's their business.>
That's the problem - it isn't their business. It's the ABA's business. You could be one of the great legal minds in India, but unless you have an ABA accredited degree, it doesn't matter (edit - I think a few states might allow such a person to practice provided he/she passes the bar). And US law schools definitely act as gatekeepers (check out the admissions pages for law schools - you will often find an explicit statement that they greatly limit the percentage of international students). US Engineering grad programs, on the other hand, tend to act as gateways rather than gatekeepers.
Some people want to see an ABA or AMA style organization for software engineers... personally, I'd hate to see this. I like the open nature of software, and I definitely don't think we'd see more innovation if the sort of people responsible for EJB gained control over licensing.
But regardless of how you feel about it, the dynamic is pretty indisputable: if the US uses the force of government and law to keep foreign lawyers out and bring foreign engineers in, then you should expect to see US citizens favor law degrees and foreign nationals (who would like to come to the US) to favor engineering degrees.
The part that frustrates me is when our wise leaders get on the soapbox and start preaching about how we need to encourage more Americans to get graduate degrees in science and engineering. If we've decided to staff our science and engineering workforce with guest workers, fine, but please stop acting like it's a big mystery when Americans respond to the market imbalance it creates.
Small problem with your theory: over the past 20 years of H1B hiring at Microsoft, the price of their software hasn't gone down, but their market share has.
So tell me again how corporate "efficiency" means a good customer experience. Make sure to include some details.
Somewhere along the lines you got really confused about what the unit of selection in free market economics is. In a theoretically free market, the market doesn't make individual companies better. It makes the bad ones die and get replaced by good ones. The fact that their market share has tracked with their customer experience is proof of the theory.
Could you be a little more condescending? It's possible to state your opinion without questioning the competence of the person with the opposing view.
If you're going to claim that H1B employees are critical for making companies better at producing their products, it would be nice if you were to back up that assertion with something other than ideology and theory. I used only one counter-example (one of the largest H1B employers in the nation, not to mention the subject of the article), but it directly refutes the theory that cheap employees make products cheaper and better.
We don't live in a free market. Any theory predicated on that assumption is wrong.
First, I've reread both your and my posts and I have absolutely no earthly idea how you decided _I_ was the one with the condescending tone.
Second, you've created a "counter-point" which doesn't even prove what you claim. You think your Microsoft example is "proof" of something and you are indignantly stamping your feet around making demands of others on some self-appointed perch of the intellectual high ground. Companies, markets, and economics are gigantically complicated things and trying to "prove" that H1B employees don't make better or worse companies by using a single example over some non-trivial period of time is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Absurd, even.
Maybe the reason none of us are citing examples is because examples are altogether meaningless. Unless you want to actually do the statistical analysis, control for all the proper variables, and try to make a statistically significant statement at the end, all you'd be doing is talking out of your ass. So, to that end, for the purposes of internet discussion between anonymous people, -theory- is about as good as we are going to do.
So excuse me for trying to correct your theoretical mistake while altogether ignoring your anecdotal evidence.
"Unless you want to actually do the statistical analysis, control for all the proper variables, and try to make a statistically significant statement at the end, all you'd be doing is talking out of your ass."
I've never claimed a proof -- just a counter-example. But more importantly, I stop trying to have civilized discussions with people when they can't summon the maturity to avoid profanity.
Long live libertarianism. Conservatism was only ever about small government by accident - they were just for mindlessly preserving the status quo. Which is why they lost.
No, seriously, stop for a moment and define it to yourself. I want you to come up with a serious definition, too, not "those assholes who hate darkies" or something like that. Come up with what they stand for, what they stand against, a serious definition of some kind.
Step Two: Determine if we've actually had a conservative government for any period of time since 1980 that have actually acted on the definition of conservatism.
I've posted this as a meta-message because you can get different answers depending on what perfectly legitimate definition of conservatism you adopt.
If you define it solely in terms of reactionary defense of the status quo, conservatism is politically dead, since the status quo has been, is, and will continue to never apply in our world. It moves too fast for that.
If you define it as isomorphic to the Republican party, then it has been in charge and is discredited... but I don't find this a very good definition, as we already have a perfectly good word for "Republican".
If you define it as involving cutting taxes, it has had some success, although only some.
If you define it in terms of libertarianism, i.e., "smaller government", then it has not been in charge since 1980. We've actually not tried "smaller government" in a long time. It's hard to even identify a year since 1980 where it was winning the war, let alone claim it has been winning since then.
"Conservative" and "liberal" are really such ill-defined constructs that using them seriously without defining them almost always indicates weak thinking. For example (and I'm not saying mattmaroon said this, it's just an example) claiming that "conservatives have been in charge since 1980, conservatives stand for small government, conservatives have been a failure therefore small government is a failure" is very bad logic because the meaning of "conservative" keeps shifting throughout the argument.
Social conservatism has had a much better run than fiscal conservatism or small government, which has had almost no traction since the New Deal or even earlier. A couple of years of exception, but even those years it was mostly lip service followed by expanded government.
A conservative is someone you don't like (if you're a liberal). Other than that, I have no idea what the hell it means (vice versa for the term liberal). Political discussions are tough to have because the terminology has become so meaningless. Far too often, I see people slap a political label on a person or policy and the label is intended to be derogatory rather than informative.
The modern "conservative" is someone who wants to turn back the clock thirty years. Since the schools and universities are solidly leftist, the country as a whole moves left over time. The "conservative" of today is thus liberal by the standards of forty years ago. For instance, can anyone name one issue on which Bush was to the right of John Kennedy?
You can basically define yourself along the right-left continuum by stating the year to which you wish to roll back the American political system. Progressives want to keep on marching forward. The folks at the National Review want to roll back our political system to the Reagan era. Ron Paul wants to roll back the system to 1900. Mencius Moldbug wants roll it back to 1687.
What's interesting is that some phenomena that we now view as "arch-conservative" - such as evangelical Christianity - turn out not to be very conservative at all. In 1900, the evangelicals were firmly in the camp of the left ( think William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, or Richard Ely).
I remember believing this in high school. It was an artifact of the definitions of liberal and conservative they taught us, which were that liberals wanted change, and conservatives wanted to preserve the "status quo." That bit of Latin was critical; it made it seem as if there was a real idea here; it was something that might be on a test.
I remember thinking that it was obvious that the safe choice was to be liberal. If you chose to be liberal, you'd have the values of the future today. It would be like leading a target. You'd just get more and more right over time, and the conservatives would get more and more wrong.
In fact, as I realized soon after, this explanation of the difference between liberal and conservative was bullshit. Conservative, as we use the term in the US, does not simply mean "wants to retain the status quo." If tax rates are high, for example, it tends to be conservatives who want change and liberals who want to retain the status quo.
The real distinction between liberal and conservative is much more complicated, and also changes over time.
Incidentally, there are several ways in which the US is more conservative now than under Kennedy. The most conspicuous is tax rates.
Trying to define a label as broad as conservative always results in gross generalizations. But I basically agree with you and was trying to make a similar point.
The Left-Right divide is about ideology, not status quo versus "change". But since the Left has been winning for 400 years, the debate often gets phrased in terms of "restoring the past" versus "progress".
In broad strokes, the Right believes in common law, property rights, localism, and acknowledging the reality of innate inequality.
The Left believes in administrative law, centralization, universalism, and equality.
The Right believes that the role of government is to provide order, security, and rule of law (negative law).
The Left believes that government is an instrument for creating a perfect world.
Again, these are generalizations. But if you look at the political battles since the English Civil War, I think you'll see the sides generally breaking into two camps that generally align with my definitions. Roundheads versus Cavaliers. Levelers versus Jacbobites. Patriots versus Loyalists. Whigs versus Tories. Jacobins versus the Ancien Régime. Unionists versus Confederates. Gladstone versus the Bourbons. Bolsheviks versus the Czar. Wilson versus the Kaiser. New Dealers versus the Old Right. Obama versus the Neocons.
You'll also notice that the left wins most of the battles. Thus the Neocons of today are far to the left of Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson is far to the left of Gladstone.
And of course, just because the Left wins does not mean they were correct and the Right was wrong. The history of politics seems to be something of a random walk. The political systems from Europe's age of reaction ( 1815-1848) were far superior to what followed. If more people had listened to Metternich's warnings about democracy leading to German nationalism, perhaps they could have avoided a couple world wars.
Incidentally, there are several ways in which the US is more conservative now than under Kennedy. The most conspicuous is tax rates.
And even the above graph leaves out seniorage, which has increased dramatically. It also leaves out quasi-taxes, such as legal mandates that require people to pay for expensive college diplomas in order to enter their chosen profession.
Our deficit is significant but our 13.84 Trillion GDP means deficit spending of 1/2 Trillion a year is less than 5%. His graph placed taxes around 12% of GDP which is just so far from the truth that it's almost meaningless.
"conservative" is about far more than just taxes. If you want to compare government spending and fiscal responsibility then Democrats are by far the more "conservative" party. The modern use of the term has far more to do with preserving the status quo from 100 years ago than it does about any specific ideology.
EX: The ban on abortion, the free market pre great depression, "small government", banning stem cell research, anti environmentalism, which really started around the great depression. I expect the "conservative" movement in 100 years will look back at the good old days of the hippie movement with longing.
'"conservative" is about far more than just taxes.'
I explain why there's a lot of definitions of the term, and your response is to... explain why one of my lines was wrong?
'If you want to compare government spending and fiscal responsibility then Democrats are by far the more "conservative" party.'
Do you live the in the same world I do?
Now, you might think I'm going to take exception to the idea that (D) spends less than (R). In fact, my incredulity is prompted by your "by far the more". From where I sit, neither party seems to have met a spending bill they didn't like, except briefly by the (R)s in the 90s which they quickly seem to have gotten over.
(And whatever credibility the (D)s may have had on this issue just got squandered these last couple of weeks, with this "stimulus" bill that, even if you accept Keynesian economic theory, won't do a damn thing to help.)
That's actually my point, there's significant things called "conservative" that haven't been tried lately, small government merely being at the top of the list.
(Oh, and part of the reason I said "make a real definition" is to head off things like saying conservatives are "anti-environment". Nobody of any importance is "pro-pollution". (I don't know of anybody, but it's best to be careful with absolute statements.) They just disagree about priorities or effects. That sort of thinking leads to letting demagogues make up your mind for you.)
Edit: I used "anti environmentalism" because while I don't think they hate the environment rather they see little value in protecting it. There could be some pro environmental movement (R)'s out there but I have never heard of any of them. The 1930's US dust bowl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl) is really the first case where we noticed a problem and attempted to reverse the effects of changes to our environment by planting trees. You could also look at the creation of the national park system as part of the same movement.
Note: This rest of this is a long rant but I am not going to delete it.
OK, they all all corrupt bastards. Both the stimulus bill and the bailout package are supported by both sides. They like to talk shit, but watch who votes for it. Anyway, it's not a long term issue so moving on:
The federal government has a 400 billion dollar budget deficit. Now let's forget about the huge unfunded liabilities from the Iraq war, the stimulus package etc but just look at that number. We spent ~800 billion on national defense. Inflation is one thing but "President Clinton's FY 1998 budget requests $250.7 billion in budget authority and $247.5 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD)." Granted the we are fighting 2 wars for some reason. Now, if we cut defense spending by 1/2 we would have zero budget deficit. No single Republican bill in the last 20 years would reduce the size of the federal government by that much hell all of them put together is smaller than that single change.
When the Republicans wanted to improve the national heath care system with their prescription drug plan they prevented the agency from using it's size to reduce drug prices. This is standard practice for all inshurance companies but for some reason they felt it was unimportant.
Obama's plan is require private heath care companies to cover people with prior medical issues. Regulation with Zero cost to the government which actually fixes a major problem. The other issue is letting inshurance companies drop people who become expensive to treat. You might take issue with this, but having inshurance that becomes unfordable when you develop a problem sounds like not having any inshurance at all. That's like your car inshurance saying we will pay for 5% of the damage but we decided to drop your coverage in the middle of the accident because it would have looked like you where going to cost us money.
When Oil was over 100$ a barrel GB kept increasing the size of the national reserve even when it was running out of capacity. Rather than using it as a strategic asset and bursting the Oil bubble sooner he decided to increase the problem by reducing the worlds oil supply costing us money and gaining an asset that's drooped to 1/3 of it's original value.
PS: The federal budget is also this out of whack while they have reduced funding for state programs. Yea, let's talk about states rights but at the same time let's cut the purse strings.
I think it's changed the way it collects taxes, but as far as I know, government spending is still up, even adjusted for inflation. So it's hard for me to see that conservatives are so successful that they have continued to lose, just not as fast as they used to.
Conservatism, was originally about allowing each state to continue as they were when forming a federal government -- it's about what the states meant the constitution to mean when they designed the government. So it should be a small federal government/states rights perspective; and these states can do anything that they want as long as their state constitution allows it.
I think this Rush Limbaugh quote does a good job summarizing modern day conservatism:
We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.^
I think ideally that is what conservatives want to stand for, though in practice it may be quite different.
As a libertarian, I think you've misread conservatives.
Conservatives believe in induction: that things that work the same way over time have a tendency to continue working the same way. That humans are basically good people but flawed. Liberals believe in experimentation: that the human spirit is basically flawed but can be perfected through the right combination of experimentation.
Burke is usually claimed as the first conservative. He was mostly a shill for the ruling class in Great Britain, but, to the dismay of his adversaries, turned out to be right in a large number of his predictions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke)
Both terms have varied so much over the last 30 years as to almost be meaningless, however. JFK? He was for big tax cuts to spur the economy. Nixon? Froze prices. Politicians (and parties) that were "supposed" to be either conservative or liberal basically abandoned their principles whenever they thought they could get votes.
People emotionally attach to the party, and then bandy about "liberal" and "conservative" as labels to shut conversation down. It has little to do with the actual philosophies of conservatism or liberalism (either classic liberalism or modern liberalism)
(Sorry. Political junkie here. Couldn't resist providing the information)
Microsoft is a chartered corporation under the United States of America. If they are not serving the interests of the people of the USA, then I see no reason why they should not be punished in some way.
Serving the interests of the people is not a binary phenomenon. Microsoft still employs 1000s and produces popular consumer products. Just how much do they need to do to serve the interests of the USA? Shouldn't their taxes take care of that?
Way to ignore the slippery slope. Microsoft isn't a public works program. Also, all the Stratocasters should be manufactured in Mexico. And hey, why shouldn't our garments by manufactured in the Marianas Islands by women living in caged compounds?
We tacitly approve of inhumane working conditions when we allow countries with no human rights or workplace safety standards to compete on a level playing field with us.
No, we don't. When American companies were caught using near-slave labor consumers revolted, causing widespread changes in manufacturing policies for a great number of corporations.
In fact, nowadays many manufacturers go out of their way to advertise their workers' working conditions and wages in an effort to demonstrate their social responsibility. Why? Because consumers demand it.
And then there are the Wal-Marts of the world, who do not do as above, because there are also consumers who do tacitly approve of inhumane working conditions.
The free market seems to be taking care of this problem - I don't see regulation needed here. Not to mention the fact that many of these "inhumane" conditions are actually pretty par for the course as far as those regions go.
My own mother worked as a child laborer in a textiles mill when she was still in primary school. The extra income allowed her desperately poor family to move into the city, find jobs, and get educations. I doubt I would be typing on this computer if it were not for the opportunities presented by what the Western world would have, at the time, seen as atrocious workplace safety standards and an abuse of labor. Modernization is a long and arduous process that can be sped up with the right pressure, but preventing these countries from competing is simply condemning them to continual and perpetual poverty.
If your position is that we should allow child labor in textile mills, and my position is that we should enact trade penalties on other countries that allow child labor, there's no useful discussion for us to have. So, duly noted.
The slippery slope is an easier thing to address; the comment that "Microsoft is not a public work" basically refutes all labor, trade, and immigration regulation. It's not a betrayal of the GOP to suggest that Microsoft might comply with the rules we already have.
Child labor is but one of many issues. My point is that there is a progression to modernizing a country, and that certain evils need to be tolerated while progress is being made. Do I agree with child labor? No. But I do believe that, in certain contexts, it is unavoidable and needs to be accepted temporarily, for the alternatives are certainly worse (e.g. condemning a large segment of the population to perpetual poverty).
Expecting a 3rd-world country to act like a 1st-world one, when it clearly isn't, does not work. In the same way that the US often forces American-style democracy upon other countries without going through the requisite social changes beforehand, so do Western nations force first-world labor standards on countries that are simply not ready.
What we, as modernized nations, should be doing is not unfairly punishing these countries, but rather establishing a roadmap to eliminate these evils through economic development. This may take years and decades, but at least in my birth nation child labor and sweatshops are all but eliminated, with the help of the US government no less. To try and play it black and white is foolish and solves nothing.
In the context of Microsoft, isn't this basically an argument for allowing the US to backslide on labor policy? We're talking about jobs that are already fulfilled by our domestic work force, at one of the world's most profitable corporations.
Living abroad as I do, with lots of Italian friends, I can't help but take the side of the guys who want a shot at living and working in the US. I am in favor of helping out US workers with things like more or less universal health care and unemployment insurance, but also in favor of letting in immigrants who are capable of taking care of themselves: if you're in the US working, more power to you. If you're mooching, maybe it's time to move along.
Just to get my wife (not some random person) and mother of my daughter into the country is a 3 or 4 month process. She has a doctorate in biochemistry and speaks English well. To add insult to injury, she'll apparently have to go through a doctor's examination before she can get a green card, should we decide to go to the US.
The US has some serious issues with regards to immigrants, which is especially ironic for a country where a very minimal percentage of the people are really people who have been there for hundreds of years, let alone before 1492.
Furthermore, the US has some weird import policies - we can't send prosciutto to my parents because of some BS health regulations (as if Italy didn't care deeply about the quality of its food products).
Yes, there are practical issues: Luxembourg couldn't open up its borders to India and China, for instance, without some serious issues, but on the whole, I have to come down in favor of openness and opportunities for foreigners. Part of that might means some practical measures like loosening the restrictions on H1B workers so they are better able to seek market rates once they've arrived. Another thing I strongly believe is that if you opened things up between "wealthy" nations: US, Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ, etc... there wouldn't be any huge population shifts.
... Wow... it's easy to write lots when the rant is strong within :-)
US import restrictions on food are notoriously brain-dead. They're even bad inside the company; for instance, it's difficult to ship raw milk cheese. But that's neither here nor there.
I'm married to someone who moved to Switzerland for work, and my understanding is, the US is not alone in the world for onerous immigration and work visa policies.
> US is not alone in the world for onerous immigration and work visa policies.
That's correct - basically everyone treats their immigrants like shit. I was in Italy more or less illegally until I got married, although it must be said that they do respect the institution of marriage more than in the US: once you're married, you can stay, no questions asked.
No, the US does a lot more than just investigate, and does not give you citizenship just for marrying someone (few places do that - most give you the right to live in the same place as your spouse, though). Going through the whole process involves something like 2 or 3 trips to whatever town has the US consulate you need to go to (a 5 hour trip for me), and in the end, and involves a lot of fees, and requires things like doctor visits, which is kind of degrading.
Bureaucracy in the US isn't all that bad for many things, but from the point of view of a potential immigrant, it can be pretty ugly. Anyone remember when they were stringing along Linus Torvalds and people raised a fuss about it?
My point is that there is no slippery slope. There is a very clear dividing line: forced labor and slavery. H1B's are on one side of that line, women trapped in caged compounds are on the other.
The Senator may not realise it, but much of the productivity growth in the US has come from technological breakthroughs of first or second generation immigrants. Short-sighted populism is what I would call this.
Why should an American worker give a damn about productivity? We just experienced a decade with robust productivity growth along with steadily declining standards of living. Improvements to productivity have almost exclusively benefited people who are already wealthy over the past 10 years. This may be slightly hyperbolic, but certainly not by much.
There are opinions being expressed here that American workers have a sense of entitlement, wanting to maintain their current standard of living. Well, what about American capital? Why do they feel a sense of entitlement to make their capital even more valuable via access to ever cheaper labor? Why do they feel a sense of entitlement to keep the standard of living their capital gives them, instead of having it taxed and distributed to others?
Ideologies are not ends unto themselves. The American people believe that driving down the cost of labor is not serving their interests now, and are not compelled by arguments that they should sacrifice their interests in homage to pure libertarianism. If those who think that the median citizen will benefit from increased immigration, make that argument in terms that addresses that citizen's self interest. That is how debate in a democracy is supposed to work.
> We just experienced a decade with robust productivity growth along with steadily declining standards of living.
This sentiment always confuses me. Granted, my experience is limited (memory only serves me for about the last 15 years), but it seems like things are getting better all the time. More people have more televisions, air conditioners, dishwashers, etc than ever before. Life expectancy is steadily increasing, food supply has become more or less a non-issue, etc. In what material dimension are we noteably worse off now than we were 20 years ago? I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm honestly curious. The only thing that remotely comes to mind is the cost of higher education, which has been increasing in cost faster than wages grow.
> If those who think that the median citizen will benefit from increased immigration, make that argument in terms that addresses that citizen's self interest.
Just because incomes have "stagnated" (which also seems to depend on how you slice and dice the numbers), doesn't mean standard of living has gone down. The constantly decreasing prices of material goods plays just as much of a factor. My wages could be cut in half and I could still afford the same amount of TV screen as two years ago. Granted, not everything gets cheaper at the rate consumer electronics do, but cheap immigrant labor has a huge effect on the prices of stuff you buy all the time, which benefits you as well.
IIRC the areas where things are getting worse, or at least, not getting as good as the GDP statistics would lead one to believe, are:
[edited to incorporate some stuff from downthread]
- people with only a high-school education don't have the same job opportunities as they used to
- the employment sectors with the highest job growth are those that don't pay very well, e.g., janitorial work rather than automotive plants
- a lot of people who want full-time jobs can only find part-time work; people with full-time jobs are working more hours with less or stagnant vacation time
- more families in which both the husband and wife work out of economic necessity rather than choice
- the housing bubble caused many people to treat the appreciation in their home's value as a substitute for saving, and now that the bubble has burst that "wealth effect" is operating in reverse
- cost of health care rising significantly faster than inflation; higher premiums and copays for those with insurance, more economic risk for those without
I think some of these are 40-year trends rather than 20-year trends, but if you drill down into the quality-of-life statistics, I think these are the kinds of things to look for.
"In what material dimension are we noteably worse off now than we were 20 years ago?"
My window was 10 years.
"Just because incomes have "stagnated" (which also seems to depend on how you slice and dice the numbers), doesn't mean standard of living has gone down."
No, it just means standard of living has stagnated, too.
"The constantly decreasing prices of material goods plays just as much of a factor."
We've had a lot of inflation, up until the economy cratered.
Well my question still stands for 10 years. Of course, if the window gets too small it becomes meaningless. Progress is never constant and moderate, there are always bad times and good, as long as the long term trend is upward.
Real wages have stayed pretty flat, but housing costs have skyrocketed, we are working more hours and not getting more vacation, and healthcare remains abysmal.
We should protect people, not jobs. Basic health care for everyone, retraining opportunities, improve education, stuff like that, rather than trying to keep hard working people out.
Interesting. Who invented the transistor? the integrated circuit? Who created UNIX? Visicalc? MS Windows? ARPANET?
Maybe he thinks this issue affects the dearth of high-tech startups in Iowa. Maybe he cares about more Americans than just those living in his state. Sure, it's probably just vote pandering, but that isn't the only possibility.
>"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times."
One loses track of all the moral obligations of corporations these days. While trying to meet them all, it can be hard to find the time to make a good product and earn money.
Nobody ever wins votes by championing the cause of immigrants. As usual though, it seems like immigration bashing is high up on the todo list of politicians where hardly any immigrants live, particularly when the economic shit hits the fan.
why does this guy care? He is a senator from Iowa...are there any "high tech" jobs in Iowa that would get affected by the H1-B program?
H1-B program is very important to this country. It keeps us ahead of the curve by draining the talent worldwide and adding it to United States brain capital.
I say we don't go far enough with the H-1B program. Many people I know are uneasy and unwilling to sign their lives away to a single company, to do with at their whim, for a chance to maybe become a legitimate US resident in a decade.
The problem is that, once you are in the US on a H-1B your life is in the hands of your employer. This is ripe for employee abuse (and one of the major contributors to wage depression in immigrant labor).
What the US really needs is a legitimized skilled labor immigration program. Something whose job is actually to steal talent from abroad and add it to America, instead of this "job shortage" excuse and subverting a different system to accomplish the same ends. If you can bring people into the country and give them employment mobility (the same way my parents came into Canada), the US would be far better off, and wage depression due to immigration would be reduced.
[edit] As a more concrete issue: here in Canada we have significant problems with skilled immigrants coming and not being able to find jobs, and thus being a drain on our social systems. This can easily avoided if certain classes (i.e. anyone not exceptionally talented) would need an employer sponsor to apply for immigration. You would need to secure a job before entering the US, but once you're in you are mobile.
While I'm generally all for the change you propose, you have to be realistic and realize this could be abused.
I could set up a company that would, in exchange for buying $3000 of my plastic toys, hire someone and let them resign a month later. I can even let them do the month's work from their new home in the US. Then they can go off and do as they please.
Granted this is just an enforcement issue, and enforcement is part of whatever system we have, but I think you could save a lot of effort by just instituting some kind of entrance exam system to certify them as a 'knowledge worker'. (At which point they can enter and leave freely, with full job mobility.)
As an added bonus, you could administer this exam to citizens as well as a form of professional certification, which would probably be more useful to employers than the existing degree system.
I could set up a company that would, in exchange for buying $3000 of my plastic toys, hire someone and let them resign a month later.
There are ways to prevent that. For example, the government could require that (a) the employer sponsoring a new immigrant has to pay six months of the immigrant's unemployment insurance in advance (perhaps put into an escrow account), and (b) if the immigrant is neither employed nor collecting unemployment insurance for more than, say, two months, then the visa is terminated.
Another possibility I've seen floated is that the government make only a fixed number of work visas available, but auction them off. Then the immigrants let in would be the ones who are likely to add the most value to their employers.
Actually that's also how we solve it in Canada for relatives of immigrants. In order to bring kin over into Canada one must sign a commitment to cover their social welfare expenses (if any) for a period of 10 years. This has done wonders to curtail people bringing in elderly relatives who do nothing but sit on welfare checks. This also holds someone accountable without leaving someone behind.
He cares because he represents a large group of people who believe in American superiority. Their worldview dictates that Americans are superior, and have 'dibs' on the products of the global economy. To suggest to them that there exist foreigners who are smarter and more skilled than Americans- even if only a small number of Americans, and even if only at a specific task- is quite offensive.
I think that political necessity demands that American politicians claim the superiority of the American worker. But I do not think that the American worker believes that at all, quite the opposite. The American worker believes that there are a lot of people in other parts of the world just as educated and just as intelligent, willing to do their job for much less money, and wants the government to protect them from this reality.
Every politician in every country right now is trying to raise barriers, buy at home first, preserve jobs for Americans/Canadians/Chinese/... . It's even more the wrong thing to do now than it was in 1930, because trade is so much more than it was in 1930, and should be resisted over and over and over again.
Give every Masters/PHD student a green card with their diploma. Then let them find a job, start a business, whatever. Else it's only a matter of time before they move a a country that gives them this freedom.
It's because of the "they're stealing our jerbs!" mentality that I see on a lot of other websites (who shall remain unnamed, the worst of which is named after punctuation)...
"But there's tons of unemployed home-grown talent here!" I hear many people say. I argue otherwise. I have met these vaunted whiners who claim to possess all the skills they need to work at MS and beyond, and I can safely say that the vast majority wouldn't make the cut. Most are mindless script monkeys who couldn't hack their way out of a wet paper bag.
I have yet to see a major US corporation favor immigrants in their hiring. In fact, almost every single American company I've had dealings with pay immigrant labor the same salary as their American counterparts. With all the extra legal hassle and costs this actually makes immigration more expensive for the employer.
The talent shortage in the US tech sector is real, and instead of bemoaning the loss of jobs to immigrants, maybe American colleges should look at why they're producing so many people who don't make the cut. And perhaps these people who feel their jobs have been "stolen" should do some introspection and figure out just how hard these other guys are working compared to themselves.
It's American K-12 education that isn't up to world standards. That means the American secondary school graduates entering tough college programs have more catching up to do than the (much more stringently selected) international undergraduates at American colleges. See the book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics
You make a good point. I didn't say conclusively that it's the colleges' fault, but it's worth looking into nonetheless.
The way I see it it's not really a lack of education but rather the mentality that hard work isn't worth squat and people will get the world handed to them on a silver platter for just Being Awesome(tm). It's a mentality that many kids in my generation grew up with, what with gold stars and the constant news of Wall Street investors striking gold by making a few lucky bets.
More American talent can be exposed if we can rid ourselves of this false sense of entitlement and convince people that if they want to get rich (or get a decently high paying job) they need to get their ass in gear and start working and learning.
That senator, is where you are wrong. America is not a fraternity. Microsoft is not a public works program. Microsoft is a private corporation. Once upon a time, republicans understood the difference.
Conservatism is dead, long live conservatism.