Laid-Off Disney IT Workers Decry Offshoring At Trump Rally (computerworld.com) 707
dcblogs writes: Two former Disney IT workers spoke at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Sunday, telling about the shock of having to train their foreign replacements. Speaking at the large rally in Madison, Ala. was Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker who trained her foreign replacement, and said tech workers are reluctant to talk about the problem. IT workers "are afraid, they're in shock," she told the cheering crowd. "They're not coming forward because we have been taught all our lives to make do and keep going on. But you know what? This little old grandma is going to stand up for what's right. "The fact is that Americans are losing their jobs to foreigners," said Moore. "I believe Mr. Trump is for Americans first."
The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Funny)
Hah, Trump vs. H-1B/Offshoring.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Interesting)
Here we go...painting this as a racism issue.
I have had to deal with being replaced by H1-b for quite a few years. I even trained my replacement too. It was just a couple of us. We got the project going and the company brought in the H1-bs to maintain it.
I never found work again. I got the BS line of "you don't have the skills" (never heard back when I asked, "what skills are those?") and usually heard nothing again. It's funny how "skills" are age and wage dependent in this profession.
And then to hear in the media that we Americans don't have the skills and that's why they need to hire H1-bs. Funny, quite a few of my classmates at my American university were some of those H1-bs.
My family looked at me differently as well as friends. I even had a family member take me aside and ask, "ARE YOU AN ALCOHOLIC!?"
WTF?!
This isn't about race. This is about American businesses exploiting very poor people. This is about gaming the system so that they can arbitrage wages and to increase the tech labor supply to suppress everyone's wages.
I don't blame the H1-bs. I'd do exactly the same thing in their shoes.
What I blame is the crony capitalist system we have where we little people get screwed and the benefits go to the top.
When Disney canned their IT department in Florida, did they pass the cost savings to consumers?
Fuck no!
So, where does the savings go to?
The CEOs and they get a bigger bonus for screwing us over.
This is just the business and political elite exploiting their laws to send us all spiraling to the bottom.
STEM work is for off-shoring to developing countries and immigrants from those countries. Any smart American kid should go into medicine. Have a look someday at what the AMA does to immigrant doctors. (Hint: they usually end up as nurses.)
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Funny)
I would hire you just for your writing style.
It is like poetry.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Funny)
It lacks the obligatory
Burma Shave
At the end
Though.
Burma Shave.
Re: (Score:3)
People who support the party of 'Unions are inherently evil and lazy' really shouldn't throw stones 'crony capitalism'.
And if you do I don't really know how to even handle the conversation. It's a wonder how these people haven't self annihilated yet.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sorry, I can't create your account until you put in a ticket.
Re: (Score:3)
So all coders are not smarter than labourers and as such are too incompetent to manage a union and should allow corporations to do it for them (which is exactly how some unions become corrupt in the first place by private outside interests and members lost control of the union, often the very corporations they were meant to be protecting union members from). Fact of life, without unions workers are screwed, the last thirty years are proof positive of that. Lowering wages, reduced safety conditions, fired a
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:4, Insightful)
Was expected to do the exact same thing, but our staff saw it coming and we 'failed' miserably to enlighten the East Indian HB1's. I was approached a couple of months after being laid off, with a very decent package I must admit to help restructure the group, but the $1000.00/hour figure I quoted the large financial institution I formerly worked for seemed to spook them. I wonder if they ever recovered the DB's I fixed for them during the training period. Backups are so fragile, and indexes so easily corrupted. Not long after I was contacted I heard from colleagues the group was outsourced to HP with about as much success as the HB1 migration.
Note I got another job after my 18 months of salary ran out, but have since left the industry. I walk and sit dogs and houses now, getting paid much less but I am very happy, relaxed and work outdoors mostly on my own schedule.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:4, Insightful)
Usually they hold your final pay, a good recommendation, or a big severance bonus over your head, and you won't get it unless you "volunteer" to "train" your replacement.
Needless to say, the quality of such training is usually for shit; as the forced trainer has absolutely no interest in passing along their acquired knowledge and is only there because of the threats made, implied or real.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Insightful)
It always surprised me as well, but from the other end.
Rather than being surprised that the company would trust the training given to H1B by their existing staff, I'm surprised their legal departments let them do it given the pretty much the only legal precondition needed to use H1B is that you can't find the skill set in the local population.
If you are having to use your local staff to training the people coming in, surely you have already proven the local population has the sort of skills need for the roles.
Re: (Score:3)
- Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change
His
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:4, Interesting)
I was once, 20 years ago, an H1B.
Back then I was "imported" because the US was behind Europe in digital telecommunications (ISDN).
I didn't replace anyone, they had to advertise the job I was taking for a couple of months and I remember my boss laughing at the applications he was getting.
They were still advertising my job even after I started it.
Here's an anecdote : The ISDN between San Jose and Mountain View wasn't working for data. I called up PacBell and after getting past the clueless support guys ("can you get a dial tone sir?" - "no, because this is a digital system, not analogue") I got through to a lovely lady in engineering.
Explained who I was and who I worked for (Cisco) and that they'd setup up their switches wrongly (US ISDN was 56Kb, they'd configure data between them at 64Kb which was causing the data corruption).
She called me back later in the day to say I was correct in my diagnosis and thanked me. Myself and the other MV folk could now work from home.
I remember one SFO immigration officer who cracked his knuckles in my face, rolled his neck and try to be as physically intimidating as possible when he bellowed at me "do you REALLY think an American can't do your job?".
"yes", I reply. It was the truth based on the data I had.
The anger swelled up in him to the point I thought he was going to explode.
He threw my passport and papers at me and I went on my way.
I stayed just short of 3 years. Too many "Trump supporters", for my liking.
If H1B's are being abused then it's the employers who are abusing them.
Don't abuse the people.
Re: (Score:3)
That's not too far off my net worth, and I'm a late-30-ish developer wondering if that will be enough to allow me to retire at 65 (hoping it will double to $1.5M or $75K/year by then and inflation stays low). It certainly isn't enough to let me quit my job if I want to keep my house, car, kids in sports, etc.
Like most Gen-X'ers, I still don't believe Social Security as we know it (i.e., cashable checks) will exist by then: I'm expecting SS will be converted al
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a long-time US Congressman and still manage to have so few assets? Why, not only would you have to forego taking even the smallest bribe, but you'd have to actively resist investing any of your $174,000/year salary in Wall Street, too!
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Informative)
he's not a communist, he's a social democrat. stop repeating what you hear on fox news.
Re: (Score:3)
you say no country has done it, then you acknowlege that many european countries and several other wealthy countries have managed to combine a democratic government and a strong safety net. say what you will about the barely-contained chaos of the british parliamentary system, with bare knuckle politics and sometimes literal fights, the system is nominally functional (similar to ours) and is democratic.
if you're on this site often then you're likely a data driven realist (a nerd), not an ideologue. So would
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it only creates cognitive dissonance if you think like a moron. Thoughtful people understand that nobody is consistently wrong, any more than anyone is consistently right. The Nazis built the authobahn (a.k.a. "Reichsautobahn"), but I don't hear people arguing against superhighways because they were a Nazi idea.
So it's a good thing that Trump brought up this issue; it'll force the other candidates to address it, or at least dance around it. But I doubt he really cares about it; he's too narcissistic and mercurial to care about anyone but himself for very long.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:5, Informative)
There's also the small fact that Bernie Sanders has already been addressing it [computerworld.com] -- long before Trump brought it up, in fact -- and conveniently has none of Trump's racist baggage either.
Re:The kryptonite of slashdot groupthink (Score:4, Interesting)
Trump isn't running against Bernie though. The right is in open rebellion about being ignored on immigration and other issues where people who think themselves our betters just want us to believe what we're told. Trump is gaming that, and gaming it very well. Cruz is addressing that with at least partial sincerity (really, the best you could reasonably hope for in any politician). Rubio is a Democrat running in the wrong primary.
Calling Trump "racist" tells me you're probably a Democrat - great for you, but it's not your primary. Sadly I predict the general will be Trump losing to Hillary, and 4 more years of the same problems we've been having, but the primaries aren't over quite yet, and maybe we'll have a surprise Bernie or Cruz.
Mr Trump is for Mr Trump first. (Score:5, Insightful)
You think Hillary is any different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hillary has a shameful history of corruption that goes back to the 1970s. Even Micheal Moore shamed Hillary for taking bribes from the health care industry.
The Clintons have been influence peddlers for decades.
Re:You think Hillary is any different? (Score:5, Funny)
She would sell out Chelsea if it got her a crucial state.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. This is a FOX "news" talking point with no basis in fact. If you want to debate the debt/deficit, let's talk about the free tax give-away by Bush, Medicare Part-D, unfunded wars (previously...Obama added the bills to the actual books massively adding to the debt), economic disaster, corporate welfare, etc...
People like you talk about who getting richer/poorer, but you don't get the facts that rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer. Republic
Re:Mr Trump is for Mr Trump first. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Republican policies don't bring jobs/money/magic beans to the lower 80%.
And Democrat presidents passed TPP and Nafta.
Both parties will sell you out to cronie capitalism. But you keep blaming 1 party, shows how little you know, and why nothing ever changes.
Severance contract (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually the reason IT workers aren't talking about this is because they usually sign comprehensive covenants to get the severance payout.
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
Re:Severance contract (Score:4, Informative)
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
Disney cancelled planned layoffs in New York and California after the earlier layoff of 200+ workers in Florida became public. The way the PR announcement got worded, those layoffs could still happen at a later date.
Re:Severance contract (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
They did - when they got caught and called-out on it in public. Can't sell as many animated DVDs if you have a bad reputation, after all.
I'm fairly sure it has had another bad benefit for them as well. For instance, I remember a recruiter cold-calling me and asking if I wanted to work for them as a DevOps/Automation engineer. I politely told him that he can tell his client to collectively fuck themselves with a pole-ax, and specifically named their H1-B policy as the reason why.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the first time he's been turned down that day, and I'm very certain that Disney is going to have a damned hard time hiring anyone that they cannot-so-easily replace (seriously - would you work for them in a capacity where they've demonstrated a complete disregard for employee retention?)
The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is the end result of lots of people feeling disenfranchised and angry over many, many years. To be fair, there's a lot to be angry about, but I don't think that Trump's supporters are really thinking this one through. People who are angry rarely do. They just want "something" to be done.
Welcome to the second wave of "Hope and Change" as a political platform.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Funny)
"Hope and Change" is quickly becoming "Seek and Destroy"
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly already starting. He's recently been threatening to use libel laws to silence news organizations that publish inconvenient content about him.
His tactics to win an argument include: Threats of lawsuits, flat out lies, insults, and talking over you so that you can't get your own point across.
If this guy wins then sane political discourse in America is well and truly dead.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Funny)
With the bombast, sounds more like Rush Limbaugh
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump speaks his mind, in the same way as his supporters do. It's a chaotic, inconsistent mess that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, just like most of his supporters. The inconsistencies, insults, the threats, none of it matters because his supporters just see someone as reactionary as themselves.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, lots of news organizations are resorting to libel, ignoring facts even during their own stories. The news runs free of any recourse for malicious reporting these days, and they need to be reined in as much as Trump does.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Interesting)
> If this guy wins then sane political discourse in America is well and truly dead.
Where the fuck have you been? Sane political discourse has been well and truly dead for a very, very long time. I'm not even sure that it was sane when I was a kid - and I was a kid when the Sun still had a price tag hanging off the side of it and dinosaurs hadn't even evolved.
Has it gotten worse? Absolutely. However, I'm not sure that it was ever good. The difference is we now have more ubiquitous communication and access to knowledge, it was never good.
I'm reminded of the folks who think Slashdot was a beacon of intelligence and civil discourse. I can link to but one thread and dispel that notion entirely. Like Slashdot, politics was never good. Even "better" is debatable.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Insightful)
Bernie sanders doesn't do it. Feel the bern!
The Opposite (Score:3)
You really need to read up on Negative Advertisements which have been a thing since I was a kid. The only difference I see between Trump and GW Bush (as one example) is who is the liar, who throws the insults, and who silences other voices.
The "media" and "news" did this for decades with pretty good success. For example, ask almost anyone what they know about Ron Paul around the time he was running and they will say "he's crazy" and yet they know nothing about him or his politics. The "News" pulled sound
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
>It's good that Trump is threatening to use libel laws against them.
Because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy? That's practically his campaign in a nutshell. "I'll sue!" The fact that he never does isn't really important, because people who like him for his propensity to blow hard about legal action have the collective attention span of a gnat.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they're angry, but apparently not about the right things. They should be angry about the growing gap between rich and poor, and the fact that the average American hasn't got any better off in the last thirty years, but if they were angry about that, they wouldn't be supporting a billionaire. They should be angry that their political system is basically in the pockets of well-funded interest groups that fund political campaigns, but a billionaire that bought himself a shot at the presidency with his own personal mountain of cash is hardly going to be the man to implement restrictions on campaign finance. Instead, they're angry about Muslims and Mexicans, who really, really aren't the cause of Americas problems. They should be angry that political parties so blatantly put their own electoral success ahead of what is good for America.
Oh well, I firmly believe that democracy means you deserve the leaders you get, so if Trump ends up in the white house, so be it.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
the political process requires choices... there are rarely any ideals... its a choice between the different options.
At this point... its Hillery VS Trump... there is very little you could say against Trump that doesn't count many times over against Hillary.
Most of the negatives of either candidate fall away once you see that... then it becomes a question of the positives...
This cause big problems for Hillary because she actually doesn't have any besides being a democrat if that is a positive.
She's not especially clever. She's not especially wise. She's not especially respected or trusted. She's not well liked. She's not good at giving speeches. She's not good at leading people. She's not good at managing things.
There's nothing there. She's Bill Clinton's wife. That's what she's been running on from the beginning.
It was how she got her stint in the Senate.
It was how she got treated seriously as a presidential candidate in 2008.
It is how she got appointed to Sec State under Obama even though Obama didn't like or trust her.
And it is why she's basically being given the Democrat nomination. She won 6 out of 6 coin tosses and won 7 out of 7 high card draws. Consider the odds of that happening.
(.5^13) x 100 = 0.01% chance of that happening.
The fix is in kids. The DNC machine has chosen Hillary. She has no reason to even be there in the first place and look at her walk to her coronation.
Against her... for some fucking reason... is Trump. And anything you can say against him is true many times over for her.
When all is said and done... the difference is this... he's smarter than she is, he has a proven track record of making things work out in his interests without someone doing it for him, he's respected within some fields for being a savvy business person, people seem to like him, he's very good at giving speeches, he obviously can claim some skill at running companies... say whatever you like about him... he's got more going for him than hillary besides the fact that she's a democrat and he's running as a republican.
That's pretty much the only thing you could cite as being a positive thing in her favor absent POLICY differences.
Now if you want to say "but I want the policies she's advocating and not the ones he's advocating" sure... that's a reasonable objection. However, that's a policy objection and not anything to do with the actual people.
The policies and the personalities should not be mixed. Say which personality you like... say which policies you like.. then vote for whomever on which ever basis you find relevant. But citing Hillary as being a better person is a very dubious sell.
Re: (Score:3)
And it is why she's basically being given the Democrat nomination. She won 6 out of 6 coin tosses and won 7 out of 7 high card draws. Consider the odds of that happening. (.5^13) x 100 = 0.01% chance of that happening.
Well, first there was only ONE high card draw, which some conservative news sources added to the supposed 6 coin tosses to claim a 7-for-7 victory TOTAL for Clinton.
However, even that is wrong. The 6 coin tosses thing was an erroneous early report put out by an Iowa paper. There were more coin tosses than that, and the Bernie Hillary split appears to be roughly 50/50 as you'd expect.
I'm definitely not a Hillary supporter, and I detest the smear campaigns the Clinton campaign has got many of their fri
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
The top 20%tile are paying 90% of the taxes,
Even if that's true, what it means is that the plebes aren't being paid enough to pay taxes. If the richest among us want us to pay more of the taxes, they can pay us more wages.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Informative)
The top 20%tile are paying 90% of the taxes,
Even if that's true, what it means is that the plebes aren't being paid enough to pay taxes. If the richest among us want us to pay more of the taxes, they can pay us more wages.
It's paywalled but you can read the headline and first few lines. http://www.wsj.com/articles/to... [wsj.com] Top 20% pay 84% of all taxes and bottom 20% not only DON'T pay taxes but actually get PAID by the IRS. We've had socialist redistribution of wealth in the USA for many years.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Interesting)
Randian horsefuckery. The poor pay plenty of sales and property taxes, so the "no taxes line" is a lie to start with. Then there's the fact that the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the half the country's combined income. OF COURSE the rich pay more in taxes, they're the ones that have all the money.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Informative)
Poor people tend to pay a higher percentage of their income
as sales tax than rich people (though I dont have data to back that statement up.
could Google it..)
Not quite but almost. poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as sales tax on necessities than rich people. That makes sales taxes which don't avoid being placed on necessities inherently regressive.
Re: (Score:3)
jack up taxes any more and you'll see even more assets leave for tax havens.
What makes you think that all assets (that could) did not already leave? Do you think people are keeping their assets here and paying taxes just because they are team players?
Re: (Score:3)
There's a couple of things wrong with that. Nobody paid those top marginal rates, nobody. The % of GDP that goes to taxes today is higher than it was then - as is the total number, and that's adjusted for inflation.
In other words, our government doesn't have an income problem - it has a spending problem. We can debate all we want about how much money the government should have but all evidence suggests that they will never be satisfied with that number.
Re: The Angry Mob (Score:5, Insightful)
Her policies are whatever her corporate masters say they are. But until the primaries are over, she'll pretend they're a watered-down version of Bernie Sanders' because his policies are the ones actual people actually want.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:4, Insightful)
The irony is that Trump is the problem. He was born with a silver spoon up his arse, and fails often but has enough money to keep going. He thinks money means he can say and do whatever he likes without consequences, and only supports the 99% as far as he can manipulate them into enriching himself.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
This explains the weird phenomenon of Trump supporters who also like Bernie Sanders. These are people who are desperate for something different than business as usual to be done, but don't know what that different thing should be and don't care.
It's easy to dismiss Trump supporters are morons who can't see he's a liar who changes his story every time it's convenient, just as it's easy to scoff at poor people who buy lottery tickets, which are the last thing anyone short of money should buy. But it's a little too easy for people who are secure and comfortable to demand people who aren't live without hope, even false hope.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
This explains the weird phenomenon of Trump supporters who also like Bernie Sanders. These are people who are desperate for something different than business as usual to be done, but don't know what that different thing should be and don't care.
I think there's a better explanation. I think the overlap in support most likely exposes the artificial, ideologically and politically driven framework imposed on American governance, as well as the belief that policies necessarily need to be ideologically consistent even when circumstances differ greatly.
As an example, why can't you be in favor of "free trade" at a city, state or nation level yet reject it at an international level? The impact of such a policy varies greatly depending on how and where it's applied.
I would say supporters who view both candidates somewhat favorably are rejecting the idea that they must subscribe to a set of policies approved by a unitary ideological choice. I also think they're rejecting a lot of the intellectually false rhetoric surrounding many of these policies. It's only too easy to see that one is being sold a policy in name that isn't it in practice -- how many pages does NAFTA or TPP need to be to implement actual free movement of goods, services and capital? Why does "free trade" need 30 chapters and hundreds of pages to describe, unless of course, it's anything but free trade.
This same political doublespeak extends over all kinds of issues and it doesn't take an advanced degree to recognize when basic facts simply don't align with the narrative being used to push policies. If they chocolate ration masses less today than it did last week, how has the chocolate ration increased?
Trump may be a phony plutocrat and Sanders may be a socialist, but if you're rejecting the establishment political narrative, these are the choices you have.
Our economy has changed dramatically. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad aspect of human nature. The protectionist measures suggested by Trump will harm everyone including the ones supposedly being helped.
That's what the economists say.
One of the things that brought the Roman empire down was all the poor barbarians who wanted in on her wealth. So, they flooded over the boarders and sucked them dry.
Let's look at this as a supply and demand problem. There are billions of poor smart people in the World. If I took the 90th percentile of intelligent people in the World, I can populate the US more than twice over with just geniuses.
Meaning, you can be replaced easily - and I don't care how smart you think you are.
Now, with wages being pushed down, our cost of living won't go anywhere. The bank isn't going to say, "Awe, your job prospects have been decimated by H1-bs. Here, we'll discount that mortgage because we're such nice people."
Food prices are going up.
Our standard of living is declining.
Our economy has changed dramatically in the last 20 or so years. Globalization is proving to be a bust for us little people. The benefits go to the top while we get the crumbs. We never had to deal with a business just picking everything up and going to some third world country, setting up shop and then importing what they make over there. Please, that cheap big screen TV is worthless to me when important things are increasing in cost. We never had to deal before with a company closing an entire department down and sending it all to India or Eastern Europe.
My father-in-law who graduated with his BSME from a public university in the early 60s walked into a job and never had to look for a job in 55 years. Today, he'd have a hard time getting that first job because he didn't go to a top school.
Things have changed and are changing for the worst for us little people.
What can be done? Don't know exactly. But the first step is to eliminate the H1-b program. It is not needed.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The protectionist measures suggested by Trump will harm everyone including the ones supposedly being helped.
This is a bit of a misunderstanding of free trade. In theory, free trade *on balance* benefits everybody, but even with the theoretical best free trade agreement possible, some people are more adversely affected in the short run than others. And in practice, reestablishing equilibrium at a higher rate of output may be difficult to achieve, as argued in an important new paper about free trade [nber.org].
It would be wonderful if there existed policy positions that have all upside and no downside, but free trade does
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't agree with much Trump policy but I hardly agree the protectionism he is proposing will harm everyone. It will certainly harm some, probably disproportionally people outside the United States. It will certainly help some it will allow a certain groups of skilled of American workers to continue in their current vocation for some additional years past the point where it would otherwise have been economically viable. It will marginally increase the cost of production and consumer prices on everyone else in the USA (a hidden tax, if you will).
I am small government guy, but one of the few things I think government should do is buffer the public, where possible for economic dislocations that occur more quickly than the span of a persons usual productive years. If you can effect that with minimally invasive use of law such as imposing import tariffs, I don't have much problem with that. I have long held the position we ought to classify labor as an import and tax businesses on foreign payrolls except where they can show the people doing those activities do not materially contribute to their US operation. Perhaps it could be prorated, for example an assembly worker in a foreign plant earns $100 but only a third of that plants output are sold in the USA than $30 of that wage would be subject to US taxes.
This is a far saner alternative than direct social safety net programs. If you allow the plant in the US to close and the workers to go idle than skills and equipment likely turn into a dead weight loss. If you keep them active its likely they can be retools and converted to other uses, retrained more easily etc. The same thing is true for IT workers. If you send them home into the unemployment-to-underemployment+welfare pipeline are they more or less likely to read up on industry changes and technical developments than if they stay on the job.
Re:The Angry Mob (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things that brought the Roman empire down was all the poor barbarians who wanted in on her wealth. So, they flooded over the boarders and sucked them dry.
This is exactly what is happening to us right now. I'm not racist I am just looking at history repeating itself because corporations are greedy so they are exploiting the H1-B visa system along with hiring illegals under the table to make their companies more money! Not to mention the illegals that come into our country, start businesses, and take money away from businesses that are owned by citizens. I have seen this first hand. I have some illegals living in my neighborhood. They have seven people living in their house so they can afford to live there, and they are running three businesses out of the house: a flooring company, roofing company, and a maid service. These are the problems that can and should be fixed. We need to lock down H1-B Visas, and I'm sorry but I see no problem with putting a wall up between the US and Mexico. It's called protecting our borders, and every country in the world other than the US does it!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They have seven people living in their house so they can afford to live there, and they are running three businesses out of the house: a flooring company, roofing company, and a maid service.
Curse those hard-working immigrants! What with all their small businesses and paying taxes and whatnot.
Re: (Score:3)
Trump vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trump vote (Score:4, Insightful)
It would take an act of God for Sanders to be the (D) nominee. Clinton has a large majority of the super delegates supporting her (I wonder how much blackmail is involved), all she needs to do is more or less tie Sanders. After all, the (D) party wouldn't want the "wrong" candidate to be the nominee, yes? We can't have those silly people picking the nominee, they don't know what is best for them.
Re:Trump vote (Score:4, Interesting)
All it would take is for the DOJ to indite her over the classified Emails stored on her personal machine, or obstruction of justice over destroying Emails on her personal server.
Re:Trump vote (Score:4, Insightful)
Um. If there is a tie, then they will work it out. The superdelegates are the way it's worked out. Frankly, in a tie, I would think it would be appropriate for the party to have a say in picking Clinton. I like Sanders, but he's really not a Democat anyway.
He's really more of a Democrat than Hillary is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trump vote (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd might as well be voting for some third world dictator thug. At least Trump is not a criminal*. That's about what it boils down to.
Given Trump's predilection for Mussolini quotes, his bromance with Putin, advocacy of violence, desire to gut the 1st amendment and love of eminent domain, I'd be careful what you wish for.
*BTW Trump U cuts it awfully close to being an outright scam operation.
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I'd might as well be voting for some third world dictator thug.
Then Trump's your man. [youtu.be]
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No, she is a criminal. She should be in prison
I'm sorry but you are wrong. She has been chased nonstop for 20 years by republicans and she has never been found guilty. If you investigate someone by 20 years and you cannot prove anything maybe there just isn't anything there.
Had you said she sometimes uses shady practices I might have agreed (which politician and/or millionaire doesn't?), but this "she's guilty because I say so" is just empty.
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No mobster stood a 20 year focused investigation.
Re:Trump vote (Score:5, Insightful)
No one, no politician, no white collar criminal, has ever faced that level of scrutiny.
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At least Trump is not a criminal. That's about what it boils down to.
Look up Trump University. Last I checked, fraud is a crime.
Re:Trump vote (Score:5, Informative)
You honestly believe that Trump is going to protect American jobs?
Oh hell no. I'm surprised he isn't having them made in Vietnam or China or India.
No. The question in my mind is simple: Vote for an insider who's lived in the political machine for decades -- wife of a two-term president -- or vote for the crazy outsider who spouts racism, intolerance and a populist message which happens to resonate with a lot of people who perceive the current situation to be the fault of everyone in Government.
Trump's is a powerful message, unfortunately it brings to mind similar vitriol spouted in the early third of the last century by someone who thought like that, spoke like that, and obtained power and carried out his narrow vision.
The difference between then and now, there and here, is our system of government. If you think Obama got cock-blocked at every turn, should Trump win, they'll do the same to him. They'll do the same to Billary, too.
So in a sense, our crazy-ass, broken political machine may well end up saving our sorry asses from our own misguided decisions.
After all.... the top gets rotated to present the illusion of change. Nothing really does change. The president can set tone, inspire and lead (or fail utterly to do it).. but the president cannot simply dictate "build a wall" or "throw 'em all out."
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Why do you think the horses will bolt? To use your analogy, there's still plenty of oats in the feedbag. You think the companies are going to just abandon the US market? Really? I gotta tell you, that's not the most logical of conclusions to leap to. I'm gonna guess you don't actually own or run a business of any reasonable size, do you?
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost as though people can't be made to vote against their economic interests by promising to keep the scary gays away from school prayer forever. Crazy stuff.
Really? You think Trump gives a toss? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do these Americans seriously think Trump gives a fuppenny tuck about American workers? I have absolutely no doubt that Trump employs in his companies whomsoever is (a) cheapest and (b) causes the least trouble. If he is now trying to get elected on an 'American jobs for real Americans' ticket then that represents a level of hypocrisy in him that even I thought impossible in a human being.
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I don't blame him for winning on the terms forced upon him.
#Trump #Winning*
*Paging Charlie Sheen
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With most other politicians, you can pretty much ensure that they support the positions they are espousing. They might not actually act on them once elected for various reasons (for example, they might promise to make something illegal but then realize that the President just can't declare something illegal), but you can be pretty sure they won't flip flop and support the exact opposite position.
Trump, on the other hand, seems to say whatever he wants at the time and has no care whether something is true o
IT Worker Shortage a Myth (Score:5, Interesting)
The "shortage" of US citizen IT workers in America is a myth. Importation of "guest workers" through various means are simply companies on the buy AND sell side of the equation gaming the US immigration system to distort the price of labor. The same could be said in other industries such as farm labor. Adequate supply of labor exists, but the industry is chafing at paying market labor rates.
The beneficiaries of this cozy relationship between politicians and offshore companies who broker IT consultants by the pound are the politicians taking $$$ and the brokers taking huge skims off the top of the rates paid for the guest workers. Meanwhile, both the US citizen workers and the guest workers are faced with lower wages, with the guest workers taking the brunt of the abuse. (Imagine paying half or more of your salary to some broker who's only "value" is to pay off politicians to get you a visa into another country).
Want to start a technology company and don't want to pay the prevailing wages? Then by all means open up shop in China, Eastern Europe, Brasil, India....wherever. I'm sure those countries would be delighted.
Yeah, good thinking. Pick Trump because... (Score:2, Insightful)
...you think he'd have kept you from losing your Disney job (despite the fact that he doesn't actually give a sh** about blue collar Americans once they're done casting votes) - your job is more important that the clear indications that he's a misogynistic racist hot head liar who has bankrupted FOUR TIMES.
This country really has become all about "me." Sure, I'll give up the fourth amendment, and start traipsing on the first - just to make sure some brown skinned guy doesn't crash an airplane with me in it
Re:Yeah, good thinking. Pick Trump because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If slashdotters' "all about me" attitude is any representation of the attitude in the US, America is screwed.
Any political discussion always brings a mass of Randian libertarians out of the woodwork, they don't post in any other discussions but they show up for these. It's almost like someone brings them in on a bus.
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I'll let the 1% go first in BEING AMERICANS who need to EARN IT, instead of finding tax dodges and subverting democracy with their money. Let them be patriotic for a while.
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Apparently you have trouble comprehending what's written. I didn't say anything about there being value in killing, I'm saying there's value in sacrifice for the greater good.
I have no reason to want that woman to lose her job, but her casting a vote for some total asshat is simpler her responding to a feeling of helplessness. It's a selfish vote. It's not illegal. and she's free to vote for whomsoever she chooses.
I'm also free to point out that this makes her an angry, selfish, and more worried about he
Empty (Score:2)
training your own h1b replacement... (Score:5, Insightful)
should be evidence enough that the employer is lying when they say they can't fill a position with an american and they should lose ***ALL*** of their h1bs, those here should be sent back home - not allowed to find a different employer to sponsor them, AND the employer should be prohibited from applying for more for at least five years.
Interesting position for each party establishment (Score:4, Insightful)
Each party is stuck with a toxic candidate in part due to its own rules:
On the Republican side, they really want a way to get rid of Trump, but they chose to select most of their delegates by a reasonably democratic process.
On the Democrat side, they are stuck with Hillary because they decided to create enough superdelegates that they could override the democratic process.
If the parties had switched nominee selection processess, other than not being Trump I'm not sure who they would have picked, but for the Democrats we'd probably be seeing Sanders- or a lot of folks who didn't enter the race because of the superdelegates would have been there to consider.
Anyway, the whole thing leaves me looking at the third party candidates to decide who to vote for instead of Kang and Kodos
They're scared of him (Score:5, Interesting)
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Isn't Hilary winning? Admittedly details get lost in the reporting over on this side of the Atlantic, but I thought she was likely to win?
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Isn't Hilary winning? Admittedly details get lost in the reporting over on this side of the Atlantic, but I thought she was likely to win?
Nobody's winning yet; the primaries are still going. The parties have not chosen their candidates, and polls are not very meaningful this far out from the election.
Today is "Super Tuesday", when a bunch of states have their primary elections. Hillary is ahead in polling vs. Sanders for the Democratic nomination, and Trump is ahead of everyone else on the Republican side. But primary polls are notoriously unreliable due to the low turnout. If the polls are correct, Hillary and Trump will win decisive victori
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Re:They TkRJeeeebs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever considered what it takes to "make your own job" even at, say, a consistent minimum wage level? It's not just that you have to afford the risks associated with competing in a crowded market, but you have an increasingly uphill battle against regulation and having enough to stay alive. It's even worse if you already have fixed costs based on a job that has suddenly gone away - I think you may be severely underestimating the personal financial risk to most people.
The current state of the world economy is such that it is actually very difficult to make your own job and have it be a going concern. Part of it is that we live in such an advanced economy already (close to saturation on most things, unless you get lucky) and are also under a fairly heavy regulatory environment (tax law, ACA, business licenses, inspections, etc.).
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Since when did a country protecting its borders and putting the interests of its own citizens ahead of the interests of foreigners become some buzzword for "evil racism" that every self-righteous liberal now feels the need to decry?
Every country in history has protected its borders and controlled immigration to some extent. Only in this weird modern era is that somehow viewed as a BAD thing.
And yes, when the U.S. was being settled, we were much more open to immigrants coming in. But that was back when we ha
Re:Yeeeeeahaaaaaw! (Score:4, Interesting)
Protectionism isn't good for the economy and won't create more jobs; this is simple radicalized middle-class politics. The ideal is to deceive people via their lack of knowledge, making them poorer and convincing them to worship you for it.
People don't realize *consumers* pay wages, not businesses. If it takes a sum total, through all levels of production, of $350 of paid wages to make a product, then that product costs no less than $350. That's why a cell phone in 1985 cost over $1,000, but in 2015 you can get a smart phone with a quad core processor and 64GB of storage for $300: there were over a thousand dollars of wages funneled into those old, enormous bricks, between mining raw materials and manufacturing silicone wafers and assembling the cases and all. Even if they slapped no profit margin on top at all, the phone would have been over a thousand dollars.
When you reduce the amount of per-unit labor costs to make a product, you eliminate some employment. Eliminate too much in a short time and you get the Industrial Revolution: 80% unemployment and a collapsed economy. Otherwise, you just get a few thousand unemployed and several hundred million (or, globally, several billion) consumers with a few unspent dollars left in their pockets that they didn't have before. Those unspent dollars are a market opportunity to sell a new product or bring a niche product (rich people toys) to the masses; but expanding that production capacity requires labor, so you create new jobs.
In domestic economics, you actually create more local jobs by aggressively outsourcing, so long as your labor balance slides more slowly than your wealth. That is: If 50% of your employment is domestic and you save enough money outsourcing to create 10% more jobs, you have the *same* number of domestic employees if you end with 45.45% of your employment domestic and the rest outsourced. You start with 50 Chinese and 50 American workers, you eliminate 10 American jobs in favor of 10 Chinese jobs, and you get 40 and 60; along the way you find you can sell 10% more stuff, so you employ 10% more workers, and end up with 50 and 60--10 new Chinese jobs overall, more stuff being made for the same amount of money, and the 50 American workers are living a higher standard-of-living because they can buy more stuff since it's all cheaper.
Obviously, if you start shoveling jobs out to China like crazy without creating new American jobs, this doesn't work. Historically, that's not how it's worked; it's not even how it works today. People cry because they say "that person's job was lost to that foreigner!", but they don't ask what happened next. They conveniently ignore that our GDP per capita has gone up by 6.3% in the past two years while expenses have gone up by 4.2%, and ignore that all this mass outsourcing has resulted in unemployment dropping to 5.5% from 8.5% (from a 4 year peak of 10%, even). They ignore that there are more jobs and more *income per person*, and engage in the trade of platitudes about someone losing their job once.
You may as well say that a doctor lost a patient in OR, so we should ban all surgery.
Re:Yeeeeeahaaaaaw! (Score:5, Interesting)
In domestic economics, you actually create more local jobs by aggressively outsourcing, so long as your labor balance slides more slowly than your wealth. That is: If 50% of your employment is domestic and you save enough money outsourcing to create 10% more jobs, you have the *same* number of domestic employees if you end with 45.45% of your employment domestic and the rest outsourced. You start with 50 Chinese and 50 American workers, you eliminate 10 American jobs in favor of 10 Chinese jobs, and you get 40 and 60; along the way you find you can sell 10% more stuff, so you employ 10% more workers, and end up with 50 and 60--10 new Chinese jobs overall, more stuff being made for the same amount of money, and the 50 American workers are living a higher standard-of-living because they can buy more stuff since it's all cheaper.
I see you drank the koolaid.
So I take 10 high paying american jobs, outsource them for 50% cost overseas. Optimistically those 10 high paying american jobs become a combination of 10 mid to low-paying jobs. They're still employed! Yay! Because unless you can prove concretely that outsourcing any high paying job results in a new higher paying job being created, what you're doing is lowering the pool. Your own logic states this unequivocally in that products are cheaper because of lowered labor costs. That only worked while we were over-employed. That is no longer the case, with the total labor force shrinking every year since 2006 [bls.gov]. It's actually worse than that, if you go further back. Then you look at what an individual makes, and that has shrunk if you clip the top couple of percent. Yes, they make so much it skews the entire result set, but take the median 90 or so percent, and you'll see that real earning power has shrunk. The reason this hasn't had the major negative impact you'd assume is because the family unit has gone from 1 to 2 workers supporting the family in many cases, or people are co-habiting more and sharing costs. It's not the rosy picture you're painting for sure.
Obviously, if you start shoveling jobs out to China like crazy without creating new American jobs, this doesn't work. Historically, that's not how it's worked; it's not even how it works today.
It's the only way it's worked. Initially we shipped labor intensive work like textiles out. Then more expensive jobs that included things like EPA restrictions. As the manufacturing base overseas ramped up, it wasn't long before more and more of those higher paying middle class jobs all left, if they could. There were some initial jobs created to build up the infrastructure to support the imports, but once done that number shrank again and now there are fewer total jobs. And lets not forget that the imports don't pay into the federal tax pool, leaving that burden more heavily weighed on the populace, as the production base which used to pay taxes now doesn't.
Re:Yeeeeeahaaaaaw! (Score:4, Insightful)
Optimistically those 10 high paying american jobs become a combination of 10 mid to low-paying jobs. They're still employed! Yay!
Actually, it's not that simple.
When you outsource those 10 jobs to China, the products they make become cheaper. For example: manufacturing a shirt used to require 479 labor-hours pre-industrial-revolution, a cost of about $4,000 at $8.25/hr (my state minimum); today, such a shirt costs $15, or 6.67 hours at $2.25/hr Chinese labor.
Take it in reverse: a cheap t-shirt would cost $55 at local minimum wage. Clothing currently equates to 2.8% of annual household budgets; if, instead, it equated to 10.3%, what would happen to the 7.5% of products each household could no longer afford? What would happen to those jobs?
The answer is not that people would work more. We're not going back to an economy where we used a different technique; we're going to an economy where we've cut back working hours by a high-tech technique, but didn't cut back costs. This prevents consumers from purchasing new products, and that means labor to produce those products doesn't get paid because those products aren't bought, so we just don't hire those people.
This is well-understood economics. I wasn't the first to come up with it; I found out this was called Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage after I designed my models, although my own models are more complete and more reliable than modern economic theory. I focus on macroeconomic form: most economists are bean counters trying to predict the stock market and commodities market, explaining what the so-called value of a particular good should be and what its correct price is; I focus on the broad movement of economics throughout history and the repeating patterns, identifying how wealth grows and what impacts the long-term changes in that respect. I don't care to say how rich we're going to be by doing X; just that X will occur and it will cause some effect to increase or decrease total wealth, employment, individual buying power, or the like.
That is no longer the case, with the total labor force shrinking every year since 2006 [bls.gov]. It's actually worse than that, if you go further back.
We've been in a labor force bubble since 1970 [businessinsider.com]. Housewives gave way to working couples and middle-class families living at an extended standard-of-living (two people work, draw more income, and buy more stuff, living like rich people--we've normalized this, so they're just middle-class). We didn't replace those housewives with maids and servants in every household; on the other hand, we *did* get nice dishwashers, washing machines, and other tools to dramatically reduce the domestic working hour load. Housewives don't have to slave over the kitchen sink for eight hours each week and then spend 12 more hours handling laundry; they spend an hour on these tasks combined and still take care of our domestic affairs. I won't paint a picture where women are now enslaved to two careers, because they're not.
It's the only way it's worked. Initially we shipped labor intensive work like textiles out. Then more expensive jobs that included things like EPA restrictions. As the manufacturing base overseas ramped up, it wasn't long before more and more of those higher paying middle class jobs all left, if they could. There were some initial jobs created to build up the infrastructure to support the imports, but once done that number shrank again and now there are fewer total jobs.
Yet a labor participation rate of about 60% is normal across all of human history, and unemployment rates of 4%-8% in healthy economies span back as far as the Roman Empire. Labor participation rates are higher in poorer societies, yet even serfs had women keeping house and raising children in
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You're operating on a vacuum assumption in your own head without looking at the world around you. You go, "Oh, that doesn't make sense to me, so I'll make up bullshit and claim everything based on solid analysis and understanding is made-up bullshit." It's familiar to me: it's called a cargo-cult. Basically, anything that's not simple is obviously suspect, and anyone who knows wtf they're talking about must have an agenda and is thus lying.
You are reveling in your ignorance and wielding stupidity as
Re:Yeeeeeahaaaaaw! (Score:5, Informative)
I assume only long-term economic behaviors which have operated as such since hunter-gatherer man.
the reduction in unemployment you refer to are people settling for (two or three) jobs as unskilled labor
The reduction in unemployment is per-capita, and you don't get -3 unemployment for 1 person getting 3 jobs. Employment is a function of job availability, not a function of how job-ready the populous is; and job availability is a function of what the populous can buy.
My logic successfully and correctly predicts all gross economic behaviors throughout human history. Your arguments are idealistic platitudes. Particularly of note:
you assume all profits are fed back into the local economy
That's not what happens. Various economic factors drive prices down. Let's explore some.
Competition is the biggest one: either direct (food producers are *common*, so you can't overcharge on food without losing customers) or indirect (smartphones are more popular than Crocs, so you can't have that huge mark-up on Crocs and expect people to buy your product when they won't have money left over after buying a smartphone). Goods with bigger markets--more demand--are more ripe for competition; low-demand and low-flexibility goods and services (rental housing is a notable one; diamonds are another) aren't, and tend to hold bigger margins and drive off price competition more readily.
A special case of competition is supply-chain competition. When GM wants to build cars, they find a contract for, say, 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 5 years. There are a dozen steel mills with that kind of output. Say they each charge $500/tonne for steel. A steel mill makes that steel at a cost of $430/tonne. When approached, the steel mill goes back to the steel ore mine and the coal mine (you need coal to make steel) and negotiates for a contract for massive amounts of ore and coal to ensure it won't breach contract. The same process occurs: the costs of these things drop from $200 of coal per steel-tonne and $150 of ore per steel-tonne to something closer to the *labor cost* of those products. In the end, the steel producer gets his costs down to $230/tonne, and sells steel to GM for $232/tonne, netting a $200 million per-year profit (thanks to the coal miners and steel ore miners also cutting their margins razor-thin to capture a $200 million per-year contract for 5 years--a billion dollar sale they'd otherwise miss out on).
That kind of supply-chain contracting drives prices for things like cars and buildings down toward labor costs.
Market saturation is another factor. 1TB SSDs cost about $200 to make last year, but had a price of $700; now they carry a price of $330. All the early adopters have thrown in their money, buying up drives with huge margins; it's no longer **profitable** to charge those big margins, so Samsung et al have backed down pricing to capture the next rung of the market. The prices will eventually settle closer to labor cost.
Consumer resistance to inflation is another factor. Each year, the amount of income per production increases, causing a rise in prices; consumers dislike rising prices, and so will slow their purchasing. This causes downward price pressure. Manufacturers have attempted downsizing on goods they can't adequately cut prices on.
Let's take some real data.
The Consumer Price Index [usinflatio...ulator.com] shows a general increase in prices per unit good of 0.8% across 2014 and 0.7% across 2015; the CPI for food [usda.gov] shows food has inflated much faster than general inflation, at 2.4% and 1.9%, with home-cooked meals experiencing a 2.4% and 1.2% price increase (eating out became a lot more expensive in 2014--2.9% over the year).
The GDP per capita in 2013 was $52,607.9
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Agreed. I have major issues with CPI and GDP; I consider them rough calculations with *serious* flaws. For this purpose, they're close enough. I don't make a habit of making large economic decisions from precise computations; the numbers generally fall in line, and I assume that line isn't exactly straight but is going in the same direction most of the time.
They're useful when debating economic behaviors, since nobody wants to rely on the backing behaviors. Nobody wants to say, "Gee, we invented all
Re:Yeeeeeahaaaaaw! (Score:4, Informative)
No, colonialism is when you strip-mine the resources of a foreign nation at far below market value, because the foreign citizens lack either the knowledge or power to resist your exploitation.
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Most of the tech you enjoy came about from the Department of Defense.
This, 1000 times. Don't like it? Stop using that digital computer (a product of developing machines to calculate ballistic tables), to post on the Internet (a product of DARPA to create a packet switching network to survive nuclear attack). I could go on and on....
A few years ago Michio Kaku was talking about the decline of funding for basic research in the U.S. since the end of the Cold War. He had this to say:
http://www.goodreads.com/ [goodreads.com]