Post: #126

(06-12-2015 09:30 AM)Peregrine Wrote:  Globalization does not only benefit the Indians that move to America. It also benefits the sweatshop workers that make more money working for Nike than they otherwise would have. That's what I mean by a net benefit on an international scale.

Yeah - and globalization first destroys the local Indian economy, agriculture and small businesses thus creating the need for an Indian worker to become a sweat-shop employee. This is exactly what happened in Mexico after NAFTA was signed.

Economies have to built up strategically and in many cases highly protected just as Japan and China is even now. If you think that the Chinese and Japanese were opening borders to Monsanto and co. like India does, then you are highly mistaken. They protect major parts of their markets with massive tariffs and even bans in some areas.

Post: #127

"he who controls the spice, controls the universe."

Everyone red pill is rooting for house atredies but House harkonnen is already winning(*cough not disney and the bigass companies*cough)...
And house ordos (*cough not china and russia*cough)...eheheheh they are just across the damn pacific, working with house harkonnen...

You can always wish for a miracle if ur romantic but imho.... im too old for this shit.

Post: #128

A combination of Union backed Democrats and Tea Party Republicans stood together in the House today to stop Obama's Fast-Track bill. A bill supported by some very unpatriotic Democrats and Republicans and a few wealthy elites (Zuckerberg, Gates, and more) that would have greatly increased H-1B visa workers and opened free trade up with more Asia Pacific countries.

This is great news for the American middle class.

Post: #129

Damn. Tuth revealing his power level. I agree with most of his post.

Not too long ago I didn't subscribe to politics and all that bullshit. I was working a busperson job at a restaurant and finally 2 years Into college decided to jump Into the field. I started an entry level job in IT just to get my foot in the door. 1 year later my job was outsourced to the Philippines. I wasn't in charge of training but the remaining supervisors were. It sucked.

I spent the next year taking odd jobs and field work. It was rough but eventually I got a decent job in IT and I was looking to move up in the company I was working at. Positions above me were outsourced to India. We lost so many good quality people. Our job now is much more difficult because we have to contact someone in India to get a 2 step process done which now takes at least 5 days.

I know so many people in my field who have lost their jobs and are now taking chump change jobs because of this.

I always thought this type of outsourcing wouldn't affect me because I studied and went to school and actually put in work. I was better than a burger flipper. But nope.

At the time I do feel lik a victim of this shitty system but at the same time also think I need to start globalizing my work. Maybe start a company in another country where everything isn't about greed and corporations.
It's fucked up how companies nowadays including mine promote diversity and women empowerment while undercutting valuable staff and outsourcing to a third world country. They don't give a fuck about me or you. They just care about the money coming Into their pockets at the end of the quarter.

Post: #130

I don't want to waste my time or the time of anyone else on the thread, so I will add value where I can. Most of us are convinced of one side of the argument already.

What I can offer is the perspective of the bottom half of the one percent, the people who end up making many of the capital allocation decisions and who end up deciding that certain jobs should be eliminated, outsourced or shifted to H1B immigrants.

Layoffs/Outsoucing/etc
At a major strategy consulting firm, I made recommendations to eliminate jobs. Sometimes it was to eliminate completely, sometimes it was outsourced to another country. I never made the decision to fire American citizens in favor of cheaper H1B labor. Yes, I always felt guilty about it. No, I never thought the workers who were losing their jobs were particularly hard hit.

Most of them knew the layoffs were coming over a year in advance and others knew they had been dead weight for years and were just waiting for their employers to wise up. Contrary to popular opinion, individuals in corporations are no more competent than people in government, they just have better incentives so dead weight does eventually get cut even if it takes a few years.

By far the biggest layoff I was a part of was driven by technological and regulatory changes. The technological changes made Americans much better off but this particular group of American workers worse off. The regulatory changes were in another country and made it wise to relocate some of these jobs to that country.

Capitalism
I currently make capital allocation decisions involving billions of dollars. This is much easier than laying people off. The clients pay for a certain capital allocation and we deliver it.

The really perverse thing is that a lot of this money comes from 401K and defined benefit pensions. This money is often invested in firms that help to outsource the jobs of the very workers whose pension monies are being invested. Workers can fix this problem. It’s called social impact investing. This area of investing was pioneered by SJWs, bleeding hearts, rich hippies, etc. but there is no reason why average people can’t get into it. Demand investment options that are consistent with your values. Don’t invest in companies that outsource US jobs, or that hire H1B workers, etc. Tens of billions of dollars are going towards funds that invest in “socially responsible” enterprises. There is no reason why funds that only invest in “patriotic” companies couldn’t exist. I suspect there is even more demand for the latter type of fund.

H1B Workers vs My Fellow Americans
H1B workers are generally highly educated, have good family values and have high IQs. I’ve worked with a lot of these people and tend to live in neighborhoods with a relative abundance of people who came here on H1B visas. Compared to average middle and lower class Americans, I have a lot more in common with H1B workers. It’s not that I don’t feel American, I certainly do, I just don’t identify as much with my nationality as I do with my social class. This has probably been true for most people of my social class for a hundred years now, but only in recent history has it been possible to form communities with people from all over the world. If not for dumb luck, I would be one of those people hoping to win the visa lottery.

H1B workers compete with me too, but my concern for fairness overrides any self-interested impulse I might have to try to impose unfair restrictions on my competition. As it is, H1B is an unfair program for both the H1B workers and their native-born competition. I support eliminating it completely and allowing companies to hire anyone they want.

The era of nationalism is coming to an end. Nationalism arose because technological advances made it possible and it did provide many benefits to the societies that adopted it. Right now, only a segment of the population benefits from post-nationalism but I suspect that will change as international travel becomes so cheap that even the working class can afford to do a lot of it.

Post: #131

I have nothing but contempt for cheap Indian IT workers especially the ones used to manage helpdesks.

The level of idiocy is astounding. Beyond stupid level mistakes and being unable to think outside of the box there's also an annoying language barrier. God forbid you didn't explicitly state something.

When i'm king of my company, the first thing i'm doing is closing down all of them. I can name a ton of Americans who can not only do the job better but do it for roughly the same cost as those nitwits.

Post: #132

(06-12-2015 09:30 AM)Peregrine Wrote:  Globalization does not only benefit the Indians that move to America. It also benefits the sweatshop workers that make more money working for Nike than they otherwise would have. That's what I mean by a net benefit on an international scale.

As as a matter of fact such a process as described of lowering the wage level in that form decreases the world prosperity and income of the lower 99,9%.

If a company lays off a IT worker who makes 60.000$ and hires an identical Indian IT consultant for 30.000$, the net savings are 30.000$ for the company. Part of it may benefit the management, but that is small in comparison since high level managers make their biggest part of their money via stock options and they are likely to invest their outsourcing savings into stock-buybacks which might give them a massive pay-off. As a matter of fact this is one of the reasons for the high in the stock market.

Those guys from India who claim that the American making 60.000$ and now having zero income will offset his job-loss via his massive share ownership are completely delusional. That guy must have had millions invested in the stock-market to do that.

So essentially you are making Americans poorer and Indians richer, but finally some 30.000$ are moving from the 99,9% to the 0,01%. Actually only the 0,001% will profit from most of it. Even worse - those super wealthy individuals are not even impacted in their spending habits by making 50 mio. $ or more. So essentially the 99% would have spent it and the money would have made more people richer - multiplier effect. The wealth of the top will just flow to funds and much fewer people will profit from it.

That said - I am not accusing the Indian worker for taking the American's job. You studied hard, you want to have a life and 30.000$ sounds good enough for you. The company gives a fuck about you and you may just as well say to your American brother who trains you: "Sorry mate, but I gotta live too. Wish there were another way."

Also I don't accuse the mid-level business owner who outsources, in-sources (as in this case) or even hires illegals. If the competition is doing it without getting fines, they are going to massacre him on the market as they have a competitive advantage he is not using. Any business consultant must advise so too despite him not liking the situation personally, but business is war and you have to stick to it.

Those who can afford to hire at high cost are few. I met some small Hedge Funds who made 50 mio. $ in profits and the owner even paid lavish salaries to his secretaries. But those guys had a good heart and could afford it, which most business owners can not. International companies like Disney in this case could theoretically do it too, but they are not going to, since they are the biggest shark of all. They rather kill before giving a dollar away.

The situation is shitty, but please - NO ONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND SHOULD DEFEND SUCH CORPORATE BEHAVIOR AS BENEFICIAL! It is not, not for the world, not for humanity, not for the local country - only slightly to the guys getting the cheaper work. But you cannot really defend it rationally, just say that you are trying to make in the world too and the corpo-governments are forcing our hands in what we can do in the current economic model.

Post: #133

I'm pretty heavily biased after seeing so many students in my graduate program that cheat and pass exams from Indian and Asian countries. They literally don't even belong in a freshman engineering course.

Post: #134

Zelcorpion, I think globalization is being conflated with corporatism. What I'm saying is that if someone from another country can do your job for less money, you should have to compete instead of demanding protective barriers.

Globalization is like the sexual revolution: it opens its respective market. Top dudes in either realm benefit at the expense of the average.

Post: #135

(06-13-2015 02:53 PM)Peregrine Wrote:  Zelcorpion, I think globalization is being conflated with corporatism. What I'm saying is that if someone from another country can do your job for less money, you should have to compete instead of demanding protective barriers.

Globalization is like the sexual revolution: it opens its respective market. Top dudes in either realm benefit at the expense of the average.

Go compete within the tax-structure, level of infrastructure, cost of living in a Western country with a dirt-road system of a central African country or even many areas in India. 30$ in some countries is enough to survive for a month while it means nothing in Western Europe.

This "Compete You Bastards!" argument is as mindless as it can come. Why the fuck does a Swede or Swiss citizen HAS TO COMPETE WITH A BANGLADESHI? Who forces them to compete? Enough said.

Post: #136

I was taking a dump at work a few years ago and remember reading this scribbled on the shit house wall:

-They build the mods in Asia (Korean fabrication yards build modular assemblies which are shipped to Alberta and put together here)

-They import Asians to build them here (under the Temporary Foreign Worker program, thousands of foreign workers, mostly Filipino, have worked in the oil sands)

-Then they send all of the oil to the USA (99% of oil sands oil is sent, unrefined to the USA while the eastern provinces import from Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, etc)

OH CANADA!

Post: #137

Quote:Why the fuck does a Swede or Swiss citizen HAS TO COMPETE WITH A BANGLADESHI?

Because that is the way the world is moving. Perhaps I should not have been prescriptive by saying "should compete" just because it is my personal preference.

Post: #138

(06-13-2015 04:45 PM)Peregrine Wrote:  

Quote:Why the fuck does a Swede or Swiss citizen HAS TO COMPETE WITH A BANGLADESHI?

Because that is the way the world is moving. Perhaps I should not have been prescriptive by saying "should compete" just because it is my personal preference.

The world is moving into slavery? Because that's what this "globalization" represents.

Again, I keep seeing free-market dupes defending globalization like it's some sort of invisible-hand in action. This shows the complete lack of understanding these free-market defenders actually have.

Americans cannot reasonably vote in anyone to get rid of minimum wage laws, healthcare regulations, or anything else so they can be employed at wages in India or China. Meanwhile, China and India have no problems purposely pegging their currency to the American dollar so that their currency NEVER appreciates in value no matter how much work their slaves perform. The Chinese and Indian slaves work for shit wages, zero healthcare, and no matter how much work is performed their currency will ALWAYS be worth less than the American dollar because the government purposely pegs their currency to the dollar. For every dollar we have, China makes sure they have 6 renminbi.

This is NOT free market, and if you cannot understand this then please go back to economics 101 and read Adam Smith. FREE MARKETS = FREE CURRENCIES, right now Americans are forced to compete with SLAVE LABOR. These guys in China and India are not living much differently than the Roman or Black slaves did. No matter how much they work, their labor is NEVER rewarded with a tangible value.

I wonder how long before Chinese and Indian citizens wake up and realize they are total slaves and riot for currency pegging to end? The fact is, this is way too complicated of a subject for the average guy in Asia to comprehend, so they keep working thinking they are making money when in reality the government debases their money so fast it is mathematically impossible for any slave worker in China to significantly raise their standard of living.

Meanwhile Americans are bled dry because there is no way to compete with people who are forced to work for free. And any attempts at making our labor markets more competitive, such as removing minimum wage or healthcare laws, are met with "OMG YOU WANT TO HURT THE AMERICAN POOR?"

In theory, tariffs could be imposed on countries that turn their citizens into slaves, but we all know our Corporate masters really enjoy their slave labor. The only thing that will stop this is the bankruptcy of America. Until that day comes, slave on slaves.

Post: #139

(06-11-2015 05:42 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  My experiences working in IT a long time ago in UK:


The way they obtained my labor certificate is a total scam:

Labor Certification

Quote:Requirement for U.S. employers seeking to employ certain persons whose immigration to the United States is based on job skills or nonimmigrant temporary workers coming to perform services for which qualified authorized workers are unavailable in the United States. Labor certification is issued by the Secretary of Labor and contains attestations by U.S. employers as to the numbers of U.S. workers available to undertake the employment sought by an applicant, and the effect of the alien’s employment on the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers similarly employed. Determination of labor availability in the United States is made at the time of a visa application and at the location where the applicant wishes to work.

The employers had to open my job up to the public to show that they 'tried' to hire an American.

To prove that no US resident could do my job, my employers looked at my resume and advertised my job with requirements that almost exactly matched my resume.

They made the requirements so specific that nobody could match it.

Was I the only guy who could do my job? No
Were there any Americans who could do my job? Of course there were!

Bingo.
This is the kind of shit I'll have to deal with too, if I want to get a job in France.
Even as a previous intern in the company, you still have to go that paperwork.
Even though I had the same courses as other French and is about to graduate with excellent marks and internships during all my scholarship.

Post: #140

(06-11-2015 06:54 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  God knows how much money the families get under the table and send back home.

This is money taken away from my future family and prosperity. Screw these people.

What do I do with what I am paid?
I spend what's necessary in food, rent, clothes etc in France, and afford myself some little pleasures casually. I keep some for my future expenses (house, car, etc). I send 1/6 of my (not great) salary to my parents back home who are retired and do not have a lot left after spending most of what they earned in the scholarship of their kids.
Am I taking money away from French's future family and prosperity? Knowing the big majority of my salary will be spent in France?

What's the problem in sending money to your parents back home? It's the least they deserve I think, provided they busted their ass in making you the man that your boss wanted so bad to hire.

Are you unhappy because people of foreign origin are in general less self-centered, less individualistic and more family-oriented?

Becoming American/French/whatever does not mean severing the ties to your country of origin. At least, not your close family.

I identify more with the French culture than the Senegalese one. I plan to become a French citizen in a few years. However I will always keep my family and Senegal in my heart, and if my future company senses an opportunity to open a market there, I will gladly volunteer to ease that.

You have a huge ass list of what you can criticize Indians for, but I don't think helping their family counts towards that.

Post: #141

Samseau, where did I say anything about free markets or the invisible hand?

Post: #142

Samseau, the Indian rupee is not pegged to the US$ unlike the Chinese yuan.

Post: #143

(06-13-2015 05:35 PM)TheSlayer Wrote:  Samseau, the Indian rupee is not pegged to the US$ unlike the Chinese yuan.

In India's case it's the fact there are 6 kids per woman which does the same thing.

Post: #144

Is there a web site that posts h1b applications by company, including job titles and salaries? I remember I found something like that a few years ago, but did a quick google search today and couldn't find any specific information.

Post: #145

Might point out that immigration restriction and globalization are two different things. I'll avoid the first point, because it is outside the permissible range of speech at this board, but I think Japan has a --- system:

Quote:“In countries that have accepted immigration, there has --------------------- there,” [Abe] told the audience, as he held up a white signboard marked with a red “x” to underscore his negative position on the issue.

But even without any immigration of new workers, companies can simply take their capital offshore. If workers from foreign countries won't come to their local plants and offices, they can simply take their plants and offices to the foreign workers. If you removed the H1B visa system, you'd simply see more American companies move their operations offshore, with a similar effect on jobs.

On globalization, it is not at all new. The exploitation of differences in prices has been around since the days of wooden merchant ships and the silk road. It is simply commerce. You can't claim that now 'workers in one country can be displaced by workers from another country more easily', that globalization has just started. There is no difference. If you are producing rugs at $1000 a rug, and a merchant starts bringing them in from overseas for $10 a rug, your job is being 'outsourced' to foreign rug-makers even if you're self-employed.

There isn't any possible mechanism by which this can go away, other than brutal protectionism. All foreign imports are banned, all ownership of foreign assets by local companies is banned, all export is banned (lest capital leak out), all citizens engaged in work subject to citizenship spot-checks etc. I.e. isolate every country from commerce with each other and create a situation ripe for war. “When goods don’t cross borders, Soldiers will".

Then add on top of that the complaints about automation. To avoid that we'd have to bring back the Luddites and start smashing robots.

All of this is simply choking the progress of mankind, on top of the governmental problems it's currently suffering from.

The gutting of the middle-class is not caused by the presence of a free-market (and there isn't one), it is caused by the constitutional conditions I described in my previous post. It is caused by masses of regulation (red tape), deliberately complex tax codes, high and progressive taxes, other bullshit like 'anti-structuring laws' and 'civil forfeiture', general legal uncertainty of 'what you can and cannot do', that raise the bar for an individual to start independent business. Workers entitlements (minimum wage etc) also encourage immigration and offshoring. If an employer has less liberty to hire and fire on his terms in the country he's in, he'll hire and fire elsewhere. And as Friedman put it "illegal workers are beneficial mostly because they're illegal" - they're outside all the bullshit laws. Then you have the fiat monetary system, which exists just to benefit the government, inflation always hits the lower class most and the upper class least, and the middle class get their wages subject to bracket creep and any of their capital gains and interest clipped because "10% capital gain under 10% inflation is zero gain, but you'll still be taxed on it". Then you have the welfare system on top of that. Then you have the ballooning costs of education fueled by government-subsidized student loans, which raises the burden of entering middle-class professions.

America did not become a place with high wages compared to the rest of the world by magic. There are no naturally occurring 'high wage fountains'. It just had lots of space, some natural resources, and free market capitalism. Had immigration been the death-knell of wages, the average American wage would not have steadily risen since the 1700s to where it is today, it would have steadily declined. Same goes for automation being the death knell of employment and wages.

More freedom is needed, not less. Specifically:
- No welfare
- No regulation (common law tort is sufficient)
- No central banking (return to free banking)
- Flat low tax, no special exemptions
- No subsidization, No tariffs
- No playing world police (war is good at making upper class industrialists rich and while the lower class get killed)

Post: #146

^ Which previous post?

Post: #147

(06-13-2015 07:10 PM)Samseau Wrote:  ^ Which previous post?

/thread-48214-...pid1042179

Post: #148

(06-13-2015 04:13 PM)scotian Wrote:  I was taking a dump at work a few years ago and remember reading this scribbled on the shit house wall:

Thanks for clearing that out. Appreciate the attention to detail you put in every post Scotian, I wish other posters would put this much effort and not keep readers hanging.

On an unrelated note



The bottom line for most for-profit organizations is increasing shareholder value. Given that a lot of them have a price-sensitive demographic, therefore they compete on price and not so much on quality. If the company can slash costs while keeping quality barely acceptable, ofc theyre going to do that.

Adapt or die in my opinion

Post: #149

Anyone wanting to learn more about the issues that are being raised in this thread would be well advised to read Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by French economist Thomas Pikety. This work has rocketed to the top as a body of work in the economics conscious regarding economic inequality and the decline of the Western middle class (which closely relates to the realities that have been discussed at length in this thread.)



Pikety's main contribution to the literature on economic inequality (which has been considered revolutionary) is the idea that there exists a "central contradiction" to capitalism: that inequality in wealth will increase when the real rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. Looking at economic data from the United States and Europe going back at least to the 1700s, one can see that the creation of a 'middle class' is not a inherent feature of capitalism, but is instead an anomalous condition that is only caused through state intervention (in the form of higher regulation and progressive taxation.)

Compare the two charts below (taken from the New Yorker):





The period of decreasing wealth inequality corresponds with the historically anomalous position where r<g. Ergo, the lowering of marginal tax rates seen in the post-1970s, spurred on by the rise of supply-side economics, as well as the twin dynamic of a decline in the cost of labour (through globalization) as well as an increase in the productivity of capital (through technological gain) is what is driving the decimation of the 1950-1970's middle class.

The Washington Post has also authored a series of article on growing income inequality that would likely interest many as well:

Part 1: Liftoff and Letdown
Part 2: The Devalued American Worker
Part 3: The College Trap that Keeps People Poor
Part 4: A Black Hole For Our Best And Brightest
Part 5: The Great Start-Up Slowdown
Part 6: What Went Wrong, And How to Fix It

Post: #150

(06-13-2015 05:21 PM)mikado Wrote:  

(06-11-2015 06:54 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  God knows how much money the families get under the table and send back home.

This is money taken away from my future family and prosperity. Screw these people.

What do I do with what I am paid?
I spend what's necessary in food, rent, clothes etc in France, and afford myself some little pleasures casually. I keep some for my future expenses (house, car, etc). I send 1/6 of my (not great) salary to my parents back home who are retired and do not have a lot left after spending most of what they earned in the scholarship of their kids.
Am I taking money away from French's future family and prosperity? Knowing the big majority of my salary will be spent in France?

What's the problem in sending money to your parents back home? It's the least they deserve I think, provided they busted their ass in making you the man that your boss wanted so bad to hire.

Are you unhappy because people of foreign origin are in general less self-centered, less individualistic and more family-oriented?

Becoming American/French/whatever does not mean severing the ties to your country of origin. At least, not your close family.

I identify more with the French culture than the Senegalese one. I plan to become a French citizen in a few years. However I will always keep my family and Senegal in my heart, and if my future company senses an opportunity to open a market there, I will gladly volunteer to ease that.

You have a huge ass list of what you can criticize Indians for, but I don't think helping their family counts towards that.

There's nothing wrong with helping your family out. But if I'm looking at this from the perspective of an economist or policymaker, I have to look at remittances as a loss for the American economy. An American worker will be paid more, thus they will pay more in taxes. It also means 100% of their money is likely to be spent in America. More money spent here means more people downstream getting hired to serve these people consuming here. You'll also have higher paid people more likely to buy homes and pay property tax to cities and funding schools. Rather than 4 Indians living in an apartment in San Francisco who will never buy property. A foreigner makes less, can be taxed for less and a greater share of their money sent abroad. It's an opportunity cost because the savings go to the top .05% who will never pay any taxes. The more wealth flows upward, the less taxes you will be able to get because of their ability to pay at capital gains rates rather than income rates.

Remittances isn't an ethical dilemma, I have no problem with people helping their family out. This is a matter of what's best from a policy perspective during the next round of Silicon Valley lobbying for more H1B visas