A Job Fair For Jobs In India — In California 309
dcblogs writes "Indian and U.S. companies are holding a job fair at the San Jose Convention Center this weekend for jobs in India. The job fair is aimed at Indian workers in the U.S., but anyone with an interest in working overseas can attend. India is pitched as a 'sea of opportunity' in a PowerPoint presentation about the job fair. That's in contrast to another slide that makes the obvious point that the U.S. has 'barely recovered from a downturn,' with 'signs that it's headed for another.'"
Recovered? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the FUCK are people smoking when they say the US has "recovered" from its "downturn."
Re:Recovered? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "economy" will NEVER recover. It's simply too good an argument to keep wages down "because of the tough times and everybody has to sacrifice*".
*CEOs not included
Re:Recovered? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sea of Opportunity"?
More like "Sea of Things I Don't Have Antibodies For".
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By the methods economists have traditionally used people aren't really important, at least not directly. A "recession" is when there's negative overall economic growth. We're in positive territory now, and have been for a while. To these economists, that's "recovery." The assumption, which has been somewhat true in the past, is that eventually employment will begin to rise. That assumption may not be true this time. Or, at minimum, it may take much longer for employment to rise, and there may be some
Re:Recovered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Need new terms for a lot of things. When unemployment goes up less than expected, that's an "improvement." When less people file for unemployment one month to the next, that's an "improvement." When cutting the *increase* of the budget, that's "saving money."
UGH.
Re:Recovered? (Score:5, Interesting)
An economy is a complicated thing with lots of moving parts. Dumbing down the vocabulary used to describe those parts to accommodate the ignorant it unlikely to help much. "Recovery" even qualified as "weak recovery" may sound too positive to people when it describes a situation with persistent high unemployment. On the other hand it's certainly more positive than the alternative.
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we need to do something about it. First, let's all stop listening to Ron Paul. He means well, but he's living in a previous century. ( the 19th)
The only problem here is, what is the alternative? Should we listen to Bachmann? Perry? Obama? Yes, Paul's got some pretty obsolete ideas (shutting down the EPA is particularly bad), but the alternatives running for that job aren't any better.
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Re:Recovered? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is technically true that the economy has recovered because the GDP measure is terribly flawed. it is defined as:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports - imports)
Note that no distinction is made for government spending financed by tax revenue and that financed by borrowing. In his book, "Leverage" (p. 81), Karl Denninger has analyzed the official GDP data from the BEA GDP Series and debt from the Treasury's "Debt to the penny" source and has shown that when government deficit spending is removed from GDP, there has been essentially no growth in the past 30 years. This is why most of our wages have grown very slowly. The problem is that we have spent our way into a very deep hole that no matter what we do there will be a massive contraction in nominal GDP - a real depression. This is unavoidable. However, digging a deeper hole with with more debt will only make the eventual pain worse.
What we have here is an economy based on the foolish presumption that we can survive when our income and expenses are two diverging exponential functions. Our expenses have been growing much more rapidly than our income and it has all been financed with debt. This debt was used to fund immediate consumption, not to produce the means of generating more income. This is not sustainable for an individual family and is not sustainable for a nation. We now see both Greece and Italy on the verge of collapse. The US is just as vulnerable. The math says there is no doubt there will be a crash. It is only a matter of "when." We do not have the national political will to have an adult conversation about this and plan and carry out the triage approach to spending that will be required to turn this around. The best an individual can do is get out of personal debt and make preparations to survive a nasty situation.
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We're only stuck because of the neoliberal/globalist blinders we have on ... we need to stop caring about global competitiveness, it won't guarantee full employment either. If we really try to compete with the Chinese who the hell is going to consume any way, austerity is necessary ... but it's not sufficient. We need austerity so our economies can become relatively self sufficient (trade balance) giving us the room to rebalance them towards greater overall employment (even if it comes at a hit to efficienc
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Not to throw gas on the fire, but both sides practice this. Observe Ann Coulter who literally demonizes liberals in her book "Demonic". Listen to "hate radio" in the daytime ran by the usual perpetrators, and you will get a major dose of it. Here's a mental exercise for you. Every time you hear the term "liberal" and it being used by the right, substitute it mentally for "Jews", and see if you see a parallel in history. If you find that disturbing do a quick google of the term fascism and compare and contra
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We're stuck with high unemployment unless we can grow the economy faster than before
(Wikipedia) "The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies ... In 2010, Peet, Nørgård, and Ragnarsdóttir called the book a "pioneering report", but said that, "unfortunately the report has been largely dismissed by critics as a doomsday prophecy that has not held up to scrutiny.""
Interesting how the belief that "growth" is a
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Interesting how the belief that "growth" is a solution still is almost ubiquitous.
Our entire economy is based on growth and it's absolutely ridiculous. I cannot offer an alternative but without heading to the stars I think it's pretty obvious growth as an economic model is unsustainable and I do not understand why this is never discussed.
I think you may be confused (Score:5, Informative)
I've not heard anyone say the US has recovered, what I've heard is that the recession is over and that is correct. A recession is a period where the economy shrinks. The US economy is no long shrinking, and has not been for some time now. However it has not been growing fast at all, and it shrunk quite a bit during the last recession, meaning that the economy is still quite far off its peak.
So it is not "recovered" as in back to or above its pre peak level, but it is no longer in a recession, though there is worry it could fall in to another one.
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When the economy "grows" slower than the population, you're still in a recession, because each person has less money, so individual spending power is shrinking. The problem with the GDP measurement is that it fails to take into account population growth.
If the population were to shrink by 50%, and GDP to decline by 10% and incomes almost double, that would definitely NOT be a recession, despite what some would claim.
We are not in a recession - we're *only* part-way through the 2nd Great Depression, and
Re:I think you may be confused (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think this is a great depression I suggest you go talk to someone who lived through the real great depression so they can slap you upside the head and explain to you the vast, vast, differences.
Oh and by your measure, there is still growth. The US has a very low population growth, as do most industrialized nations. It is higher than many other industrial nations (some of which have negative growth rates) but it still only 0.9% annually. In 2010, the GDP growth was 2.9%.
Definitely Qualifies as The Great Depression Redux (Score:5, Interesting)
First, Take out the REAL inflation numbers, and GDP was negative.
Second, the only reason that this depression isn't having the same "misery index" as the first one is because of the greater safety net, and because we caught a lucky break with the weather. Without unemployment insurance and welfare, and the dust-bowl conditions of the 30s [wikipedia.org], it would already be just as bad as the first one.
The "real" unemployment rate - when you take into account those who are heaping on debt by staying in school because they can't find a job, those who have given up, etc. (the U6 measure), and we're into the same range as the Great Depression. The real rate of unemployment in California, for example, is now 20% [msn.com]. Another 5% and it will be equal to the peak in 1933 ... and it's heading there, as cities and states struggle with their own ongoing debt crisis.
There's almost 50 million people on food stamps. And housing is now already officially worse than the great depression [cnbc.com] (and it's going to get wors)
Half of all homes now have a mortgage that makes them unsellable - if there is equity left, it's not sufficient to cover the additional costs of the sale (real estate commission fees, etc). Strategic default is a problem, but another problem is that, without jobs (or only part-time or low-paying jobs), even people whose mortgages are now "ok" are in trouble.
The fact is that any rise in GDP is not being seen by the workers, and hasn't been for more than a decade. Ask anyone who's had to take a major pay cut, or simply can't find a job because for every opening, there are 100 or 1,000 applicants.
Re:I think you may be confused (Score:4, Funny)
I talked to someone who was around back then and he said that things are actually worse. Today, people don't know how to hunt or farm like they did back then.
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My parents grew up in the depression. When you have to use the sears catalog for toilet paper, come talk to me about having it hard. Yes some of the people during the depression could grow their own food. So could you, but you don't because you don't know how. Well neither did most of the unemployed during the great depression. Food typically was about 40% of the living expense back then as well and significantly more expensive than today.
Unemployment was upwards of 50% that means half the country had no jo
hey hey sloppy joes (Score:2)
Unemployment was upwards of 50%
No it wasn't. [wikipedia.org]
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They're called Obama voters.
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We supposedly ended the recession in 2009. Keep in mind, a "recession" is two quarters of negative GDP growth. Two quarters of positive GDP growth is technically the end of the recession.
My theory is that someone, somewhere had an idea click in their head - if we don't hire a whole ton of people, we can exploit the hell out of existing workers and have plenty of people to replace them if they ever get fed up.
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Re:Recovered? (Score:5, Informative)
Did Obama ever actually claim "the economy has recovered"?
Anyway, it's all about how you define "recovered" - some economists argued that the economy had "recovered" once it showed 3 months of consecutive growth. See this businessinsider article [businessinsider.com] for an example of that usage. The man on the street may well argue that "recovered" means the jobless % returns to previous levels, but others are arguing that may not happen at all in the "jobless recovery" [businessweek.com]. So, by what metric is "recovered" measured? Profitability? Employment? CEO salaries? Salaries for everyone else? Economic growth? Consumption? House sales? The deficit? And over what time period is this metric to be measured?
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I remember hearing about 8 years ago that all recoveries are "jobless" initially. Stockpiles of goods and supplies are depleted, and production resumes to fill the supply lines. Underutilized workers stop slacking, and then are encouraged to work harder. Demand increases more and workers do some overtime. As production becomes steady at levels higher that non-overtime work can maintain, then finally more workers are hired (because overtime is expensive and wears people out.)
Thus, the initial stages of a rec
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Social media is a bubble, same as the previous tech bubble, same as the education bubble, same as the stock bubbles, same as the group buying sites bubble, same as the "cloud" bubble. If it fails, it loses money, and if it succeeds, it quickly becomes commoditized and goes from profitable to barely breaking even. It's not like past industries where there were significant barriers of entry.
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There's a huge barrier to social media, because it has almost zero value without people to socialize with. Most other products and services I can use if I'm happy with them, doesn't really matter how many that are not. People try Google+, go "that's neat and all, but all my friends are on Facebook" and return there. Of course if you first lose your position as "the place to be" the same network effects will kill you quickly too, but it doesn't happen easily.
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It has almost zero value even if the whole world is using the same one. Advertisers haven't figured that out yet, but eventually they will.
What makes social networks vulnerable is advances in the same technology that created them in the first place. Once software gets to the point that you no longer need a central "provider" to create and maintain your network of contacts, "social media" will die.
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It's a bubble. Too much money chasing too little long-term potential. And if you thing it's a lasting change, you're blind to the first lesson of history - that the only constant is change. Within 10 years, "the cloud" will be dead.
Nobody will need it when they'll have terabytes of their own storage sitting on their own devices, accessible from anywhere. The sa
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Why do you think IPv6 means everybody will have gigabit internet access to their front door? Those two things are unrelated.
As far as access goes, the last mile is the largest cost by far. The cost of everything in-between is insignificant in comparison. That's why it costs $1/Mbit to get network access in a carrier hotel, and $10 to $100 per Mbit to get access to your front door. The cost to lay the fiber to your home is nearly the same whether you buy 1Mbit or 10Gbps. Why you buy 100s of Gbps at a ti
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I never said they were connected.
IPv6 means that every device has a unique address. No more NAT, you can address your home personal multi-terabyte storage from anywhere.
For home speed, it's increasing everywhere except ... wait for it ... the US of A. Why? Because the telcos have no real competition. Let municipalities get into the game for all comms (tv, voice, net), and gigabit to the home becomes reasonable, because you have 1 carrier, and 1 medium.
At that point, you don't need a data center - S
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I agree the US is dragging behind in comms, but I disagree with letting municipalities be the carrier for the last mile. That creates a completely different sent of problems since you're just making the cost a hidden cost in the form of taxes.
I might have agreed if you said let municipalities lay the fiber, and allow carriers light the fiber (and pay a lease fee to the city), at least that way you're not creating a government run monopoly over the network, that way there can be some real competition carrie
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Invented Almond Joy?
Please spare us the insipid plugs for Almond Joy's! Mounds are infinitely better! Mounds forever!!
That all depends. Becaaauuuuussseeeee...
Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't.
Next (Score:5, Funny)
Indian users complaining about the bad English of all those US based call centers.
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If there were call centers setup in the US to cater to Indian clients then why would they be speaking English in the first place?
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If there were call centers setup in the US to cater to Indian clients then why would they be speaking English in the first place?
Because English is one of the official languages of India [wikipedia.org], and is spoken in every state [wikipedia.org].
-Ster
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No that would be Hindi...
First off because it is the official language and secondly because way way more people speak it in India then English.
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And yet still you could say that still a lot of Indians speak English even if it is significantly less then Hindi, but basically every single one of those Indian English speakers has English as a second language and would rather/is just as comfortable in speaking a Indian language (mainly Hindi).
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Well, it is one of the official languages.
And I sure know many speak it. For instance, they can say in a daily scrum about their code for their chosen task: "it is working fine", and then when someone points out their code does not actually do what it is supposed to do but is just some example they googled up, they can say "oh shit!"
Le sigh.
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But there is a difference with India as a whole and your little Americonized section of it.
Using statistics you can easily deduce that only 10% of the population speaks English and all of them know another Indian language making it quite far down the list in potential universal languages in India.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Work With Indian Talent (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately my experience has been largely negative. It's clear that some of the so-called universities attended by Indian students are paper mills that don't do a decent job of educating them about programming.
There's also a cultural issue. For some reason, many of those I've worked with can't or won't search for internet howto's and help instructions on their own, though they'll follow those instructions if a senior developer sends them a link.
Obviously I've worked with a lot of good Indian developers as well, but there are clearly some cultural differences that can cause friction and frustration.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
We invented languages like PHP and VB because we need many poorly skilled developers for drudge work. If you don't do brain dead easy work, then don't hire people trained for brain dead easy development.
There are *many* shitty universities inside the U.S. too, heck fraudulent education is a growth industry. You'd never hire developers from University of Phoenix though, simply because you already know they suck. Did you ever try asking your skilled Indian colleges which Indian universities are actually good?
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His first day on the job, I was showing him our code base and asked him to do something with a for loop. Granted he's never programmed in PHP but come on, constructing a for loop in PHP is about as simple as can be. He didn't know how to do it, even after readin
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I work in a university (in IT no less) and I can attest to this. It never ceases to surprise me how many students we hire that are computer science majors and know little to nothing about computers never mind how to program one.
That and it seems like anyone can get a masters degree or even a phd if they read enough books and write enough papers.
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cs in indian universities is a huge joke. hell, even other engineering degrees are usually shit. they don't tell you anything about the person than the fact that this guy can work real hard and follow orders. that's the way it is here, i'm afraid. for eg, i'm studying electronics in an indian university (its one of the better ones), and i know more and have more experience in programming than most of the cs faculty here.
i dunno what kind of an issue this is. people here (in my uni) are very smart, they do e
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It isn't about sending them back so there are more jobs here. It is about sending someone you have confidence in back so they can lead a team of low wage developers in India.
FTFA:
Indian companies need experienced people who can step into project management roles up to senior levels, said Bhushan.
The companies are typically looking for someone with eight or more years of experience and specific domain knowledge. The workers ahould have the ability to lead large project teams and run large Web sites, said Bh
Good, let them go (Score:2)
Less competition for the unemployed here.
Work visa (Score:2)
Last I read on slashdot, getting a work visa for India is extremely hard, meaning Americans can't as easily go to India for work as the reverse. Anyone have more info?
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Last I heard, India was like every other country in that if they really want you they'll break all the rules and bring you in anyway. If you have the specialty that they need, all that is irrelevant. Just like here, where we actually have seminars on how to disqualify qualified applicants so that you can hire an H1-B.
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They are looking for Indians to go back and run projects for them so they don't have to pay an agency that handles management. It is cheaper to send someone back and set them up with a $7/h crew.
Um, there are lots of these (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Um, there are lots of these (Score:4, Insightful)
Wage War in India (Score:5, Interesting)
You are more right than you know actually. I work for an Indian outsource company. I was outsourced 3+ years ago. I talk to a lot of the guys over there and from over there. These companies now pay their people the same to stay in India as to come to the US. They used to pay them a lot more to come here. But in the last year or more there has been a pretty major wage war as the different India tech companies pilfer talent from each other at an alarming rate. It has led to a lot of turnover.
But then, I've been approached by recruiters here who want to pay me more than I get now. They are just desperate to oversell my skills (fine, unless they oversell to the point the client thinks they're getting a triple CCIE when they're only getting a CCNP/MCSE), and I currently have the best schedule ever being able to work from home anytime I want. If only I didn't have kids I could be making 30% more than I am now.
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>> If only I didn't have kids I could be making 30% more than I am now.
And keeping 70% more of it!
Best two years of my career (Score:3, Interesting)
I lved in India with my family setting up some engineering teams. Best two years of my career... but also the most challenging, simply because you have no idea how hard it is to adjust to living in a foreign culture until you have to do it.
Of course, if you have a crappy boss, it'll completely suck - like anywhere else..
Nothing new (Score:2)
There have been China job fairs for years (Score:4, Interesting)
Periodic fairs for jobs in China have been held in the SF Bay Area going back to at least early 2009 so this is nothing all that new. The Chinese jobs usually required fluent Mandarin. The Indian jobs might be more approachable for non-Indians since English is the language of the educated class. Not that it matters much to me. I traveled in India for six months and while it is a fascinating place to visit, I don't want to live there.
Indians returning to India is old news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can you handle the truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the US is Marxist/Keyenesian then why hasn't the Gini coefficient gone down? Sweden and Denmark might be called a Marxist/Keynesian fusion, but most of the west is crony capitalist.
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I don't know about Denmark, but Sweden is moving away from socialism towards less regulated free market. They have a long way to go of-course, but at least they are on the right track. If they don't do it, they are facing the same problem as the rest of the socialist world. As to them being 'keynesian', I don't know that for a fact. Sweden at least is an oil exporter. Maybe what they really are is a better way to be an energy exporter economy than say the Saudi Arabia or Russia or most of African exporte
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Sweden has no oil. You must be thinking about Norway.
As for being on a right track, the current craze of de-regulation does not seem to be helping anything.
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The problem for most of the "socialist" world is that they don't have oil ... they require austerity for that simple fact ... no amount of capital,free marketets or deregulation will fix that nearly every facet the productive economy is dependent on oil. They can only produce luxuries while other countries sell them necessities, a poor position to be in. Redistributionism or social darwinism are really orthogonal issues to that of the real problem of the modern world ... peak oil (it doesn't matter if peak
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No, you really haven't ... the thing about redistributionism is that if government really wants to do it, it can. Monetary policy is just a side show, they have the guns ... and if they want to redistribute they simply do it. FDR did it, the French revolution did it .... the current US government simply doesn't ... they go through the motions, they keep old inefficient build to fail wellfare systems going for now, but they are not redistributing wealth faster than it is concentrating ... they are just tower
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"the cure is savings, underconsumption, deflation and debt restructuring."
So ... where exactly are jobs supposed to come from in that scenario? The service industry after minimum wage is removed? (ie. more servants.)
flamebait on slashdot? OK! (Score:4, Insightful)
Globalism is failing because of a lack of minimum wage. Rich Republican cock suckers don't give a shit about one countries economy. All it means is wages drop in yet another country and the value of their investments in the global stock market go up. You dumb ass wrong wing radio listening morons can keep regurgitating bullshit from your born again bigot spin doctors or join the fight. Either watch the lying bastards suck down fat paychecks while leading you into the land of indentured servitude while the rest of us "liberals" [wnd.com] fight from the land of reality or get a fucking clue. Vote for Perry. He knows how to hand the keys to corporations in other countries [zimbio.com] while the people that live in his state fall further into abject poverty. Globalism is going to happen whether we like it or not. The way we don't want it to happen, without something to level the playing field ie. minimum wages and expectations, is the way it is happening. Controlling how it happens is up to us people that work for a living, aka "liberals".
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The only way "globalism" works is for there to be a single government with one set of rules for everyone. If you don't have that you will have China devaluing its currency to drive prices lower. You will have Mexican workers being paid $2 a day in Mexico and being paid $6 an hour in the US - of course there will be stream of people coming across for $6 an hour!
Whereever there is the possibility for arbitrage you are going to find someone to put a deal together. Arbitrage is simply taking advantage of dis
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You will have Mexican workers being paid $2 a day in Mexico and being paid $6 an hour in the US - of course there will be stream of people coming across for $6 an hour!
A global minimum wage doesn't require a global government only a global agreement. It is something the WTO could do but don't because they are a bunch of rich fucker's bitches.
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No. You spun that. Minimum wage keeps rich fuckers from moving jobs to some place that has slave labor.
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No, minimum wage only outlaws some people from working.
NOBODY can FORCE me to hire someone, who is not producing more than minimum wage worth of value after all of the expenses for a higher than minimum wage salary.
If you hire a person, that person has to produce enough value to offset the cost of hiring, all of the associated expenses and he has to produce some profit.
So if somebody produces 6 dollars worth of revenue and he costs say 5 dollars, then the 1 dollar is profit. If the minimum wage is 7.25, the
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If you don't hire people because you don't want to pay minimum wage you should be jailed for your protection. People not being hired for less than minimum wage should toss a tire around your head and burn you alive.
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So if somebody produces 6 dollars worth of revenue and he costs say 5 dollars, then the 1 dollar is profit. If the minimum wage is 7.25, then by hiring that person at that wage instead of generating 1 dollar worth of profit you generate 1.25 loss.
Honestly, in the USA, you would not want to hire someone at $5 even if you could. What kind of work ethic, timeliness, reliability, problems, criminal record, etc. are you going to have to deal with from someone willing to work for that little? Where my wife works, they have people making $8/hr. The turn-over and people issues are ridiculous. You're lucky to find someone willing to get out of bed and come to work for that tiny a wage.
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Only if the minimum wage is universally enforced. If it isn't and one country has it and another one does not then it is meaningless.
Same thing goes if the US were to have a trade agreement with China, India or Chad that workers had to be paid $10 an hour. A French company could go in, get the goods produced with workers being paid $0.30 an hour and ship them to the US - there would be nothing wrong with that and it would not violate any trade agreements.
You see, if there is a possibility of arbitrage it
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Agreed. They have to be global
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When are we going to start requiring congressmen to take basic economics before serving office?
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Yes, industrial revolution. The best thing that the free markets did for the people - allowing the people to be more productive by efficiently organizing land, capital and labor to increase productivity to the point, where under 5% of population could actually feed 100% of it. Allowing hundreds of people to work in factories manufacturing all sorts of products that would have taken tens or hundreds of thousands of people to produce purely by hand before that time.
Making the workers so efficient and producti
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Are you saying that no government regulation was necessary during that period? For example, without the Pure Food and Drug Act, the meat industry would have naturally corrected itself based on market forces? Pardon the pun, but it seems difficult to swallow after what was (eventually) proven true in Sinclair's The Jungle.
Whether the FDA and other agencies have grown too large is a different issue. Some regulation will always be necessary because the basis of capitalism is growing profit by any means nece
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Are you telling me there is a difference between your parties and between your candidates? Are you telling me that Clinton was any better than any of the Bushes or Reagan?
Why? Is it all the wars he went into? Is it the US debt refinancing with variable rate short term borrowing? Is it the bubble that was inflated during his time by the traitorous Greenspan's policy of taking price of money down to 1%? Was it NAFTA maybe? Maybe it was the increase in drug war spending?
But I am not protecting any party, the
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That is why Democrats print so much money, it is the best way to steal from the rich.
- out of all the other stuff, I just want to bring out the point, that in reality the inflation tax hits the poor much harder than the rich.
The rich can shift money from asset class to asset class, sure some get hit with inflation, but the only people actually suffering from real rising prices that result from expansionary monetary base are the poor, who have to spend more and more of their fixed income on the same basket of goods.
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The US doesn't need capital ... it needs oil. The US is swimming in capital, the whole world is ... there just isn't anything worth investing it in, except for natural monopolies and governments (to protect your ownership of the monopolies).
The only end result possible of anarcho capitalism in the absence of economic growth is feudalism (rent seeking will keep concentrating wealth more and more). It's not a solution for the modern world of natural resource limits and automation.
After 2 years of "creative de
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After 2 years of "creative destruction" nothing will have changed about the fact that an US worker would be trying to compete with a Chinese worker with vastly lower wages ...
I think this needs to happen. US labor is less valuable than it's ever been and with greatly weakened pricing power, yet people still want to be paid what they used to be paid. The faster we adapt to the real world, the less painful it'll be in the long run.
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The recession only ended if you were rich enough to get a government bailout. Y
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So you're seriously saying that a race to the bottom is a good idea?
I'm just saying that it will happen. But we can get a better outcome if we don't wriggle on the hook for a decade or two.
It would be tolerable to work for less if the cost of living decreased in proportion to wages, but it hasn't.
Here's an example of the wriggling on the hook, I was talking about. Rather than let housing prices decline to their true values, society has tried with various stupid ideas to prop up the value of housing. It won't work in the long run except to cause a lot of pain.
The recession only ended if you were rich enough to get a government bailout. You can't have a functional economy when most of the working people have very little money. The occupy movement is just the beginning. Things are going to get bad if this keeps up.
The worst thing that could happen here is if the Occupy movement ever becomes credible. Sure it sucks, if you don't have wea
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Re:Can you handle the truth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, the classic mo-Ron philosophy. Ron Paul has zero grasp of economics, much less foreign affairs.
Lets say he and the tea baggers win. He pulls the military off the South Korean DMZ, the Navy aircraft carrier groups mothballed, and out of Pacific waters. Great cost savings. Come a few days later, Kim has invaded Seoul. China still has a grudge against Japan so their carrier fleet now is menacing that country. Taiwan becomes red. Now the West is in deeper shit because 1/3 of the total manufacturing capacity we have is now controlled by hostile countries or destroyed.
Ron pulls out of the Middle East leaving any allies (Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia) to their own devices. Iran starts striking Tel Aviv with rockets, Israel retaliates with nukes, but gets overwhelmed by every country in the region swarming them. Countries friendly to the west or at least not hostile (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey) now have a bloodthirsty mob. Now, nuclear terrorism is going to be a primary threat to the world as a region-wide caliphate expands to threaten Spain and western Europe.
Ron pulls funding from hospitals, Social Security, and Medicare. Now hospitals and charity organizations have to take care of the sick, and we are back to poorhouses that are like African AIDS clinics where a drink of water, much less an IV of useful medication is a rare thing.
Ron sells off government land. Great money maker. Now Yellowstone Park is a privately run resort, with multiple golf courses in between the geysers. The parts of the park that just have animals running around are turned into ranches and deer leases.
The land that isn't turned into resorts gets logged. Ron Paul has been an enemy of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the EPA in general. Can't have people living in a country without acid rain.
So, after a while, the US starts looking like a post apocalyptic hellscape, even though the economy went up for a bit. Any areas that had old growth forests are gone, other land becomes toxic waste pits due to strip mining and contaminated water tables. Classic farmland gets taken away from families and handed to big agribusiness. Soon, the US doesn't even have the ability to feed itself (think the Irish Potato Famine where there was plenty of food, but England took it all.)
Don't forget Ron Paul's stance on national security (or lack of one). Once his defunding policies take hold, the drug cartels wouldn't just be a border menace, but would be happy to set up shop in cities, just like the mafia did. I'm sure local businesses would love to be paying an additional protection payment to the Spanish speaking people with the teardrop tattoos in most US cities.
Wow, what a utopia! I wonder how many people would love to live in a place with no national parks, lead in the water, a nuclear threat from foreign combatants whom we have no intel on due to no troops in the area. Any useful resources (rare earths), we will have to beg a Chinese-Russian coalition for. Of course, national security will be shit because the Army doesn't have enough boots to keep order when some town gets nuked.
I sure want to raise my kids in a country where I have to pay for a symbol on my house so the FD would come, a transponder on my wrist so an ambulance would actually stop, and where I had to pay the police to investigate a crime a la Heavy Metal. Schools? Screw that. The kids can have the luxury of working on farms as migrant workers, mines, or spend their lives in jails if they can't get work. Keeping people in prison for life helps private corrections, so that is important for US business. Literacy? Being able to read a contract and refuse signing is anti-business. Have to stamp that out.
Ron Paul's version of the US is a country full of robber barons worse than Carnegie and Frick. At least they left concert halls and foundations behind. Modern day CEOs leave nothing behind.
Ron Paul appeals to those who have failed economics, civics, and government in high school. I have yet to see someone who has any form of formal education champion his crap.
Re:Can you handle the truth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, the classic mo-Ron philosophy. Ron Paul has zero grasp of economics, much less foreign affairs.
- yet he is the only person in gov't who understands enough of it to build up a portfolio, with minimum gains of 300% and maximum gains of 2000% based on his ... 'misunderstanding'?
He pulls the military off the South Korean DMZ, the Navy aircraft carrier groups mothballed, and out of Pacific waters. Great cost savings. Come a few days later, Kim has invaded Seoul.
- first of all, yes that's a real cost saving, because USA has no money.
Secondly, South Korea is plenty capable of protecting itself. In any case it's non of US's business.
China still has a grudge against Japan so their carrier fleet now is menacing that country.
- all that China needs to do in fact for US to stop its militarism is to stop funding it.
Seconly, Japan is plenty capable of protecting itself.
Thirdly, Chinese rather trade with Japan than fight a war.
Lastly, it's none of US's business.
Taiwan becomes red.
- right. Why don't you attack them preemptively? The failed Vietnam war shows just how misguided the approach of proliferating the 'righteousness' of US ideals is, and now USA is trading with Vietnam.
Now the West is in deeper shit because 1/3 of the total manufacturing capacity we have is now controlled by hostile countries or destroyed.
- maybe it's good for the West. It now will have a perfect reason not to pay the debts back and to re-invent its own productive capacity. There you go - instant jobs.
Ron pulls out of the Middle East leaving any allies (Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia) to their own devices.
- terrorist attacks against USA stop. USA stops funding people that caused 9/11 (with money stolen via inflation and borrowed from China). That's just terrible.
Iran starts striking Tel Aviv with rockets, Israel retaliates with nukes, but gets overwhelmed by every country in the region swarming them.
- Israel has over 300 nukes. USA has nukes as well, if anybody attacks Israel with nukes it will immediately destroy the opponent and I am sure that Ron Paul would go to CONGRESS and ask the AMERICAN PEOPLE if they are willing to DECLARE A WAR.
What a fucking amazing concept, Anonymous Coward, isn't it? Who are you, Dick Cheney? How is bloodsucking going for you, you heartless prick?
Countries friendly to the west or at least not hostile (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey) now have a bloodthirsty mob.
- Way to mix Saudi Arabia and Turkey into one crowd of 'non-hostile' or 'friendly' countries.
Again, 9/11 was FUNDED by Saudis, you fucking shit.
Now, nuclear terrorism is going to be a primary threat to the world as a region-wide caliphate expands to threaten Spain and western Europe.
- no no, you are Bill O'Reilly, aren't you?
Ron pulls funding from hospitals, Social Security, and Medicare.
- unfortunately that's not his platform, so you are a lying (what else is new).
Now hospitals and charity organizations have to take care of the sick, and we are back to poorhouses that are like African AIDS clinics where a drink of water, much less an IV of useful medication is a rare thing.
- More Bill O'Reilly.
Ron sells off government land. Great money maker.
- BETTER than the status quo, where the coal and gas and oil are extracted from these lands without ANY payments of any royalties. That, of-course, and all the moral hazards of the government setting liability caps and limitations while sniffing crack off toaster ovens and fucking with the company's executives.
Now Yellowstone Park is a privately run re
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Both China and North Korea are nuclear-capable countries with 1M+ strong armies. US army can't defeat a handful of towelheads in Afghanistan. It's completely useless against North Korea or China.
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Yes, let's get rid of all our protections.
A lot of those protections, protect rent-seekers. For example, some agricultural subsidies might "protect" the US food supply in some useful way, but they most definitely protect the big agribusinesses and food processing businesses.
And as others have noted in the Chevy Volt story [slashdot.org], many countries have become nations of cowards. A few less protections would help us recover from that.
Re:Can you handle the truth? (Score:4, Insightful)
On thing to remember when evaluating those costs. It's not usually the big bad corporations, the villains of the morality play that usually bear those costs. They have the resources to comply with the regulations and in many cases welcome them as a barrier to entry protecting them from competition. The law preventing BigFoodCo, Inc. from poisoning children (like they really want) is at worst a minor inconvenience to BigFoodCo. They do what's required, file the paperwork, raise the price of milk by a few pennies and turn to some other scheme to fulfill their goal of poisoning children. The people who bear the cost are potential entrepreneurs who look at the costs and decide it's not worth it. Or those that go for it but end up bankrupt because the costs of compliance were too high. Or, those who don't comply and get caught like organic coops [theepochtimes.com] and Amish farmers [liveleak.com] raided by the police and FDA for selling raw milk to the tree hugging hippies who want it. Note that in the California case selling raw milk is legal, but they didn't have all the proper paperwork filed.
Re:Can you handle the truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if not the EPA who is going to regulate ... you can say they do more harm than good, but we have plenty of object lessons in third world countries of free market inspired environmental destruction to say that some government agency has to keep the externalities under control. Maybe market forces could be incorporated more, but someone still needs to make the regulations and police them.
A factory owner will never have a contract with every person on the planet breathing the air he pollutes, contract law can't solve everything ...
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Any industrial activity pollutes ... who is going to determine when continuing industrial activity should only require compensation and when it is simple beyond the pale? Is it going to be the judges making pure value judgements every single time? Without a value judgement all you would be left with are absolute property rights, with any single downstream property owners able to close down a factory. In the case of AIR that is everyone, any kind of economic activity (including agriculture) instantly becomes
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You work with RMS?
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A race? No. An educational system? Absolutely! There seems to be something badly wrong with teaching in India. There is a huge difference in quality between students I've taught who went to school in India and those who went to school elsewhere. It can't be genetic, because the ones educated out of India seem to have the same spread of abilities as everyone else.
It seems that Indian education teaches you to memorise a large problem-to-solution map, and if the problem is not an entry in that map then
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So according to a two American political organizations, US is among the top countries chosen by being favorable to American companies? Stop the presses!
Regardless of the messenger's origin, the message describing the disparities between the US and India is still true. Talk to any random Indian living permanently in the US or in Canada, or Germany, or Japan. They love their country and the relatives they left behind, but they'll tell you that this is true, and that they have chosen to stay abroad permanently so that their children do not grow and/or get educated there because of those disparities.
Economics is not the only factor middle-class, college edu