Posted on 03/12/2008 8:59:01 AM PDT by PreciousLiberty
All the money the Gates Foundation is spending in other countries could be used to train people right here in the US.
Some of the best engineering and software engineering minds I’ve known have been Russian or Romanian who could barely speak English. Indians have better English skills and there are many who are as good as the Ruskies (needless to say, there are many good native-born Americans as well)
He wants to feed the starving babies in Africa but chokes on his canoli when asked to pony up a little more for you. That’s a liberal human for you. Makes me kind of want to tell em to go to hell when they ask me to fight for them. Maybe they can get the Indian call center guy or starving baby to fight for them.
I mean think about it. We were told how a rising tide lifts all boats and it’s good to foster a middle class in places like India. Oh yeah? So we can pay 110 buck a bbl of oil and rising? A rising tide of oil demand. I guess since the S&P has been logging terrific returns it’s all okay.
/sarcasm
At the same time those same controls serve to make it difficult for intelligent and highly educated people to get into the country.
Those are the two problems that have to be fixed first.
They came up with that device because we'd long ago abandoned any sort of rational basis for immigration and moved to what's known as "family reunification".
Look, if we need Ph.Ds we need them. Someone else's "need" to bring in his mother, sister and niece should not be prefered above "our need" for quality folks who can provide positive input to this country.
The H-1B visa is the biggest scam. Indian companies have rigged the system by placing offices in the USA and staffing them with their own “H1-B” recruiters. These Indian recruiters then discard any American-name sounding resumes in favor of their Indian counterparts...thereby bringing in even more of them. These are the companies that blew the quota up on the first day. Wake up, America! I bet if the H-1B program was disbanded completely that suddenly these companies like Microsoft would “find” American workers to do the job.
The reality is that if we don't get the best minds here in America, they will go to work for overseas firms or start their own in other countries. Just considering India, most American based software companies already have a large presence there.
Bill is wrong, though, when he says, "the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields." Stop by any American college and one will find a large proportion of the students are from foreign countries, especially at colleges that focus on the engineering sciences. If our education system is so "broken" why do so many foreigners send their sons & daughters to American schools at considerable expense when they could more cheaply have them educated in their own country?
“’Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields. “
That much can’t be disputed.
BS...
There are pleanty of skilled High Tech workers in the US... Companies just don’t want to pay for them.
Why pay 100K+ for an employee with all benefits in the US when you can shell out 30k or less per employee in pakistan or india....
Gates is as bald face a liar as I’ve ever seen, he should have been a politician.
He probably meant this at the school level.
“However, there are millions of Americans who are qualified in spite of all this nonsense. Like those who finished school a few decades ago.”
When I was still at IBM I saw them lay off many Americans while hiring H1b’s because they couldn’t find Americans to do the work. It’s against the law and IBM is lying but nothing can be done because they’re just too powerful and our government does not care.
Hmmm. Believing in free-trade doesn't mean believing in unfair trade, or turning a blind-eye to those that cheat. For trade to be truly free, it needs to be based on an equal footing.
Besides, it's not like Gates and Microsoft have any major competition to deal with since he has a virtual monopoly in PC software market. What competitors, domestic or foreign, is he going to lose business to if he had to raise prices a bit in order to raise wages and satisfy his stock holders?
It's also Ironic that the most rapacious, predatory capitalists are always liberal. Gates, Soros, et al.
"When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid one against another, in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Gates seeks to artificially increase the labor supply through outside sources to depress wages. Even the great Adam Smith would have a problem with what Gates is doing.
"The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is a necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
"The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditions than where they are low." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
What are tech salaries?
Bill Gates is a turd who doesn’t want to pay Americans a fair market wage.
He’s talking about the shortage of high skill workers. They don’t get low pay.
Don't try injecting actual facts into the discussion!! Go along with all the idiots who tell each other people with advanced technical skills make $12 an hour! There's just thousands of people out there with advanced technical skills who companies won't pay more than that - that's why they outsourced it instead. The engineers all went into selling insurance or working at Walmart or they accepted the $12 pay or something. They'll tell you.
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