[Coldjensens]

Buy a house for $3000 - $7500 and then just leave it when you are done with it. Cheaper than renting.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by Sparrow_temp

they bring in foreigners on H1B visas to do the work

H1-Bs are limited to just 65,000 a year.

Sad story at Microsoft. Because of the ridiculously low level of H1-Bs permitted by the Federal Government, Microsoft has had to open a massive office in Vancouver just for work they'd rather do in Seattle, but can't get immigration docs for the programmers. Those programmers are now spending their money in the booming British Columbia economy rather than the teetering Washington state economy.

If you're pro-American then you'd also be in favor of lifting the H-1B caps so these jobs would stay in America. Not like any of these H-1Bs are coming to work in auto plants in Michigan.

[Sparrow_temp]

There are a lot of H1B's in the place that I work in Lansing. It's not an auto company but rather a well-known telco. If your pro-American, you'd be in favor of eliminating the H1B visa program entirely. If you're not an IT worker, you probably don't care but it's lowering wages in this field and is making jobs harder and harder to come by.

If there's truly a shortage of people, the laws of supply and demand will take care of the issue -- wages will go up and our universities will increase the labor supply. We don't need the government increasing the labor supply from some third world country so corporations can decrease wages and take the jobs from American workers. 65,000 may not seem like a high number until you realize this is per year -- there are now over 1 million visas that have been issued under this program. How many jobs of this type are created per year? Microsoft, Cisco, and other companies who taking advantage of this system should be ashamed. There is no shortage of workers -- this is just pure greed on their part.

[TheseGoTo11]

The two largest recipients of H-1B labor are Infosys and Wipro, both Indian companies. Without the H-1B, the same people do the same work, except they'll do it in Bangalore instead of Santa Clara. So they spend their wages outside the U.S., creating more unemployment in the U.S.

Also not sure why Microsoft and Cisco shouldn't maximize profit. They've got a half a trillion dollars of market value between them. Less profit means lower stock price, and a lot more people out of work as a result.

[scottmi]

I also agree with the idea of a college degree not being as valuable as people believe to be. I'm in a field that was booming in the 90s due to advertising dollars being spent like crazy but now, a decade later, entry level job wages have dropped from the low/mid-40s to high-20s/low-30s...if you can even find a job.

But I also know that's life. The world certainly isn't going to sit still and I think at this period in time a lot of people are confused about how much & hard) they should work and what they're really worth.

For example, baby-boomer parents (people who served in WW2 and were the first to really benefit from social security) lived in a country that did not have to deal with a global economy or high-end/mentally-intense jobs. The big industries were construction, manufacturing and automotive and during this time unions came to power.

A generation later, the baby boomers entered into the country and the world was getting ready to start dealing w/ other countries in importing/exporting of vast amounts of goods and services. Technology & communication had improved significantly compared to the baby-boomer-parents' generation and as a result people left school more educated than ever before. However, physical-labor jobs still ruled America's economy and unions still had a lot of power (although in the 70s and 80s their power started to drop significantly).

Baby boomer children started to really enter the workforce in the mid to late 90s and by this time the world was completely different than the one their grandparents inhabited. Social Security became a laughable means of retirement (I can retire when!?!), pensions/401-k/other worthwhile retirement plans from companies became almost non-existent for new workers, health insurance was no longer a given and unions had all but disappeared (even in schools at public & college levels). College degrees had become so common that most jobs now require them in the same way a H.S. Diploma was your "foot in the door" to most jobs in 60s/70s and as a result, their value to employees lessened dramatically.

Add into the mix a now mature global economy where America is competing against Asia and the Middle East for natural resources and technology jobs and you have one bleak outlook for the whole economy. Oh, and we are still supporting baby boomer parents who retired decades ago wth our taxes (they never paid as much into the system as they got out of it) and we will be paying the enormous retirement costs of baby boomers when they start exiting the workforce in 5-15 years.

...and let's not forget that communication & technology has evolved so much the world doesn't even operate close to way it did during the baby boomers generation. Everything is fast-paced and companies want to be paid now, now, now and employees want instant rewards at almost the same rate. High school graduates are smarter than ever before in how to work with technology, deal with bills, etc. but yet they still aren't smart enough to get entry level jobs in anything other than food or retail work. Credit debt is everywhere and virtually unavoidable in the US and our standards of living have gone so far off the scale of reason because of our constant exposure to the unrealistic media and the 'pounded-into-our-skull' idea that unless you have the best, you're a loser.



Point is, in this whole long rant.....is that America is pretty much screwed for the next decade or so. Until those baby boomer parents are 100% gone our country will be trying to do too many things at once for a non-working group of expensive retired people who are only a drain at this point. After that, generation X- & Y-ers will be screwed for the next 20-30 years paying their social security until the baby boomers die off. It also doesn't help that within the next 20 years the world's economy will have probably evolved yet again to a point where tech jobs dictate money-flow and us dumb Americans will be even further behind other countries that stress better education in the K-12 system to eliminate the need of college experience necessarily.

It's a very complicated scenario and I've already typed way too much...but what I was trying to say is that the people after WW2 had the best quality of life overall (for the time), their kids had it not-as-good and people born within the past 30 years will have to become much smarter & work harder and still won't even get what baby boomers had. Our kids will have it even worse.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

The two largest recipients of H-1B labor are Infosys and Wipro, both Indian companies. Without the H-1B, the same people do the same work, except they'll do it in Bangalore instead of Santa Clara. So they spend their wages outside the U.S., creating more unemployment in the U.S.

Also not sure why Microsoft and Cisco shouldn't maximize profit. They've got a half a trillion dollars of market value between them. Less profit means lower stock price, and a lot more people out of work as a result.

People from India living and taking jobs here send a good chunk of their incomes back home anyhow. So many billions of dollars earned here are being sent ouf of the country in the form of remittances, that money isn't staying in our economy anyhow.

If you pay an H1B visa employee $30,000 to work here and that employee sends $400-$500 a month back home to support family there or instead you pay an American employee $35,000 and that employee has no ties to foreign country, and all his income stays in this country, that's much better for the USA economy.

If there are shortages of educated job applicants, that ought to inspire some of these businesses to provide scholarships and job training to American students.

[Sparrow_temp]

The government shouldn't be helping the likes of Microsoft and Cisco to maximize profits by allowing the importation of cheap labor via the H-1B visa program. It would be far better if the companies were forced to offshore the work rather than muddy the issue by bringing the workers here. There are expenses and consequences to offshoring the work -- it's not a guarantee that it would actually be done.

I'm not nearly as impressed with job creation numbers if I know those jobs are not going to American citizens. There is no doubt in my mind that these H1-b workers are a factor in the wage stagflation in IT and the difficulty some new grads are finding getting a job in the field. Why on earth should the government make things worse for American workers in difficult economic times by allowing the importation of foreign labor? It just doesn't make sense. It's just another illustration of corporate greed and how politicians are bought and paid for.

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

The two largest recipients of H-1B labor are Infosys and Wipro, both Indian companies. Without the H-1B, the same people do the same work, except they'll do it in Bangalore instead of Santa Clara. So they spend their wages outside the U.S., creating more unemployment in the U.S.

Also not sure why Microsoft and Cisco shouldn't maximize profit. They've got a half a trillion dollars of market value between them. Less profit means lower stock price, and a lot more people out of work as a result.

[scarabchuck]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

The two largest recipients of H-1B labor are Infosys and Wipro, both Indian companies. Without the H-1B, the same people do the same work, except they'll do it in Bangalore instead of Santa Clara. So they spend their wages outside the U.S., creating more unemployment in the U.S.

Also not sure why Microsoft and Cisco shouldn't maximize profit. They've got a half a trillion dollars of market value between them. Less profit means lower stock price, and a lot more people out of work as a result.

Don't forget about Incat (owned by TaTa) or Myhindra.... they are big into the H1b thing.