<p>I posted the source on page 2. It’s a 2002 Computer World article. </p>
<p>“Simply allowing something to happen (in this case, for a foreign-born worker to be employed in this country under a voluntary, private contract) is not a subsidy, all other things being equal.”</p>
<p>So it costs the government no money to run the H1B visa program? What about all the govt. workers who must be paid to administer the program?</p>
<p>Tom, I agree that the industry shouldn’t solely control and write the rules and regulations that govern it. However, at the same time I don’t think it would be wise for people who are not knowledgeable in the field to do so. There has to be a balance somewhere.</p>
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Only if US is Singapore - total leadership from the Lee’s family, then as a business family that work out. Otherwise, they will either find business-sided engineers, or crazy scientific dreamers. However, I do respect the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu.
He is damn intelligent, and he balances science, engineering, and reality. It is very hard to find another one.</p>
<p>Or you can have a scientist elected as the president, like Germany, the prime minster was a physicist.</p>
<p>I don’t think one person would solve the problem, no matter what position he or she holds. What ideally has to happen is the general public need to be educated in (insert public policy issue here) so they understand why certain things have to be done. Does the average American really know the state of this country’s infrastructure is and how much we depend on it? That’s a tough massive undertaking, so IMO, educating politicians is the next best.</p>
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<p>I believe the general public is aware of the poor infrastructure after the disasters in the past 5 years. The president and the congressmen, said so much about their plans to bolster the economy. One initiative is to renovate the infrastructure. Part of the federal aid that NYC received didn’t really help to create jobs at all.
[City’s</a> stimulus money going toward public-employee payrolls, entitlements not job creation - NYPOST.com](<a href=“http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/timulus_fails_to_get_the_job_done_tq7hwmrNCvyQSEvSufOMKL]City’s”>http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/timulus_fails_to_get_the_job_done_tq7hwmrNCvyQSEvSufOMKL)</p>
<p>As you can see, while the aid isn’t specifically for renovation (that’s why the state and city government can use it whatever purpose they want), the money that was used for the construction went to the contractor’s pocket instead.
I am sure even if the aid was meant for renovation (meant for it), the law makers can figure out a way to “steal” part of the aid to assuage the financial challenge that the state and city is facing.</p>
<p>The problem is that we put hopes into politicians, and think they will make magic out of the worst. We want to bring in more good people, but even they did get elected, as soon as they hit the congress floor, these good people realize politics isn’t so simple. You go through layers of negotiations. I asked a question earlier but nobody answered it: about engineers and the budget and business department.</p>
<p>So we want to bring in more educated folks. So when they realize that we need to renovate the infrastructure across the country, they will make another pork barrel bill.
We can’t blame it. These representative have to return something to the district they represent. This is how our society works. </p>
<p>Maybe we should stop the endless STEM initiatives, and the minority initiatives. Instead centralize one single initiative for a specific field. That can save a lot of money. But the politicians will not buy this plan, because this plan has two side effects: increase unemployment rate (a lot of people are employed under these initiatives), and they will be blamed for losing grants.</p>
<p>Re: OP</p>
<p>I don’t think that it is an issue. Engineers’ interests are aligned with society & government’s interests. Our society is pro-business & pro-technology. The government spends a lot of money on technology research. We don’t really need engineers to be politicians.</p>
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Even with some of the more publicized incidents happening recently, there are still plenty of people who don’t want to put money into it. By the time an infrastructure project is complete, the politician who supported it and lobbied for funding may very well be out of office. The general public doesn’t see poor infrastructure as an immediate danger so they don’t consider it to be a priority as long as it is still functioning. </p>
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If it went to the contractor, then there is a reason for it. The owner doesn’t just give the contractors whatever they want; they review the work in place each month and give a percentage of the contract value to the contractor based on that. Other possibilities for the increased cost are delays due to ownership or change orders (such as due to unanticipated subsurface conditions).</p>
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The reason there are a lot of negotiations and debates is people don’t agree on what is best. If everybody thought infrastructure was so critical and in such a bad shape, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.</p>
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I can’t answer that one. The civil engineering firm I used to work for didn’t have a separate “business” division. Engineers managed their own projects and costs and everybody was supposed to help out with marketing and soliciting future work. Nowadays I work for a construction management firm, so that question doesn’t really apply to me now.</p>
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A National Infrastructure Bank would fix this problem, if it gets created.</p>
<p>Every friggin’ interest group says the same thing. There are few congressmen with economics background (80% lack this!), and business backgrounds, and ethnic backgrounds…even seen one referring to lacking ‘community college’ background. Good lord.</p>