<p>"> but everybody will have less purchasing power and standard of living</p>
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<p>Fine with me. A good chunk of the rest of the world has lived with this
for decades."</p>
<p>A good chunk of the world lives with dirt floors, no clean water, and barely enough food. So you don’t mind living in a 3rd world country? Why do you not mind seeing your quality of life diminish? So that the Wall St. crowd has more money to buy bigger houses and more yachts?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly… because engineers don’t make minimum wage. Far from it. How is this supposed to be considered insightful?</p>
<p>As for the article, you should generally refrain from using editorials as a basis for an argument. As economically sound as it may be, I would be willing to bet that some economically conservative person could come up with an equally valid argument to the contrary given the complex and only somewhat understood nature of the economy. Two equally competent economists will often arrive at different conclusions. Forecasting the economy is only somewhat easier and more reliable than forecasting the weather.</p>
<p>I am not sitting here advocating lowering the minimum wage, but I certainly don’t think it should be raised any more.</p>
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<br>
<p>What does this have to do with the minimum wage? It appears that you
are admitting that you have a strawman.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Been there, done that.</p>
<p>You apparently don’t get out much.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Wall St was decimated after the mortgage bubble crashed. You didn’t
read about all of the financial workers suffering with tuition bills
in the parents forum?</p>
<p>
Two sides
Either the healtcare there is better and the patient is rich?
Another problem is organ surgery. A lot of people can’t wait to be on the list here in State(which is like forever!), and they were told they can get the surgery done at another countries, like India.</p>
<p>Normally I don’t use editorials, but that one was wirrten by a Nobel prize winning economist. Not exactly a weak source. Also, the Federal Reserve did a similar study and came to the same conclusion:</p>
<p>Why Minimum Wage Hikes May Not Reduce Employment</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/ACFA7.pdf[/url]”>An unexpected error occurred.- Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta;
<p>“A lot of people can’t wait to be on the list here in State(which is like forever!), and they were told they can get the surgery done at another countries, like India.”</p>
<p>That’s because in the US it is illegal to sell organs. A lot of these organs that people buy overseas are bought on the black market.</p>
<p>“Wall St was decimated after the mortgage bubble crashed. You didn’t
read about all of the financial workers suffering with tuition bills
in the parents forum?”</p>
<p>And Wall St. got bailed out.</p>
<p>I don’t care what prize you win, if your editorial starts out with “Conscience of a Liberal”, (or Conservative, it doesn’t really matter), then it isn’t going to be credited as an unbiased source. Besides, I am sure he didn’t win a Nobel prize for that article. Just because Feynman won a Nobel prize in physics doesn’t mean I would take his word on things like relativity.</p>
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<br>
<p>What does that have to do with the jobs lost on Wall St?</p>
<p>My point was that your willing to take lower pay and live a lower standard of life, not knowing that the extra money you would have made will go to the people on Wall St. who caused the recession. Would you rather that money be in your pocket or the pocket of Goldman Sachs?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We live well below our means and have done so for decades.</p>
<p>If you want to live a happy life, work on the things that you can
control and don’t get angry about the things that you can’t control.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>It is in my pocket. But through another route.</p>
<p>If you think that Goldman is printing money, buy Goldman stock.</p>
<p>I would like to see less money going to the GOV. There to many people playing the system, and getting handouts.</p>
<p>We need smaller GOV.</p>
<p>Small government in action:</p>
<p>[No</a> pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn - U.S. news - Life - msnbc.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/]No”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/)</p>
<p>Homer,</p>
<p>Small Government is better. I do not need the government to tell me how to eat, when to sleep, or how to use my money…Big government sucks.</p>
<p>Government is the problem.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That story has nothing to do with small government. The firefighters didn’t put out the fire because the home wasn’t in their district and didn’t pay the fee to get out of district protection. Would you expect a car insurance company to pay for your accident if you didn’t subscribe to their service?</p>
<p>Does it suck? Yes. However, they didn’t pay taxes to the town or the protection fee, and therefore didn’t have a right to the service.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Completely agree here. Would you pay your neighbors’ children’s tuition bills? People don’t work for free. If people were stuck in the building, then I would say it would be an ethical dilemma but in this case, I don’t think they did the unethical thing.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>True but people value their own lives over social justice. If they did not recieve the illegal transplant organs, someone else would. Again, I am not advocating the process. Besides, STD drugs were tested on unconsenting South Americans in the 1950’s [source not available] but does that mean that if one has an STD, they would not use that drug (if they were intelligent, they would not sleep around and get the STD to begin with, but still). </p>
<p>Do we not wear clothes made in sweatshops by third world residents living in bad conditions and buy oil, minerals, and manufactured goods from corrupt and authoritative regimes which use coerced labor? Of course we do. I am not saying this is right but this is human nature. Even liberals (who would advocate otherwise when it comes to other peoples’ lives) would compromise on social justice when it comes to them, their family, or their kids.</p>
<p>saw this article today about disappearing jobs and thought of this thread. SOmeone please clarify the distinction made in this article between a computer programmer and a sw engineer. It looks like I and along with many others am the former.</p>
<p>[disappearing-jobs:</a> Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110958/disappearing-jobs?mod=career-worklife_balance]disappearing-jobs:”>http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110958/disappearing-jobs?mod=career-worklife_balance)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>also,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Haven’t you heard again and again that everyone has called this recession of the last two years the greatest since, but not including, the great depression of the 1930s? Seems like this has been characterized by everyone as something more distinctive that 'just another recession in the market economy ‘s cycle’. Why did we spend a couple trillion of dollars in bailout in our country, and another sevderal trillion in Europe to keep this thing from blowing up even more?</p>
<p>Was there ANY kind of bailout to ANY segment in the recession of the early 1980s? Most experts that I have heard believe without the bailouts that we did during these last two years, we would have had an even higher unemployment rate that the 80s. WHat I heard from the likes of Warren Buffet and many others , in fact, is that without the bailouts we could have gone to 25 pct. like the '30s. In fact we did the bailouts as proactive measures based on extensive research into the 1930s.</p>
<p>ANother point about UNemployment: the (almost) bigger issue is UNDERemployment. THAT figure has been pegged at 25 - 30 pct. I’ll try to find the back up, but I have heard said again and again. YEs, I can get a job next week - at burger king as a fry cook (probably); and if I make manager of the store in three years, I <em>might</em> get up to 40 to 50 pct of what I was earning as a computer programmer.</p>
<p>(continued from a timeout)</p>
<p>Or how about the big one for us IT guys - HOME DEPOT (it is funny how many I see over there, pathetically trying to explain the use of some tradesmen’s tool; I come out and ask - have you been downsized? Invariably , I get a yes; I saw a bagger at the grocery store , too, the other day, this very intelligent sounding older looking guy, a 50 something easily; I bought a hard drive at fryes recently from this Indian fellow; also sounded very intelligent, a little gray at the temples ; I knew more about the tech details of the drive than he did and I asked him - were you cut ? yes. He worked at Lucent and was a manager of over 90 systems he told me. As I walked away with my HDD, he ran up to catch me to put his ID number on the $59.99 drive for some kind of commission , I guess.</p>
<p>I get a fry cook job or the like, I have to completely tear asunder our home, our family. I am not prepared to do this just yet, but we are getting there.</p>
<p>Underemployment, like unemployment, is bad for the US since it significantly reduces the dollars put back into the treasury for common expenditures.</p>
<p>For the last example I also want to remind you all that when I mentioned Indian people taking over floors of American workers, I meant Indian nationals, and not the ethnicity. ALso, I mean no racism at all. I loved those guys that I worked with actually even tho I was training them to take my job. We shared a similar love of work and pride in doing a good job. I don’t like the higher ups.</p>
<p>Last election I voted for Nader. He was the only one of the three candidates that had teh right view of H1B visa/ outsourcing.</p>
<p>McCain = No limits to H1B visa. MNC have the right to do whatever the heck they want.</p>
<p>Obama = status quo or increase them (he also voted in the past when he was a senator to increase them)</p>
<p>NAder = said we should decrease the H1B limits. He took a particularly global view in his explanation. He said the rampant outsourcing from developing countries such as India tends to drain the brains of their country to their country’s detriment while it at the same time promotes a downward spiraling of wages in USA (see above, for example). It lines the pockets of the few in power , all in all.</p>
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<p>The team that creates Microsoft Developer Studio: engineers. The
people that use Microsoft Developer Studio to create programs for use
in their own company: programmers. The latter category is a little
fuzzy as it can depend on the size and scope of the project, the level
of formalization of the project, how it is developed and maintained,
and the level of complexity and difficulty involved. The typical
programmer will not know how to write a compiler. The typical engineer
will have either taken a compiler course or have the necessary math
background to take a course or learn it from a book.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We have a lot of problems from a financial and economic perspective
but from the perspective of how people are living their lives and
surviving, it’s not as bad because of our social safety nets.</p>
<p>We spent the several trillion dollars and it has been relatively
painless, right? Someone pushes a few buttons on a computer and we
have instant cash. I’ve watched the Federal Open Market Temporary
Operations for many years and always marveled that they would create
billions and tens of billions in money out of thin air every day.
Getting up to trillions is a natural exponential growth of that
currency manipulation.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I do not recall bailouts in the early 1980s. Back then the idea is that
you let the economy crash so that the imbalances got cleared out which
meant that the economy could get going again. Everyone remembered how
bad it was so that it would take a long time until the next recession.</p>
<p>I would suggest that you study Kondreytieff Cycles. Alan Greenspan was
well aware of them and bragged at how he would overcome K-Waves. Well
he got his chance and did delay the onset of the Kondreytieff Winter
but we can see that K-Waves still essentially work. Basically human
nature and generational cycles mean we get a cataclysm roughly every
three to four generations.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The Labor Department publishes multiple unemployment numbers and the
numbers, including discouraged workers, is around 17 to 20 percent.
That may also include those that self-identify as underemployed.</p>
<p>A job is a job. It may not be ideal but it puts food on the table.
You can have a snobbish attitude about work or you can take what
you get to get to the next job. I’ve worked many jobs and a bunch
of them were minimum-wage and below minimum-wage jobs. I value all
of the experiences that I gained from those jobs. You do what you
have to. Nobody deserves a job unless they create their own.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Hopefully he saved something from his position and rewards from
Lucent. A coworker’s husband worked there and was laid off back
during the tech crash. He had undergraduate and graduate engineering
degrees. He went to a local state university and got a certificate in
a different kind of engineering, worked a few temp jobs and is now
working full-time. He had a problem, made a plan, executed on the
plan and is reaping the benefits.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We have a residence in another country where the economy is doing
significantly better than it is in the United States although things
are going quite well in my state. The cost of living is far lower
there than it is here. It’s not bad to have contingency plans. Do you
have a five-year plan for your household?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>It is better than no employment at all.</p>
<p>The Federal Reserve has been talking up Quantitative Easing for a
while. The markets are anticipating more information in the Fed’s
November meeting. It appears that the Fed may try to print our way
out of the recession. If so, the gateway for this will be the
moneycenter banks.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’ve worked with people from around the world since the 1980s. Some
were from Eastern Europe, some from Western Europe, some from asia
(many countries, not just India). There has been international
competition for domestic jobs for quite some time but it intensified
in the 1990s. </p>
<p>I’m happy with my managers. My managers are all older than I am and
appreciate the issues of the older worker. I also appreciate the
executive suite at my company. They make the decisions that have
made the company successful and they do seem to care quite a bit
about the engineers that have helped to make the company successful.
Do we use employees around the world? Sure. But that’s something that
we all have to live with.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The politics subforum is under the parents forum.</p>