The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage 392
walterbyrd (182728) writes in with this story that calls into question the conventional wisdom that there is a shortage of science and engineering workforce in the U.S. "Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce."
Links (Score:4, Insightful)
Why link to an article about some studies that "prove" common knowledge is false, instead of linking directly to the studies themselves?
Is it journalistic courtesy?
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You mean "Thanks Obama and Bush and Clinton and Bush and Reagan!"
Re:anonymous coward (Score:5, Insightful)
It has to do with far, far more than just visas and immigration policies, it has to do with all the policies backed by these administrations (and the Congresses during their terms) and their cumulative effect on the American economy: NAFTA and other trade policies, wars, defense spending, spending on research (or lack thereof), corporate welfare, and on and on.
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I'd agree, but the article summarizes a collection of studies, so is a work by itself. To skip the article, you'd either need to just link a number of studies and skip any useful summary of them, or you'd need to reproduce the summary in the article (which would be plagiarism, or at least wasted effort).
Re:Links (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. While some may not appreciate this, it's the compilation and interpretation of the links that provides value.
I learned this, first hand, when I had opportunities to read published "classified" documents as part of my military duties. My first thought was, like, "No Shit Shirlock...this is common knowledge." The information sources that were cited in the paper were all public domain or common, open sources, and readily available and even were the subject of discussions I had made with my peers. However, it was the analysis of the information, the common threads, and the meaning the analyst derived from that information that made it a classified document.
The point I took away from this article is not that there is not a shortage of capable works. Instead, it's a shortage of capable workers willing to work at the salaries and rates being offered. The VISA opportunities, as stated in the article, have enabled positions to be filled with qualified individuals at a substantially lower cost. In many cases, the job positions are created with the specific goal of filling with someone offshore. While this works out well for corporations, Sadly, this puts American workers at a serious disadvantage since they still have to live in this environment.
I have no qualms with hiring someone from overseas who has a passion for the work and willing to work for a little less. I do have issues hiring someone just because they can do it cheaper. My experience is the latter costs more in the end while the former can be a great bargain. Nonetheless, I still would prefer to see those jobs go to Americans first, those with passion second, and finally qualified but lower-cost last.
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary; it's a shortage of companies willing to provide on-the-job training and the salaries and rates necessary!
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not really. Companies are complaining about lack of supply and are unwilling to do anything about it when they hold most of the power and have most of the resources. They want to treat people like dirt and they're surprised it's biting them in the butt.
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The point I took away from this article is not that there is not a shortage of capable works. Instead, it's a shortage of capable workers willing to work at the salaries and rates being offered.
The full answer is that there is a shortage of capable workers willing to work at the salaries and rates necessary to keep the jobs in this country. The US had a huge head start in the IT field because most of this technology was invented here, but the benefit of that is slowly dwindling. It is similar to the manufacturing benefits we had when automation pioneers like Ford invented their processes in the US. But we are in a global marketplace so eventually all fields need to justify their compensation on a
Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wanna install windows 8 on 100 machines ?
Nope
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Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Informative)
Rather difficult to say. In some countries, the term/title "Engineer" has a specific legal status and requirements, which this guy apparently doesn't meet.
Perhaps he's a "craftsman", but this whole issue is a ten-beer discussion.
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Perhaps he's a "craftsman", but this whole issue is a ten-beer discussion.
I'm so tempted to troll the world with "Software Craftsman" on my next batch business cards! I never got my degree, so I'm not an "engineer", but I'm past the "programmer" level. I'm a developer, but the word "developer" doesn't convey much meaning to the world. "Craftsman" on the other hand... at least they'll ask what the hell that means :) I'm not a cubicle drone, so that works out nicely.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Informative)
My father had no college but was a certified Master electrician and plumber, he did need a certain amount of experience and had to take multiple exams. After he was unable to physically do the job every day they still kept him as foreman until he retired since it meant the company was not required to pay the state for some permits and they didn't need to pay for the state to have a certified master inspect the job.
In order to become any kind of craftsman you usually have to go through some type of apprenticeship with exams and at the end be certified by some authority state or otherwise.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Funny)
...so that puts a plumber ahead of a programmer in terms of genuine credentials. A plumber is more like an engineer in this regard than a programmer is.
That certain special faction of the peanut gallery will just LOVE that. '-)
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Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because there's a fine line between coding and designing. A design done in such a way that it is too expensive to code is not a realistic design. For realistic designs, it helps to have coding experience. Similarly, merely following specs for coders negates their influence on design when they spot an efficiency or feature that should be reflected back up into the design. I think this is what you intended to say.
For the GP: "one programmer in C++, in Fortran by another one, and in LISP by a third one". Nah, this should be "one programmer in C++ and/or Fortran and/or LISP". Good coders can use just about any language given a bit of experience with it, and these mainstream languages should be known by anyone who calls him/her self a coder.
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Your reply is a little ambiguous .What about programmers who design and code ? .
The coder/designer would be an Analyst/Programmer. However, the title "Engineer" is both a very specific one (referring to someone who maintains and operates an engine), and also a very generic one (a catch-all title for people trained and *hopefully* skilled in the design/construction of various types of machines or structures - Mechanical Engineer, Civil Engineer, Electrical Engineer, and so on).
I would suggest that a programmer or analyst/programmer is a specific class of engineer.
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Do they have a professional engineering license?
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Funny)
There's no clear distinction between design and code any more
Looking at the code produced by the agile teams here, this is unfortunately too true :(
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, the lack of distinction between design and code makes the distinction between engineers and programmers even more clear. "Making it up as you go along" is exactly the opposite of engineering!
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You can be really good at what you do, be very well paid and not be an engineer, but if you call yourself an engineer, or just let it be thought you are one you may one day get a visit from the said associ
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What you're talking about is a Professional Engineer. Often there will be many engineers working on a project with only one PE to sign off on it. As for requirements on calling yourself an engineer, they are state based, not universal.
clarify Professional Engineer licensing (Score:5, Informative)
A few misconceptions in the above: (speaking for California, here, where I'm licensed)
1) a degree is not required; 6 years experience with reference letters from other Engineers is. Some fraction of college can serve as, I think, 2 years of the 6, if it's the right courses, etc.
1a) passing a pair of day long tests is required: Fundamentals of Engineering (formerly EIT), typically before you start working; and the actual PE exam, which is field specific (e.g. Civils take an exam on concrete and steel; Electricals look at EM fields, control loops, and logic design, etc.), and which you take after doing your 6 years.
2) It's not a professional association/order (although such do exist: IEEE, CSPE, etc.): it's a license issued by the state (Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, in California; similar in other states), just like Bar Licenses, MD licenses, etc. The BPELS can take your license away if you seriously screw up. There's a delightful newsletter that comes out with all sorts of examples of struck-off Engineers which make you ask "What were they thinking that this would be ok to do".
3) PE "wet stamp" is really only required for a limited set of things: building plans is the best example. The vast majority of engineers in California toil under what is called the "industrial exemption": you're not personally liable for stuff, the company is. Product design, for example, is usually under the exemption.
4) There are laws about the use of the title Engineer in certain contexts. I can put up a sign advertising myself as an Engineer (because I have a license). Someone without a license cannot, and must call them self a "consultant" or some such. There's subtlety too, in some states (e.g. California) about "title" and "practice". The former is using the title Engineer (e.g. in advertising) and the latter is about doing engineering (e.g. designing buildings). Some kinds of engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) are actual practice areas: as an Electrical branch PE, I can't do Civil engineering work. Some kinds are just titles: Petroleum Engineer or Traffic Engineer, and are essentially flavors of one of the "big 3".
There's also rules about whether one can practice engineering in another state, and that is, of course, state by state dependent, and whether one has to get licensed there (with or without a test, etc.; but almost always involving paying a fee).
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Re: Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have degrees in both civil engineering and computer science, am a licensed EIT, and work as a "Software Engineer." The vast majority of "Software Engineers" are indeed not true engineers.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Informative)
That effect is because it takes so long to get to the front of any field, which I suspect you know. However, each field seems to do its damnist to exclude members of other fields or prevent one subfield from influencing another. Academia promotes this sort of fraternal organization and pisses on any cross-disciplinary researchers. In most companies, however, one is almost required to be cross-disciplinary at PhD level. I do not mean to imply that academic should be training PhDs for industry, but they cannot all get tenured at some university. So in the looking out for the well-fare of their graduates, they should be promoting cross-disciplinary research.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder... maybe that's why you don't see a lot of ninja proctologists out there.
Re:Want to know why PhDs can't find work? (Score:5, Interesting)
> If I had a dollar for every professor whom I have met who shows up on campus at 9 a.m., teaches one lecture, takes an hour for lunch and leaves campus at 3 p.m. thinking that he has put in a full day of work and who actually believes that the smartest and most capable people work at universities, ...
I have a STEM PhD. I do not know a *single* professor who did that. All of them worked longer than 9 - 5. I have not even heard of a faculty member who puts in less than 40 hrs per week, not the tenured ones and certainly not the ones on the tenure track.
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No there isn't. If you really wanted a fresh kernel you would have plenty of people to choose from. Same for hard core numerics. Lots of smart people want to do that work, but sadly there isn't much of it to go around. Many people work quite cheap for those jobs (at least for awhile).
I did VMS internals back in the day. Hard core, big fun. When VAX work dried up, life was quite uncomfortable. I don't work on internals any longer because I won't hitch my career to a specific hardware platform again.
Pu
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There's a huge difference between "lots of people want to do that work", and "lots of people are qualified to do that work" I'm sure if you put out a job posting, you'd get hundreds of resumes. But 99% of them would be completely unqualified to do the job. The few resumes you got from people who were qualified would be from people who were already employed, and they would probably just be looking to move up in payscale, rather than getting away from a bad job. T
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's certainly no shortage of lobbyists in Washington crying to Congress that they need more indentured servitude licenses (aka H-1B visas).
Summary misses the interesting points ... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a lot more to this article than the mythical labor shortage. There is a discussion of the complexity of the issue. That includes things like labor market cycles, shortages in some specializations with surpluses in many, the cost of misinformation to graduates, and a fair bit more.
To the summary skimmers, this article is probably worth your time.
Looking in the wrong place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Looking in the wrong place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. When there are shortages in a free market, you can see the shortage from the rising price. It's an objective, quantifiable measurement of the shortage.
Do STEM salaries indicate a shortage ? That is, are they increasing at a rate beyond other areas ? I don't see it.
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
The authors agree:
"Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations."
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Yet, whenever someone talks about raising H-1B limits, there's the inevitable concern about how the flood of cheap labor will drive down salaries. The other perspective is that STEM salaries are already overinflated, and bringing in foreigners will keep labor costs at reasonable rates.
Steady salaries just indicate that any disparity between labor supply and demand is also remaining steady.
Huh (Score:2)
Is it me, or does "a shortage of workforce" make no sense at all?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a shortage all right.. (Score:5, Funny)
I think you'll find that defining "properly" in this context runs into the same critique you made about "shortage".
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This will work for a while when there are jobs available, but eventually this is just going to dump a lot of graduates out into the world with poor job prospects and mountains of debt. The empl
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I would phrase it slightly different: There is a shortage in willingness to pay.
Re: There's a shortage all right.. (Score:2)
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Time shift (Score:4, Funny)
We had plenty of qualified workers back in, say, 1997 when the internet first boomed.
The economy was strong as ever.
Can't we just pretend it is 1997 again?
Shortage of *good* scientists and engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
everyone Shouldn't go to college (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shortage of *good* scientists and engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
Sturgeon's Law all over again. Which itself was a somewhat embittered re-observation of what had already been seen in the Pareto Principle (ratios may vary somewhat).
The saving grace of that is you don't need 100% of your staff to be rock stars. There's room for the stars, the supporting cast, and even a few janitors, and that actually makes a lot more economic sense, since those of us with star talents are neither being efficiently used when we have to do the grunt work nor likely to be very happy to so so.
What it more telling is that companies these days typically don't attempt to take their existing assets and train them to become worth more, they want to hire in new people who can "hit the ground running" - trained at someone else's expense, and if the existing people cannot be found a place, they're summarily discarded. Along with their accumulated knowledge of how the business works and how to efficiently support the business.
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I don't think training is the panacea you're implying. The problem is that there are people who are just untrainable, I really don't know if this is because some people are genetically dumb, whether it's a social thing whereby they're brought up with an unchangeable attitude against taking anything in, or whether it's simply because they don't have a genuine interest in the topic and so can't actually bring themselves to learn anything about it even when the opportunity is thrown at them.
Given this, I can s
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You forgot one category of "untrainables". Those who are simply too lazy to try. They are legion.
But I'm not referring to untrainable people, I'm talking about the unwillingness of companies to train trainable assets, expecting to profit off someone else's labor and expense.
It didn't used to be like that.
If it's really true that the ratio of work needing top-notch talent to the supply is that out of balance, I have doubts that higher education stepping in will help. Since without anything else changing, run
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"About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects."
Good programmer and good designer don't dovetail as neatly as you seem to think. Someone may be a first class at writing code and designing algorithms, but useless at the overall design of the project so there is no way they could be a software architect. Conversely , plenty of shit coders make good overall architects.
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Unless you are doing hard CS and actually cooking up unique algorithms I have never observed what you are saying to be the case. Frankly as far as most software goes if its designed well it mostly codes itself.
If the coupling and cohesion is correct, the components are mostly simple enough there are only so many ways you could code them. Modern IDEs solve most of the style and discipline problems of yesteryear.
I have seen plenty of shit code, but its mostly shitty because its spaghetti, there is lots 'co
Code's itself? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, well-designed stuff is easy to code - if you are a solid programmer.
It's amazing how many people carry the qualifications of a programmer, but can't actually code their way out of a paper bag. Abstraction, interfaces, any sort of advanced design pattern, and their eyes glaze over. By the time you break it down enough for them (write a method that takes a, b, and c - do d, e, f and return g), you'd have been faster writing the code yourself.
Of course, you also get crappy design, but that's a whole 'not
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If that was true, it would show in rising salaries for those jobs. Companies don't believe they can continue to attract a sufficient number of employees, by paying wages which have stagnated for a decade.
I know there are horrible inefficiencies in the recr
It's all about cost (Score:2)
For any skilled profession the resource availability usually dictates what the wage price would be for that resource. The exception being lawyers and healthcare because they've been given a licensed right to charge prices outside of market forces. When Businesses look at labor costs they always want the cheapest price because usually labor is the highest cost by percentage, meaning anything they can do to drive that cost down is thought to be best for the bottom line. That's why H1-B Visas exist, not be
Glad to hear it! (Score:2)
My total compensation as a qualified Engineer is similar to the average compensation for a doctor. I think that's reasonable. It's very hard to fill positions right now.
CEOs and lobbyists cannot find engineers? (Score:2)
Granted, the vast majority of CEOs and lobbyists are good at what they do, but their jobs do not involve finding an engineer. The lobbyists do not need engineers, and the CEOs have minions who can find engineers for them. I suspect that the typical CEO thinks that an engineer is a cross between Dilbert, middle management, and a random faceless guy with a pocket full of pens and bad personal hygeine plus the social skills of Sheldon Cooper - "if all those factors are not present, the person is not an enginee
Business as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a business as usual so far as I can see from what companies claim.
There's no shortage.
There's a shortage of highly competent, high producing, years of experience individuals willing to work for peanuts.
Everyone else needs training, which companies are no longer willing to pay for. In some magical fashion, employees are just supposed to be hired and become immediately productive.
This is not conventional wisdom (Score:5, Informative)
This is political wisecrackery with no legitimate basis to back it up. Congress has been informed for over seven years that this is an untruth. (Here's an article in Businessweek [businessweek.com]from all the way back in 2007 citing a study done by the Urban Institute [urban.org] debunking this myth.
This information has been reported to Congress on both the floor and in committee hearings. (Sorry, at one point, I had an old printout of one report supporting this statement. I can't seem to locate it, either in paper form nor on Google.) Congressional leaders willingly refuse to accept this truth, simply because there is more to gain politically by not accepting it. (Huge amounts of money are circulated by lobbyists in support of political agendas influenced by this...opening up more H1B visas, for example.)
Its just a bit more complicated. (Score:2)
The issue can be experienced first hand by anyone in a big tech center trying to build a team or expand one.
Finding people isn't too hard. Finding good people, at a price where there's SOME return on investment (that is, as much as you'd like to, you can't pay everyone 7 figure...but you can still pay them high enough to all toss them in the top 2%, and still be looking), is really hard.
If you put your office in the middle of nowhere, you won't have enough people. If you put it in a tech center, you'll be c
define 'shortage' (Score:2)
Shortage of cheap, pliable engineers (Score:2)
Look at highest paying jobs to find the shortages (Score:3)
CEOs vs actual capitalism (Score:3)
As companies grow, it's more profitable to buy legislation then compete. The move to expand the H1-B visa program is a perfect example. The best employee is a slave. The closest we get to that in the USA is an H1-B serf. CEOs across the board will try and purchase legislation that reduces their labor costs by insuring a supply of imported serfs, since remote serfs often prove to be less useful.
That's the reality. Anything coming out of the mouth of a CEO or a media company(s) where that CEO sits on the board, is simply self-serving noise.
With inflation in china and india, give it 4-8 yea (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.
Lies, thy name is McKinsey and Company and McKinse (Score:3)
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Informative)
We are full on socialists, have been for many many years and the socialists in charge seek only to confiscate more and more of the wealth of the citizens.
You have no clue what it means to live in a socialist society. So stop putting completely inapprobriate labels everywhere just to appear alarmist. The U.S. is capitalist. Pure and simple. With a very small amount of socialist icing on top. I've grown up in a socialist state. To call the U.S. socialist is akin to calling snow black.
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Arguably, social security @ 15% and Medicare, most states add in sales taxes @ 6%, local property taxes, fuel taxes; no 60% isn't that far fetched.
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I think the alternative minimum tax kicks in at some point and imposes a (hefty) flat tax structure.
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Once you're making enough money though, you can start using 'tax efficient' accounting schemes to avoid paying anything at all.
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Social security is regressive, and once you make over about 130k you stop paying on your further income, which would apply to the stated 200k+ example the previous poster noted.
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Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
You just don't know how it is when a farmer is blackmailed to join a farmer's collective by having a truck outside his house all night with a running engine, shining the beams into the bedroom. When his son is put in jail for trumped up traffic violation charges, and the charges will only be dropped if his father joins the collective. You don't know how it is when a private owned print shop just doesn't get any paper, because the order for new paper was put back and back and postponed again by the state owned papermill. You don't know how it is when you can't rent out your house anymore, but you are required to report all available appartements to the municipal appartement administration which then will send you whoever people they allocated the appartments to.
Stop your clueless musings about how socialist the U.S. would be. It just isn't true.
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That's not socialism. 80% state ownership, heck if you have that then you might as well have 100% ownership, wich as we all know is full on communism.
Nope, socialism means the state owns the means of production, communism means the state has vanished and the people own the means of production. Socialism is a transitory phase towards communism.
What Americans call "socialism" is actually the welfare state built by "social democrats" which may employ similar methods as socialism does but which has a completely different goal - it's goal is to maintain a capitalist economy and soften it a bit to make it more bearable. It is a concept that you Americans co
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:4, Informative)
And no, you don't still have a clue. You come across like the american jews in the 1930ies and 1940ies, who told their European brethren who could barely flee: "we also had hard times." Yes, there are regulations in the U.S. and there are taxes. That doesn't make the U.S. in any way socialist. The municipal appartement administration has no comparable counterpart in the U.S.. The owner of a house under the municipal administration can't enter any contracts anymore. Not even necessary repairs. He can apply for repairs at the office, but the administration will determine the time, allocate the money, will hire the craftsmen (or send their own), and oversee the execution.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Informative)
Repeat after me: No private ownership or private control of production means. As long as most of the production means ownership and control is private, you simply don't have Socialism. You can call me Euroweenie or Hans or whatever, but you still are wrong. Swearwords don't change that.
Choose a new swearword for the situation you don't like in the U.S. or be prepared to further be called for misunderstanding and misusing the word Socialism.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the truth comes out. Why is it that every time someone gets up in arms about Socialism, or regulation or taxation it turns out to be about the government taking your money and giving it to those people? You know why the state has to do that, Cletus? Because Capitalism can't seem to provide enough for everyone.
Capitalism is an economic system concerned with bringing goods and services to market at a profit for the capitalist. That's it. It has nothing to say about making sure everyone gets fed. It has nothing to say about whether people in a society have a roof over their heads, or safe roads to drive on, or a fire department, or help when they are sick, or courts to redress their grievances, or are discriminated against. It's an economic system, not a governmental system.
You may not like how the government is run, but the minorities and the poor are not the problem. Sure, the government takes some of your (and my) money to support some of those people. But that's only because Capitalism doesn't do it. Society is more than economics and commerce.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The U.S. is capitalist."
Perhaps your time in whatever state you are from has clouded your view some?
What us capitalist? Wikipedia tells us "Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy."
We do have private property ownership here in the states, but then you are allowed to own private property in Europe, in Russia, even in China, are you not?
We are taxed here at all levels, income, sales, property, capital gains, death. Local, state and federal. These taxes pay for all manner of social programs from food stamps to SSI (it's a tax), Obamacare (medicare/medicaid), unemployment, I could go on. And this is a progressive tax, that is those who earn more are taxed more, excluding of course those elites who find themselves very powerful and connected to the state decision makers and this get themselves out of these things. These people exist but they are not large in number, basically unless you are very poor, or very rich you are paying anywhere from 60 to 80% of what you earn to government in one form or another.
And for all that we live in a society of regulations from cradle to grave. You cannot buy a light bulb without the permission of the state. You cannot buy a toilet without the permission of the state. You cannot wash your car without the permission of the state. Your food must pass the inspection of some nameless faceless beauracrat. Likewise your medicine. Your clothes. Your home. Your car. Your barber cannot cut your hair without a state license.
This isn't capitalism, not by any stretch of the imagination.
And by the way, I am not trying to attack you in any way, I have no doubt whereever you are from it is also highly socialised. I am just trying to make the point that so many "progressives" and liberals (a terrible word but it's what people here use) constantly accuse us of being "evil capitalists". We haven't seen the free market here for generations, and every year taxes go up, government get's bigger and individual liberties go away.
I don't know about you but I rather liked the whole "freedom" thing we used to have.
You seem to be confusing an economic system with a governmental system. Your definition of Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy. I don't see how any taxes or regulations negate that. Even with all that stuff, the US still has an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy.
Or do you mean that the trade and means of production aren't really in control of their owners because those owners must comply with regulations and pay taxes? Many (not all) of those regulation were enacted to solve problems. I actually like that my food is inspected by some faceless bureaucrat; likewise my medicine. In such a complex society we need rules and regulations to maintain a standard of quality, safety and responsibility. You may counter that we do not achieve that, and I might agree. But not everyone is an honest or virtuous actor. There is an old saying that if men were angels, we wouldn't need government. I agree with that. I would love to eliminate government. But men are manifestly not angels, and they act in short-sighted and selfish ways. Capitalism without regulation is the Devil's playground, as has been demonstrated time and again. I don't see how those regulations make it not-capitalism.
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When the returns on capital are used to buy representation, extend time limited legal protections and defend monopoly positions you no longer live in a capitalist society, it could even be argued you no long live in a democracy. So pure and simple, the U.S is ......
Fascist? Corporatist? An oligarchy? A plutocracy? Ok, I'm out of guesses...
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Not quite. Corporations are quite happy to lobby for increased government interference when it suits them. They want the government to stay out of their way but they are more than happy to lobby for measures that increase government meddling in a way that harms competition.
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So you're saying they want to raise taxes on bazillionaires back to where that pinko Eisenhower had them?
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Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, you don't believe in education either, or you wouldn't spell "global" as "globul" or "religion" as "religon". Tax rates in the U.S. are well below those of other countries. That alone doesn't make the U.S. not-capitalist, but it does put it in perspective. Yes, the company tax rates need to be adjusted, that usually happens about every 20-30 years, so hold on to your britches.
Socialized medicine? Errr....how come the insurance companies are still in business and the new ACA requires everyone to get insurance somehow. Ma and Pa Kettle do get Medicare, but that is because the sainted insurance companies want to cherry pick the healthy people and insure them. Death panels you say? What do you think actuarial boards of insurance companies are?
Global warming is a fact, stop trying to turn it into a political issue. Don't believe me? Look up Miami and the plans they have for sea level rise and how expensive it will be for them. And even if you do not believe in global warming (although frankly I think it is like not believing in gravitation), observe the data on the acidification of the oceans. That's directly due to CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere. It's killing coral in....Florida and throughout the Caribbean. Localized? Hardly, it is also killing coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They expect it to be gone within about 50 years if something isn't done. Yes, I know, what's a good Libertarian care about coral. Well, the crux is the ocean is the bottom of the food chain. Maybe you've heard of it, you're at the top...for now.
And if the U.S. isn't a capitalist economy, how did the real estate market manage to tank the U.S. economy and give the world's a cold? The basic problem is that a pure capitalist economy spawns bubbles and monopolies. In order or to level that out, laws and regulations were needed. Don't believe me, look at the U.S. before the Great Depression. The economy was a wild west of an economy and lurched from crisis to crisis. Of course, if you lost your money in one, your days of lurching were over. The Great Recession happened because the Bush Administration did not believe in regulation. The head of the SEC was a puppet of Wall Street. That allowed Wall Street to run amok. Realtors, the local zoning officials, the builders, and the sainted American people worked with almost no rules and...splat...there went the economy.
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http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
It's easy to look at that on paper and say "well that wasn't very long!", but there was a period of 68 years between the first state law limiting child working days to 10 hours and the push for national reform. Most of the people on slashdot have not been around for 68 years...At
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Spare us your juvenile politics. You obviously have NO idea what true socialism is. You americans make me sick , sitting between 2 oceans without a clue what its like in the rest of the world, whinging about trivia.
"Yea, this is exactly what our founders fought and died for so many years ago"
Your founders were a bunch of religious extremists. Be thankful your country isn't run by them any longer or you'd be a christian version of Iran.
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Spare us your juvenile politics. You obviously have NO idea what true socialism is. You americans make me sick , sitting between 2 oceans without a clue what its like in the rest of the world, whinging about trivia.
"Yea, this is exactly what our founders fought and died for so many years ago"
Your founders were a bunch of religious extremists. Be thankful your country isn't run by them any longer or you'd be a christian version of Iran.
First of all, please don't lump us all in with this guy. Second, I'm going to need some backup for the idea that the founders of the US were religious extremists. They went out of their way to say that the state could not establish a religion. Is that what religious extremists do?
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Re:Shortage of people or people with degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies have no desire what so ever to train up employees. Which is of course part of the shortage right there. Companies bitch that they can't find people with the exact skill set they need, but are unwilling to hire and train. Also the management set has their heads very far up their asses and have convinced themselves that engineers and other highly skilled workers are overpaid.
Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.
Unreasonable to the political and management class, why? Cause reasons.
What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
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What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
So what's the problem? India and China get the factories and know-how, and for now the American companies control patents and trademarks and distribution. The executives at the American companies make lots of money
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You have hit the nail on the head - no investment in growing and developing exactly the people that are now in short supply.
It's worse than that, many have the attitude that skills gained while employed and paid for by the Employee doesn't count and most seem to feel that company paid training for skills benefiting the company places the employee into an indebted status.
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This one.
Ohh yes you do. It might be against the rules on paper, but when you can threaten the worker with deportation back to their third world hellhole of a home country, they tend to not complain about you breaking the rules.
You use an H1B when you're too cheap to pay market rates domestically and you just want t
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They'd rather look to individuals as a consumable resource. It's more profitable for them that way, at least in the short term.