Re: Economic (ignorance) Nativism and me

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Mar 25 2001 - 05:16:08 MST


Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/24/2001 10:59:06 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> emlyn@one.net.au writes:
>
> << If there were no shortage, your salaries/rates would be lower than they
> are.
> Then, where would the incentive be to get people from overseas? >>
>
> OK, so basically you approve of a pay cap for domestic workers based on
> global competition, because the domestic workers demand too much. This is
> very much the view that I expected of those of a libertarian economic
> philosophy, and who is to say you are wrong?
>

I don't see the above suggesting that at all. And it doesn't have a
thing to do with being a libertarian. A libertarian believes that
whatever the free market determines is the rate for programmers is a
fair rate, period. I don't see naything there about any cap. Or did you
mean gap? If you can find qualified programmers for less elsewhere then
great. As a software engineer/ CS type I have no problem with that. I
have a strong feel from my two decades in this field just how strong the
demand for software talent is and how difficult it is to find/train
really good software people. So I don't expect the price to plummet with
more overseas workers coming in hardly at all.

> But all should be forced to compete in the global market. Why not bring in a
> million medical professionals to take care of us in the USA? What about
> Sweetheart deals could be set up between health insurance companies and
> pharmacy chains-halving costs? This could apply to legal services also. I
> mean, why pay lawyers thousands of dollars when foreign attorneys could be
> much more inexpensive? How about foreign police and fire services? Why
> should these be exempt? :-) Eh! Its a notion. Here is a link to a law firm
> that is dedicated to protect and promote foreign IT workers. Its a 'dated'
> link but it provides a bit of info.
>

I think it is mistaken to suppose that highly trained professionals in
many fields exist in huge abundance.

-s.
 
> http://www.visalaw.com/h1bpage.html
>
> <>
>
> Yah! This has been done by Microsoft, with its India based training centers
> already, but there are contracting firms bringing significant numbers of
> foreign workers, anyway (see the law firm link above).
>
> So where does that leave us? If Joe Corp executive has come to feel that he
> can get quality work of imported foreign workers, it will delight his
> shareholders if such occurs-more money in the short term. Notice how H1-Bs
> never applies to managers?
> Supposedly, 5.6 million new IT workers will be needed in the USA in the next
> 5 years. Gates and company may have a point, if true. If not....?



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:43 MDT