Werner was an unrepentant nazi who used slave labor to build his rockets. Literally worked them to death.
Posted on 12/28/2024 6:39:57 PM PST by conservative98
There’s a raging debate on X right now about H1B visas and Vivek Ramaswamy is getting slammed for suggesting American culture is bad and thus can’t product high level talent that top tech companies want.
Let’s start back from the beginning:
THE HILL – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairs of President-elect Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” are defending the tech industry’s reliance on foreign-born engineers as the incoming Trump administration prepares to crack down on immigration.
Musk and Ramaswamy both pointed to a lack of engineers stateside.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday post on his social platform X.
When another user suggested the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was denying opportunities to Americans, Musk argued that the poster’s understanding of the situation was “upside-down and backwards.”
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” the tech billionaire said. “HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
This is where Ramaswamy steps into it, blaming tv shows that promote ‘mediocrity’ on a culture that can’t product top talent:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
This didn’t go over well with everyone…
Even Nikki Haley chimed in, saying there is nothing wrong with American culture…
The press secretary for DeSantis also suggested the problem isn’t American culture, but mass immigration and quoted Governor DeSantis:
Vivek isn’t wrong that we have a problem with American culture but it’s not what he suggests. It isn’t TV shows and movies that produce mediocrity. No, this has a lot to do with the breakdown of the family, with the inability or unwillingness of parents to push their children to excel academically instead of endlessly playing video games or sitting in front of a TV. Also many of our schools have big problems producing excellence as well. But I think it all starts with the breakdown of the family, ie. fatherless children and single mothers working multiple jobs to make ends meet while their children are at home doing whatever they want. And this is a product of the Godless left.
But that being said, I don’t know how much that really plays into this problem of top-level talent. It may have some effect, but I also agree with fact that mass immigration is a big culprit, in that it provides the cheap labor that companies want. This is a battle we’ve been fighting for decades, not just against the left, but against the Chamber of Commerce types in the Republican party for decades who want the left’s version of immigration so they can reap the benefits of cheap labor.
Look, I have never disagreed with merit-based immigration, especially when it comes to top level talent. We want the best and the brightest no matter where they are from as long as they are willing to assimilate. But we want it on our terms.
Let me quote the Great Mark Levin from over a decade ago:
"And what do we the people want? We want our border secured. And let me go even further. Let me make it absolutely clear to every foreigner outside this country.
This country belongs to us; it doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to the 7 billion other people all over the world.
You see the way it’s supposed to work is we decide who gets to come here. We decide the standards. We decide the requirements. We want to know who you are. We want to know what you’re going to – (ready for this one?) – contribute to this society, not take from this society.
You see because I want to make it very very clear to the left, to the media and even some ‘Repubicans’ and even some TV and radio hosts.
There’s nothing compassionate about the downfall of America! There’s nothing compassionate about the hollowing out of our society! There’s nothing compassionate about bankrupting our children and grandchildren, destroying our school system, destroying local law enforcement and hospitals, what’s been built up over 200 years.
It’s one thing to export our viewpoints, our economic ideas, our governing ideas. But it’s quite another to import the views, the culture and the destitution of the third world. Because that is national suicide. And any thinking person who is not playing politics, who’s not a demagogue, who’s not a propagandist, any thinking person regardless of party, ethnicity, or anything else knows I’m right!
This isn’t about voting as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t about pandering to this group or that group as far as I’m concerned. This is about preserving what’s left of this Republic."
Exactly right. Been there, done that. Got the resignation letters to prove it.
I said something similar several days ago on another thread, it is our culture and education system.
It is part of the work WE have to do that the President cannot fix.
WE have to fix the culture, WE have to fix education and that means everything from the cost of colleges/universities right down to the god awful ‘required’ indoctrination classes.
WE have to figure out ‘why’ Americans refuse to actually work towards anything, have goals, strive to rise to their full potential.
Years and years (decades ago) the politician said...they are doing the jobs Americans won’t do. Back then is was the lawn guy, the pool cleaner, the housekeeper, the dishwasher. All the while Americans rose higher and higher on the welfare roles until they became too lazy, too disillusioned , too dependent on a system that destroys them and our nation.
Ramaswamy is making an observation that isn’t far off. Our immediate need is filled through legal immigration, but we have to look internally to address our own dysfunctional liberal culture.
This summer I had my roof replaced. The supervisor was military veteran. The workers were Ukrainian refugees. Why? They were willing to do the work to get their family on their feet in a new country. At first I was horrified, but the more I thought things through...why won’t our own ‘welfare dependents’ work as hard? A generation from now, these legals kids won’t be on welfare.
It is time we look inside and fight back against those that would trap people in the welfare cycle. How much talent has been lost because of the liberal education system?
Yutes of today!
Worried about privilege!
About body parts they should or should not have!
Head sunk in their phones!
Posting sexy pics/vids on whatever!
Did I leave anything out?
Werner was an unrepentant nazi who used slave labor to build his rockets. Literally worked them to death.
Fascinating.
Achiever from long enough ago not to have been affected.
I’ve more or less done that. Did a lot of scut jobs until I was able to secure my Bachelor’s.
In my current line of work, I have to draw upon research work in many different fields. Most of which I have not been trained in. It can be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.
Well, he is telling the truth. I tried intensely to get students to change the way they were thinking and living in high school while teaching, to almost no avail. What is happening in our nation now (rejection of God) is going to have horrific consequences. “For what you sow, that shall you reap.” If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting. Said that to them over and over again. LOOK at what we’re getting now.
“And Musk IS the current US space program. Nobody else is, realistically, anywhere near SpaceX. Sometime next year Starship is going to start regularly launching 200 tons to LEO, which is going to be a world-historical event.”
Exactly correct. What Musk has accomplished is near miraculous. Nobody else was even willing to try to do it.
He is the genius of the age.
He actively recruits all the top level engineering talent he can, and he drives them to perform beyond their own expectations.
He is able to do this because they buy into his goals, not for making money, but for doing what many think is impossible. Money is just a means to an end for Musk. He doesn’t even own a yacht.
“and the corporation is still in business?”
Easy, they provide lousy results and you do not care.
All kinds of things are suboptimal or substandard around you, but the price is sometimes right. You receive poor quality products and services but the price is cheap, so you do not care. You do not care if prices are higher than they have to be due to lousy H1B foreigners causing delays and product development problems. You will pay, grumble, and pay some more.
You do not care if your Internet service sucks because it is the only service available.
You do not care that your cancer in incurable because you think that’s just the way it is.
You do not care that your family has Alzheimer’s because Vivek’s family cheated the public out of needed research money (He did that!) because you do not know any better.
You do not care that your car’s computerized systems are faulty or not as well designed as they should be because you don’t know they could be better.
You do not care that many innovations have not made it to market because you do not know any better.
Your comment that poor quality H1B foreigners would doom a company is patently false because you do not know any better.
Completely agree.
Define “Asians”.
It also happened to teenagers. By the end of the 1990’s the minimum wage job that teens used to gain experience and some money was nearly dried up from illegal aliens taking the jobs for cheap.
As my kid said, a few years ago, a bit of a whinge about his salary - “he pays people with glory”.
Granted with the current SpaceX valuations the stock options are going to be pretty glorious too.
This post by atomic I think is well reasoned and captures most of the issues.
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Liz Wheeler
@Liz_Wheeler
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Extend some grace to Elon. He’s wrong about H-1B visas… but, take a breath.
He’s brand new to the right, he’s super open minded so this discussion may open his eyes to the truth on this.
He also bought X to defeat wokeness, restored free speech (and saved America) & did more
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chickenpie
@chickenpie
H1B is *NOT* about engineers. Here’s how they play us.
“We need more engineers!” [true statement]
“We need H1B to fill the vacant positions.” [So we give it to them.]
Then instead of engineers they hire hundreds and thousands of low end IT workers who are not any better trained or skilled than US workers but much cheaper.
They have many different ways of hiding it. A couple of years ago the differential for the EXACT SAME WORK was US $38 Infosys $23.
Here’s a way to think about it. They say “Oh we cannot staff our hospital because we need more doctors and there’s a shortage. Give us a visa waiver to bring some in.” So we do. But they don’t just bring in a few doctors, the replace the janitorial staff, the food service staff, physical therapists, MRI techs and so on with lower cost foreign workers.
What could “fix” it.
1.) Remove the “indenture.” If an H1B holder can change employers instantly “at will” this system would collapse and disappear.
2.) Make H1B valid *ONLY* for advanced technical degree holders (e.g MSEE).
3.) Make H1B valid “ONLY* for certain high wage scales (e.g workers earning over $200K per annum) because it’s not about the money right? Just the skillset.
I’ve worked in tech in Silicon Valley for decades (GOOG, INTC, WIPRO and others) and I have watched them abuse this program since it’s inception. So do not be misled or distracted. IT IS ALL ABOUT PAYING LESS WAGES TO CHEAP FOREIGN LABOR.
Let me also say that Musk may not even be aware of how it works at the street level. There are good valid arguments for H1B. JUST NOT THE WAY IT WORKS IN PRACTICE TODAY.
8:59 PM · Dec 28, 2024
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“ It takes 12 years to educate children to about a grade 5 education, when you compare what used to be taught in 1900.”
The main difference was that in 1900, we did not have “No Child Left Behind”, which prioritizes the education of the SLOWEST kids over the brightest.
In 1900, if you did not keep up, you repeated the grade, and then you were done at 8th grade. You had no right to high school.
We need to return to a form of that, imo. As far as public education goes, give people plenty of help to try to educate them. Howeve, recognize not all will.
If somebody didn’t make it, they could continue to self study, through a local resource library, but those able to make should be allowed to do so.
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