Second, I did not say the line you put in italics. Pretending to quote me when you aren't is not honest.
Third, plenty of older technical personnel change jobs every year. At my company we certainly do not look only for young people, though we do actively look for talent among people who are still students because we want to grab them before somebody else does. Our most recent hire in my office was an older woman coming back to work after five years off raising a child. She was a C programmer and is learning a new language, successfully.
Fourth, I don't think you know what "by definition" means. Return to Euclid and try again.
That was not the intent, apologies.
I don't care how many statistics are cited, the truth remains that age discrimination is rampant, worse than it ever was before.
Hey, folks, guess what? The United States government isn't supposed to be the World's Greates Employment Office! Where do we see that in the Constitution? Is it one of the penumbras the Supreme Court hasn't found yet?
Do any of you have any idea of the number of foreign nationals who come to this country for advanced technical degrees? Take a look at just about any university's graduation program and you'll see an example of what I'm talking about.
Are y'all wanting to exclude them, too? After all, some of them might be terrorists -- or turn into terrorists on return to their home country.
Which is where they'd be headed if it weren't for H-1B visas. Getting a degree in physics or math is, for many fortunate individuals, a rather trivial exercise compared to getting a green card. Colleges and universities absolutely love foreign students who pay full-rate tuition (that subsidizes our own kids who get in-state tuition breaks of typically 70-80% of the actual cost) and boost the school's diversity index to keep the equality police at bay.
How many American kids are kept out of grad school on account of foreign competition for available slots? You can bet it's plenty. American universities have a deserved reputation as some of the best in the world in science and engineering, so why wouldn't an Indian or Iraqi or Korean or Nigerian with the requisite talent want to apply? Are we going to push for a federal law restricting student visas, too?
Trade protectionism is a failed policy that leads to poverty, political turmoil and war.
Employment (and, by extension, immigration) restrictions prevent employers from hiring the employees they need.
In times past, Democrats were the ones wanting to force workers to join unions in order to get a job, saying to consumers, "look for the union label." Americans bought Detroit iron, the auto workers got rich at our expense and people traded cars in after two years because they were worn out after three.
Some Democrats are still trade protectionists (Gephart for example) but others (such as Bill Clinton) learned that you cannot compete in a world-wide market by keeping labor costs high.
Bush may have a lot of faults in other areas, but his devotion to free trade at least partially makes up for them.