WOW....
Stunning to see so much populist, anti-free trade, pro-protectionism sentiment here on Free Republic.
IMOHO, we could use a tad more protectionism instead of government implemented and sanctioned policies that are killing us by degrees.
I’m seeing these policies more recently as a national security issue, not one of populism.
Free Trade and these work visas are cutting wages.
Outsourcing is making us far too dependent on other countries.
I don’t see how this is a good thing.
They came up with that device because we'd long ago abandoned any sort of rational basis for immigration and moved to what's known as "family reunification".
Look, if we need Ph.Ds we need them. Someone else's "need" to bring in his mother, sister and niece should not be prefered above "our need" for quality folks who can provide positive input to this country.
Hmmm. Believing in free-trade doesn't mean believing in unfair trade, or turning a blind-eye to those that cheat. For trade to be truly free, it needs to be based on an equal footing.
Besides, it's not like Gates and Microsoft have any major competition to deal with since he has a virtual monopoly in PC software market. What competitors, domestic or foreign, is he going to lose business to if he had to raise prices a bit in order to raise wages and satisfy his stock holders?
It's also Ironic that the most rapacious, predatory capitalists are always liberal. Gates, Soros, et al.
"When in any country the demand for those who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, servants of every kind, is continually increasing; when every year furnishes employment for a greater number than had been employed the year before, the workmen have no occasion to combine in order to raise their wages. The scarcity of hands occasions a competition among masters, who bid one against another, in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily break through the natural combination of masters not to raise wages." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Gates seeks to artificially increase the labor supply through outside sources to depress wages. Even the great Adam Smith would have a problem with what Gates is doing.
"The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is a necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
"The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditions than where they are low." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.