Posted on 10/07/2009 7:40:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
But you won't commit to any details on any of it, huh?
... if US standards didn’t have the high taxes, onerous regulations, a healthy legal environment, etc.
Thanks for the correction!
“Globalism, and various ‘free trade’ agreements have in reality functioned as a form of reverse protectionism”
Globalism did not impose environmental regulations and onerous taxes. US government did, and lead the rest of the world into it. And it backfired.
“Guest workers pay no or partial taxes. That alone puts American workers at a severe disadvantage.”
Thats BS. If H-1B visa holder is a resident, then income taxation is like any other US citizen. They have to pay both Social Security and Medicare taxes as part of their payroll.
“Workers off shore can live well on $10,000 per year.”
Actually they can live well on half that money. $10,000 a years is huge amount of money for any person.
the H1B program needs to be shut down immediately! Why Republicans don’t campaign on that is beyond me.
How do you propose to keep the free market system alive when companies continue to cut workers? Without jobs these workers cannot buy the goods and services supplied by the free market. I believe it becomes a vicious cycle, that will eventualy spin out of control. The spin cycle may have already started.
Sponsorship for the kind of work visa that allows foreign nationals to *(take)* professional-level *(jobs)* in the country.
Maybe cuz they dont want IT industry to go down the American Auto industry path?
My desire is immaterial; the reality is that there are a LOT of really sharp programmers around the world, and business is international.
I don’t see any other industry, or workers subjected to the same treatment,
Because what other industry has a barrier to entry that consists of a $200 computer?
Think about it - what mandates that you work in a factory. The tools and equipment and facilities! You can't distribute production of a car around the world. The parts, sure. But final assembly? Not a chance.
You cannot distribute production of crude oil to a dozen places - you pretty much have a physical well where you get the oil, and thus you need people and infrastructure at that location.
Software? With the Internet, if you're in the cubicle down the hall or in your home in Kiev, it doesn't matter. You need a dirt-cheap computer and a brain. That's it. Suddenly there is no need to have people here to do specific work with specific tools.
Software is the ultimate expression of intellectual property. It's ephemeral. It's bits. It's concepts. You don't even need physical copies like you did for books! Downloads are the standard (when was the last time you bought a physical CD or DVD of software, compared to the last time you downloaded a file or package). Software is developed not at a physical location, but in a person's mind.
THAT is what is changing the marketplace for programmers. The fact that the programmer does not have to be at a physical location, or use specific machinery or depend upon a specific company-built infrastructure. A computer, broadband connection, and a few free tools (e-mail, web browser, FTP client, compilers) and you can be productive in a matter of minutes, not days.
In light of this, companies are realizing that having a few really smart guys as direct hires - guys to dream up the great ideas and ride herd on the developers - is all that you need. The actual coders - brilliant ones around the world - can be anywhere. Tools are standardized, libraries are industry-wide. You can successfully integrate programmers in the Ukraine, India, and China with sharp system architects and program managers here in the US.
The demand for coders will always increase; people want custom software. But the salaries they command - here in the US - will continue to drop as things are internationalized and automated. Just look at what the CMS systems like Joomla and Drupal have done to the webdev market. You don't NEED to pay someone $40/hour to put content on your website, your secretary can take your marketing brochure and paste it herself.
Software will continue to decrease wages at high rates because, ultimately, there is "nothing" there - it's all algorithms executing on computers. There's nothing to stop the free-fall because there isn't any "floor" in terms of the cost to develop.
I even know one guy who contract-develops in Kiev from a local free Internet coffee house (he uses their computers for free, even). Literally for the price of a cup of coffee, he has a solid 4-5 hours of all the tools he needs to be a productive C++ programmer.
THAT is why the market is changing, not because business is out to screw the worker. It's the barrier to entry that does it, and if I can get great work from a guy in Seattle or a guy in Mumbai, well, why shouldn't I go for the lower price?
Exactly. The fact is you can develop from anywhere in the world if you have an Internet connection. That’s not true of machining titanium, or stamping steel, or refining oil, or even growing pineapples. I can develop software - in Shanghai, Seattle, or Chaiyaphum without a problem.
The reason IT wages are dropping is not H1-Bs; it’s the fact there is essentially NO barrier to entry to becoming a developer, and being a productive one. Some time spent learning and a $200 computer and you have the tools needed to be productive.
As long as Joe Sixpack refuses to pay $1000 for the latest software title, it will get developed overseas.
In a perverse kind of way, it’s fun to talk to those who rail against H1-Bs and the dropping wages of IT workers, especially about open source. Most are huge open-source supporters, and most have pirated copies of software and/or music on their computers. They want the wages of IT kept high, but do not want to pay the prices (or even ANY price) to get the results. You can’t have both...
Yes, it DOES matter. When American IT jobs are given to those abroad, or those abroad are shipped here as a cut-rate labor supply, it discourages anyone here from going into the field, and also discourages those already working in it from continuing. This may be OK, until we need experienced, home-grown talent to work on sensitive defense -related projects, and all we have are burger flippers.
Congress justifies peddling American jobs around the world by saying that there are not enough qualified Americans to do them. It sounds good and provides political cover, but is not true and eventually is self-fulfilling. This is just like saying that the mexicans take only the jobs Americans won't do.
See post #34.
Also FYI, during the current job situation, 125,000+ new LEGAL workers are coming into the country each month!
Exactly what myths are those? Cuz a lot of the nonsense you are posting about H1b taxation are myths in themselves. For H1-Bs there are only two categories Resident Aliens or Non Resident. If he/she is a resident then income taxation is like any other USA person and must pay taxes on their worldwide income, no exception. A non resident alien can claim benefit if there is a treaty between US and that country. The reason being that he person is not a US resident and is using minimal social/infrastructural services or benefits provided by US government and also to avoid double taxation from the home country.
What you are saying about minimum living allowance and sent overseas are urban legends. Never happens.Period. There is no such thing as minimal allowance. There is a minimum salary cap on how much you HAVE TO pay an H-1B visa resident and so what goes to the government as income tax also has a minimum cap. End of story.
Same applies to L1s. L1 visa holders are required to pay
federal income taxes, provided they meet the “substantial presence test” that determines if the person is a resident alien. L1s also have to pay social security and Medicare. There is no arguing about this. There is no way a foreign resident can legally work full time in the US and not have to pay taxes whatever the visa. I dunno where you get your facts from but most of them are malicious and very misleading.
Same question back at you.
You really need to be doing YOUR OWN research before you spew.
http://taxipay.blogspot.com/2008/08/us-visas.html
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p519.pdf
http://www.intersticeconsulting.com/documents/US_India_Personal_Tax.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Income_taxation_status_of_H-1B_workers
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=188413,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=129428,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc851.html
....And you are welcome!
Your BS sounded so much like DU propaganda...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1172663
Rings a bell?
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