“You get what you pay for. Pay half a salary get half an employee.”
In 1972 dollars, a senior engineer would be making $274,000 today. So, you’re right. They pay half and get half.
I remember back in the early 90s when I was selling employee benefits in Silicon Valley. I would go to these tech companies and talk to each employee. This was when Bill Clinton had really started the H1B visa program in earnest. An employee would be making say $100,000 a year and they would tell me “see that guy over there”? He’s from India and he’ll work for 60,000. They get them over here and don’t have to pay and benefits. Which one would you hire? The white guy or the Indian? Talk about demoralizing to the white guy, right? I think this was the beginning of the demoralization of the workforce.
Then we were outsourcing our jobs and Bill Clinton was saying we are going to be a service economy! We don’t need to be manufacturing stuff here when they can make it cheaper in China and then you just get to buy it for cheap. I knew right then we were in big trouble and nobody was watching. Nobody was trying to stop that, they were all on the bandwagon in Washington DC. Except maybe Ron Paul.