Honestly, Executive Orders in general are dysfunctional cludge. I feel less bad about things like DACA, since that's trying to fix something broken instead of wrecking things for no useful reason (or acting to puff up a sick ego) ... but hell no, that should have been a proper law.
Robinhood's crypto offering is extremely deceptive. They offer "commission-free cryptocurrency trading" but don't make it clear that you pay a 0.95% fee[1] on every trade (technically a 'spread' and not a 'commission' but there is hardly a difference). They also take 25% of staking rewards. These are absurdly high fees.
You could go do A right now at a local level. You don't though, because you don't actually want to live that way. It reeks of virtue signaling despite your protest.
> You could go do A right now at a local level. You don't though, because you don't actually want to live that way.
"A" by its very nature is a "group effort". I could definitely be a better citizen and volunteer more and donate to causes, but that is a drop in the ocean.
And I pretty much do live that way myself. I have a modest home that I still have a mortgage on and live pretty simply. I drive a refurb'd EV, dress like slacker, and seek community and connection over flashy toys. I admit that when I walk through the first class section to my seat in coach I am not without envy.
> It reeks of virtue signaling despite your protest
The test in my mind is the cost of B, of living in that kind of world. The fact that you only see virtue signaling in my words says more about you than it does me.
I'll bite. What's the downside of a flat tax for a category like datacenters? If Meta want's to negotiate a lower tax rate for datacenters that's great, just allow every datacenter to apply for that same rate then.
But it's not less in local coffers. If the incentive was not given, the datacenter would not be built there. The state government wants it to be built there to increase economic activity in their state.
Residents aren't paying more for anything and no services are being cut.
There are 50 states in the US and plenty of other locations to build datacenters. "Still needing the datacenter" isn't a reason to build it in this specific location. It's ok to just admit you were wrong.
> There are 50 states in the US and plenty of other locations to build datacenters.
Yes, and we should ban them from issuing these sorts of race-to-the-bottom sweetheart deal at taxpayer expense to trillion dollar corporations to address that.
1950 Census
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Race Percentage of Total Population
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White 89.5%
Black 10.0%
Other Races 0.5%
Keep in mind the black population was essentially segregated at this point.
I think it's important to note that our understanding of whiteness has changed over time. And, during that time, there was division amongst even what we consider today as white people. Polish and Italian immigrants often faced discrimination, for example.
If you get rid of race it doesn't fix anything because the underlying cause was never race - it was, and remains, humanities perverse desire for hierarchy and prejudice.
The white people will just then find some other irrelevant bullshit to be mad at each other about and will then segment themselves more. They will literally invent new races and ethnic groups, if they have to, to distinguish themselves from others.
That H1B labour allowed other firms to build tech, which kept those firms competitive, creating a deeper economy and experienced bench.
That depth then enabled more advanced tech firms to be born.
At least thats what I think they are saying.
The analogy would be that China took over low tech manufacturing, and then because of that were able to develop expertise to move up the value chain.
At the same time, supply demand curves are real. If you have more workers, it should result in competition that drives down wages. (ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL)
There was a distinction being made between Tech and IT, which I am not too sure about.
> If you have more workers, it should result in competition that drives down wages. (ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL)
Sort of a meaningless statement when all things are definitely not equal.
If there are 5 million people in a country, or 200 million, the theory of too many workers means the 5 million people country should be paying everyone vastly more.
But that is trivially untrue.
Economies grow and shrink and adapt around the number people.
> Sort of a meaningless statement when all things are definitely not equal.
Hey, don’t look to me for a defense of the weaknesses of economic models.
At the same time you can’t really discuss complex systems like economies where one part affects another, without holding some of the factors in stasis.
Centris paribus does extreme amounts of heavy lifting.
You essentially have no data to back this up though, especially given the filed H1B/L-1 labor data for big tech is first year of employement with only base salary, which bears no ressemblance to what their wages will be even just 3 years in.
In the early 1990s a good software engineer was paid $40K starting salary, and good companies like Sun Microsystems paid $45K. If you adjust that for inflation it is around $100K. But good companies in silicon valley today pay $120K plus stock grants (so around $170K or so), and Meta and Google pay much more.
So software engineer salaries have gone up dramatically in the last 35 years H-1B visa has been around. In fact, the H-1B visa is the reason the salaries have gone up. Without it the industry would be stagnant, just like non-tech S&P 500 companies and most companies in Europe in the same time period.
Are you trying to argue that increased supply of labor is responsible for increasing wages?
As others have said, H1-B has been good for companies, and bad for American workers. The same companies who were found to be colluding to keep wages down.
Europe is stagnant because of regulation, not because of immigration.
> Are you trying to argue that increased supply of labor is responsible for increasing wages?
I am saying the reason silicon valley exists is because of the immigration of the smartest people from around the world. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US.
Consider the seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need"). It was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration been bad for American workers? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, without them the center of tech would be Beijing.
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