America's Chip Renaissance Needs Workers (wsj.com) 117
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week South Korea's SK Hynix announced it would partner with Purdue University on a $3.9 billion semiconductor complex here, the largest single corporate investment in state history. Now comes the hard part. SK Hynix must not only build the fabrication plant, or fab, which will package high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence, and a connected research-and-development center. It also has to staff them. "We need several hundred engineers to operate our advanced-packaging manufacturing fab -- in physics, chemistry, material science, electronics engineering," Kwak Noh-Jung, chief executive of SK Hynix, said in an interview following last week's announcement.
Staffing a fab is harder in the U.S. than in South Korea, where SK Hynix has contracts with local universities and its own in-house university. Nonetheless, Kwak said, "the final goal is very clear. We need to have very good engineers for our success in U.S." The U.S. is trying to do something unprecedented: reverse a shrinking share in a key manufacturing sector. Between 1990 and 2020, the U.S. share of world chip making shrank to 12% from 37%, while the combined share of Taiwan, South Korea and China grew to 58%. The federal CHIPS program has showered billions of dollars on Intel for fabs in several states, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.in Arizona and GlobalFoundries in New York and Vermont. SK Hynix hopes for support as well.
Subsidies alone won't guarantee a sustainable industry. Fabs need customers, a supply chain and, above all, a skilled, specialized workforce. From 2000 to 2017, U.S. employment in semiconductor manufacturing shrank to 181,000 from 287,000. It has since recovered to about 200,000. Why did the U.S. share of semiconductor production shrink? As in other industries, the U.S. became an expensive place to manufacture. Susan Houseman of the Upjohn Institute, who has studied outsourcing, said this wasn't "primarily a story about offshoring." U.S. companies still lead in chip design: Nvidia in artificial intelligence, Qualcomm in communications and Apple in smartphones. Over time they mostly contracted out fabrication of their chips to foundries such as TSMC who benefited from generous domestic subsidies. The theory behind CHIPS is that, by matching Asia's subsidies, the U.S. can again be competitive in chip making. Nonetheless, there is a chicken-egg problem. Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers. But without fabs, America's best and brightest have little incentive to pursue careers in the sector.
Staffing a fab is harder in the U.S. than in South Korea, where SK Hynix has contracts with local universities and its own in-house university. Nonetheless, Kwak said, "the final goal is very clear. We need to have very good engineers for our success in U.S." The U.S. is trying to do something unprecedented: reverse a shrinking share in a key manufacturing sector. Between 1990 and 2020, the U.S. share of world chip making shrank to 12% from 37%, while the combined share of Taiwan, South Korea and China grew to 58%. The federal CHIPS program has showered billions of dollars on Intel for fabs in several states, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.in Arizona and GlobalFoundries in New York and Vermont. SK Hynix hopes for support as well.
Subsidies alone won't guarantee a sustainable industry. Fabs need customers, a supply chain and, above all, a skilled, specialized workforce. From 2000 to 2017, U.S. employment in semiconductor manufacturing shrank to 181,000 from 287,000. It has since recovered to about 200,000. Why did the U.S. share of semiconductor production shrink? As in other industries, the U.S. became an expensive place to manufacture. Susan Houseman of the Upjohn Institute, who has studied outsourcing, said this wasn't "primarily a story about offshoring." U.S. companies still lead in chip design: Nvidia in artificial intelligence, Qualcomm in communications and Apple in smartphones. Over time they mostly contracted out fabrication of their chips to foundries such as TSMC who benefited from generous domestic subsidies. The theory behind CHIPS is that, by matching Asia's subsidies, the U.S. can again be competitive in chip making. Nonetheless, there is a chicken-egg problem. Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers. But without fabs, America's best and brightest have little incentive to pursue careers in the sector.
job requirements will be worded so that only H1B w (Score:3)
job requirements will be worded so that only H1B workers get the job
Re:Yep (Score:1)
Pay starting at $17/hr masters degree and 10 years experience required. Rotating shifts only. Health insurance with a $10,000 deductible.
The ACA requires that nearly all health plans have (Score:3)
The ACA requires that nearly all health plans have an out-of-pocket maximum of no more than $9,450.
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i.e. a slave workforce
H1B needs a big audit & slump protection (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree much the H1B system is a scam and I've seen it abused personally multiple times. I don't have to trust pundit takes because I have my personal pundits: my eyeballs.
I have nothing against visa workers, but when a (tech) slump comes, send them the hell home so we citizens can get jobs.
The slump thing highlights another general problem here: if your career depends on subsidization or protectionism, what happens when an administration gets in power who is against such? Reagan 2.0 may pop back in and declare "free trade is best trade!", and we are back to square one, and your chip degree is then worth a bag of corn chips.
Regardless of how you feel about protecting an industry, those in power could yank the cord.
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot (Score:2, Informative)
Politicians mouth that we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem when talking about the budget deficit.
Well, I don't think so. We have a revenue problem caused by the race to the bottom of wage scales facilitated by both legal (H1B) and illegal aliens driving down the wage scale, Businesses who must hire are very happy, but such folks in near-slave-wage conditions cannot be taxed for sufficient monies needed to run the country.
And decent salaries plus US income taxes yields products too
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Let's try taxing the mega-rich first. Let them be the guinea pigs for once, instead of the lower classes.
Re:Shooting Ourselves in the Foot (Score:4, Interesting)
"Let's try taxing the mega-rich first."
We keep trying that with income taxes and it keeps not working. The really rich know how to hang onto their money. According to those that know, there are trillions of dollars held abroad for the express purpose of avoiding US income tax that would come back and be invested in the USA if it would not be income-taxed. The USA could do with some hefty investment sans things like capital gains taxes (which are also income taxes that would be abolished with the demise of the 16th Amendment.)
And, one more time, the FairTax is a luxury tax. Who do you think is going to be paying big-time for a luxury tax? Donald Trump's 757 retails around 100 million, he got it used from an airline so presumably 50 million, and the FairTax would send 15 million to the US treasury for just his single purchase. Think that's his only bauble? Then there's Bill Gates 600 million dollar yacht. That'd be 180 million to the US Treasury. Sound good so far?
The real big-time is that the FairTax spreads things out so about twice as may people are paying, not just 150 - 160 million paycheck earners. EVERYBODY that spends pays, even the playboys with no jobs to tax and are spending "old money." Everything above a person's or family's poverty-level gets taxed, which is what makes it a luxury tax. Taxes are on new items for sale at retail and services. Joe blow buys a used car, then no tax. You buy a used (existing) house, no fairtax. Its just the people that are living higher than most that pay.
I think you need a multi-pronged approach (Score:2)
But you're right that they will just look for ways to hide their money so you need to have other taxes and rules to prevent them from doing that and to prevent the accumulation of so much money that it stops being money and it's just power.
The real problem is there's no easy solution to this and it's going to require adjustments and
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Income tax is not how you tax the ultra wealthy.
What you need is a minimum tax rate. Look at global income from all sources, and the tax they pay is a percentage of that. The EU has been working on it for corporations, but there is no reason why it can't apply to individuals too.
Makes avoiding tax very difficult. Any wealth they actually want to use has to be in the system somewhere, and is thus taxable.
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"Income tax is not how you tax the ultra wealthy."
You got it.
"What you need is a minimum tax rate. Look at global income "
You ace question 1, and now you're going to tax..., income???? When you just said that isn't the way to do it? Slow learner, or what? The rich aren't going to tell you about their global income, they're going to have it sequestered outside the US, and you're going to play bloody hell finding and collecting anything.
OTOH, their consumption is blindingly easy to detect and tax. Sal
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Income tax generally refers to tax on traditional income, e.g. salary and other benefits. I should have said global revenue, including things like returns on investments, gains from currency fluctuations and so forth.
Another way would be to have a wealth tax.
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"Another way would be to have a wealth tax."
The 16th amendment provides for taxing income. Simply stealing from folks may not be covered.
And simpler, just tax their egregious spending. Lots easier.
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Believe me when I say that taxing them is certainly preferable for them to the alternative.
It's the difference of what happened in Austria-Hungary and what happened in France in 1790. One of them had a mostly unharmed aristocracy after that date.
The other one didn't.
Re:Shooting Ourselves in the Foot (Score:4, Interesting)
Politicians mouth that we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem when talking about the budget deficit.
Well, I don't think so. We have a revenue problem caused by the race to the bottom of wage scales facilitated by both legal (H1B) and illegal aliens driving down the wage scale, Businesses who must hire are very happy, but such folks in near-slave-wage conditions cannot be taxed for sufficient monies needed to run the country.
Ignoring that the general consensus is that immigration drives wages up [brookings.edu]...
And decent salaries plus US income taxes yields products too expensive to sell.
Wait, what? Most of the price of goods does not come from salaries, but rather profit-taking along the supply chain.
The cure, of course, is to repeal the 16th Amendment, abolishing the income taxes, and replace them with a consumption tax, namely the luxury tax known as the FairTax and described in 131 pages by US congress' HB25.
Did you actually pass high school economics? This would make the problem much, much worse, for multiple reasons.
First, only a small percentage of an average person's income is spent on goods, and if you exclude all the things that a person can't live without (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), then the price of everything else will have to be increased astronomically to raise a comparable amount of revenue for the federal government, to the point where those things would become permanently unaffordable to all but the most ultra-wealthy. Want to see the poor be unable to afford to own a laptop? You will.
Second, 100% of the tax will be passed on to consumers directly, which means even if the above problem didn't exist, any reduction would depend on businesses saying, "Oh, we're making enough money because of lower salaries that we're going to lower prices." This will, of course, never happen. So when (not if) businesses continue to charge the same amount of money throughout the distribution chain, the people at the end of the chain will pay dramatically more.
Want to raise taxes in a way that won't affect the average person? Raise the capital gains tax on capital gains income over $200,000 per year with a once-per-lifetime home sale exemption.
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Pretty much all of your statements are diametrically opposed to my personal experience. You must not have been in the software industry when wages were headed over $100K until H1B workers (not immigrants, they are guest workers with no intention to stay, they just come to make (relatively meagerr) money ) and eviscerated the wage scales in the software industry. They called it the "dot.bomb." Happpened late 90's to early 2000's. Plus the idea that very little of our monies goes to buying goods and serv
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Pretty much all of your statements are diametrically opposed to my personal experience. You must not have been in the software industry when wages were headed over $100K until H1B workers (not immigrants, they are guest workers with no intention to stay, they just come to make (relatively meagerr) money ) and eviscerated the wage scales in the software industry. They called it the "dot.bomb." Happpened late 90's to early 2000's.
I was working in the industry at the time, and that's not what caused that crash. The dot-com crash was caused by a bunch of investors throwing money at ideas that were half-baked, and creating companies that had no real chance of succeeding. Those companies burned through cash like it was the end of the world, couldn't get additional rounds of financing, and then shut down, leaving large numbers of people out of work But remarkably, in spite of high unemployment, average wages actually increased through
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"Housing is the biggest budget item in most households,"
Houses are items for sale. New ones are Taxed. Used ones are not.
"Transportation is the next biggest item. Unless you remove the fuel tax, the biggest chunk of that expense is unlikely to be independently taxable"
Gasoline is a new item for sale at retail, so is taxable under the FairTax. Its price, due to being produced in the US, would fall about 20%, and then be taxed up to about what it was before the sales tax is instituted. Its a wash for th
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Even if you massively expand the definition of a sale as you're doing, the fact that consumption is generally only proportional to income out to a couple hundred grand of income (unless you include securities, which you don't), and then flattens out makes your tax scheme regressive. No matter how you run the numbers, the middle class end up paying a higher tax burden, and the wealthy end up paying a lower tax burden, resulting in the erosion of the middle class and an increase in wealth inequality.
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"Even if you massively expand the definition of a sale as you're doing"
I'm not expanding anything, that's just how it's written in the proposed legislation of HR25.
"makes your tax scheme regressive"
Impossible. The FairTax is 100% avoidable for those who care to try. Nobody is coming thru the front door with guns drawn and leaving with your assets. Regression is impossible with the FairTax. Nobody pays more than they choose too. And, BTW, most everyone's taxes go down EXCEPT those that are currently g
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"makes your tax scheme regressive"
Impossible. The FairTax is 100% avoidable for those who care to try.
You obviously have no understanding of economics, or else you'd recognize how utterly impossible what you're saying is. Supply and demand makes that ridiculous.
Before someone can buy something used, it must have first been sold as new. For everyone to be able to avoid it, there must be enough used instances of a product to meet demand, and if everyone chose to always buy used, there would be no new products bought, and therefore in a year or two, there will be no used products on the market, because nobod
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"Everyone has to eat. And unless you can buy used food, it's taxed. And it's "choose to", not "too".
Alternative response: Could you please tell me where I can buy used toilet paper? I choose to not pay the tax at all."
You're not paying attention. The US gov't sends everyone legally here a sum of money sized to pay the FairTax on their spending up to their personal poverty levels. That is, if a single person ha a poverty level of $12K, the gov't sends 12 checks a year big enough to pay the FairTax of on s
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"Everyone has to eat. And unless you can buy used food, it's taxed. And it's "choose to", not "too". Alternative response: Could you please tell me where I can buy used toilet paper? I choose to not pay the tax at all."
You're not paying attention. The US gov't sends everyone legally here a sum of money sized to pay the FairTax on their spending up to their personal poverty levels. That is, if a single person ha a poverty level of $12K, the gov't sends 12 checks a year big enough to pay the FairTax of on spending up to the poverty level each month. If a family of 4, that check would be bigger, because the poverty level is probably somewhere around $30K. The gov't pays FairTax up to the poverty level, meaning the poor person pays $0 FairTax up to the poverty level.
You're still completely ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that the same amount of revenue has to come from somewhere, and that the proposed 23% tax on spending is just plain staggering, whether the government sends you a check for that back or not The poor are still having to float almost a quarter more spending for the month, but getting only about 7.65% more from not paying FICA taxes. Many of them will go bankrupt pretty much immediately, and many more won't be able to deal with sudden surges
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"You're still completely ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that the same amount of revenue has to come from somewhere, and that the proposed 23% tax on spending is just plain staggering, whether the government sends you a check for that back or not The poor are still having to float almost a quarter more spending for the month"
Good grief, were do you get this stuff?
The poor are maybe making $12K a year, maybe less. If they're making $10K, they're sending $1530 per year to the US Treasury. P
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"You're still completely ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that the same amount of revenue has to come from somewhere, and that the proposed 23% tax on spending is just plain staggering, whether the government sends you a check for that back or not The poor are still having to float almost a quarter more spending for the month"
Good grief, were do you get this stuff?
Economists pretty much universally agree that FairTax is regressive. Where do *you* get this stuff?
The poor are maybe making $12K a year, maybe less. If they're making $10K, they're sending $1530 per year to the US Treasury.
To Social Security and Medicare, yes.
Plus, under the FairTax, the price of the AMERICAN PRODUCED food will be the same before and after the FairTax is instituted,
Realistically, no, it will not. You cannot possibly guarantee that unless you implement price controls. Further, there's really no chance that it will be the same, because the wealthy will be paying less than they are now as a portion of their income, and that difference must come from somewhere for it to be revenue neutral, which means that on average, the poor and the
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Ah, a luxury tax on things that people do not need somehow bankrupts the middle class. Ludicrous. Do you have tin foil hats in matching designer colors too?
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Ah, a luxury tax on things that people do not need somehow bankrupts the middle class.
A tax on electricity is not a luxury tax. A tax on food is not a luxury tax. Buying new goods isn't a luxury for most people. Nobody wants to buy somebody else's problems, and the number of used copies of most goods is tiny compared with the number of new copies out there, and once that supply is exhausted, buying new goods isn't even optional unless you can completely do without the product. Sorry, but that's just not how real luxury taxes work. They've fooled you.
Ludicrous. Do you have tin foil hats in matching designer colors too?
Economists by the boatload have said
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A tax on electricity or food s a tax on basic ,living expenses and included in the calculation of the poverty level. That is, if electric and food prices increase, the government's calculation of the poverty level and that "prebate" check that is sent to you every month will increase to pay that tax on them. That's just in case you don't have the ability to analyze that yourself, although I rather think that you are just playing dumb to have something to argue about.
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A tax on electricity or food s a tax on basic ,living expenses and included in the calculation of the poverty level. That is, if electric and food prices increase, the government's calculation of the poverty level and that "prebate" check that is sent to you every month will increase to pay that tax on them. That's just in case you don't have the ability to analyze that yourself, although I rather think that you are just playing dumb to have something to argue about.
What you're saying is that you consider living in a manner consistent with being above the poverty line to be a luxury, and people should be taxed on it. And that attitude justifies, at least in your mind, raising taxes on the middle class — even the lower middle class who often struggle to get by.
And because your tax proposal applies only to things that normal people buy, while mostly ignoring true luxuries, such as yachts bought overseas, and completely ignoring securities, butlers, maids, personal
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"What you're saying is that you consider living in a manner consistent with being above the poverty line to be a luxury,"
Exactly. If you're buying something you don't absolutely need, then you're buying a luxury.
"raising taxes on the middle class "
Nooooo.... try again. Product you are about to buy has just lost all the income tax expenses that it had during its manufacture. That means its price goes DOWN. Then it is FairTaxed, which brings it back up to approximately what it was before the FairTax.
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"all the things rich people just buy overseas instead isn't taxed."
Well, it is, and there's this thing called customs, that when said purchase is brought into the country, that gentleman will be there to collect that tax.
But of course the rich guy attempts to buy one big-ticket item overseas, maybe a yacht. OK, why would he do that? A yacht built by American builders would be so built without the US gov't increasing its price such that 22% of its selling price is composed of taxes incurred by its manufa
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"all the things rich people just buy overseas instead isn't taxed."
Well, it is, and there's this thing called customs, that when said purchase is brought into the country, that gentleman will be there to collect that tax.
Except that the bulk of things rich people buy are stocks, which aren't. And customs only covers things brought into the country. The wealthy have homes in other countries. Why do you think they need to consume everything in the United States?
As long as that yacht's flag state is another country, the U.S. has no particular right to charge customs merely because it happens to dock in a U.S. port. That's prevented by international maritime law. Nor do they pay customs duties on that grand piano bought fo
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"Except that the bulk of things rich people buy are stocks, "
Stocks are not subject to the FairTax. FT applies to items sold at retail, and services. Stocks are investments, and are not taxed. That's a good thing, as the stocks provide money for businesses to expand and hire more people, for more money if necessary, which it would be as there would be so much activity that there would be a labor shortage, so wages would necessarily go up.
" The wealthy have homes in other countries. Why do you think the
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"Except that the bulk of things rich people buy are stocks, "
Stocks are not subject to the FairTax. FT applies to items sold at retail, and services. Stocks are investments, and are not taxed. That's a good thing, as the stocks provide money for businesses to expand and hire more people, for more money if necessary, which it would be as there would be so much activity that there would be a labor shortage, so wages would necessarily go up.
No, that's a bad thing. That means that the wealthy can earn huge amounts of income without ever paying tax on a penny of it, either at the time of sale or at the time of purchase, while the poor pay the bulk of the tax burden. Hence, regressive tax.
" The wealthy have homes in other countries. Why do you think they need to consume everything in the United States?"
They consume here because they live here. Yeah, they may not pay tax on a home in Brittany or Tuscany, but unless they build it themselves, IOW a NEW home, it isn't subject to FairTax anyway.
You're completely missing my point. They DON'T pay taxes with your tax scheme, but they DO pay income tax on the money used to pay for those homes with the existing scheme. So the wealthy pay taxes on a much smaller percentage of their spending under your sc
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"No, that's a bad thing. That means that the wealthy can earn huge amounts of income without ever paying tax on a penny of it, "
OK, I think we're done here. You appear to be stuck on the idea that it is necessary to punish the successful by stealing their money from them, IOW charging income taxes. That is what's wrong with our economy. The only consideration SHOULD be whether the FairTax will fully fund the government, as those who first proposed it calculated that it will. If "the rich" accumulate bil
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"No, that's a bad thing. That means that the wealthy can earn huge amounts of income without ever paying tax on a penny of it, "
OK, I think we're done here. You appear to be stuck on the idea that it is necessary to punish the successful by stealing their money from them, IOW charging income taxes.
I prefer to think of it in biblical terms. To paraphrase Luke, from those to whom much is given, much is expected.
The wealthy don't get wealthy on their own. They get there by taking advantage of the hard work of others. They benefit most from having a stable society, from having police protection, from having banks that are insured, from having workers who aren't cutting off people's heads and sticking them on pikes outside the Bastille. They benefit most from the interstate highway system for transpor
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" Is there any way your 'fair tax' isn't ass about backwards?"
We're talking about a very small portion of rich people that might care to buy a very specific item, a vehicle, in, say, Italy and attempt to enjoy it without paying US sales tax on it. OTOH, big-box stores, a very small part of the economy, sells on the order of 90% of things sold in the US. Inside the store, the US goods offered for sale are going to be about 20% cheaper than they are now, while foreign things in the store stay the same pric
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"What a great idea. Tax the poorer people more and the rich less !"
The truly poor (living at or below the poverty level) pay $0. Pretty much everybody pays less, EXCEPT those that are currently gaming the income tax system. They would be in line for a rude awakening.
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"Poor people spend all their money. They pay tax on everything."
One more time, poor people spending below the poverty level pay $0 FairTax.
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Hey, everyone paying exactly the same is fair, isn't it?
(and since I know that some people would actually say that with a straight face: Yes. Sarcasm)
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I have nothing against visa workers, but when a (tech) slump comes, send them the hell home so we citizens can get jobs.
Oh, oh, but what happened to "no human is illegal", "tear down the wall on Mexican border", "hating immigrants is racist" and so on? I guess when a brown person jumps the wall and "steals" some redneck's job it's racist to try to stop them, but when a different-shade-of-brown person lands in Los Angeles, H1B visa in hand, and heads for Silicon Valley to "steal" some hipster techie job now they need to get "sent the hell home"? And it's not fucking hypocrisy exactly how?
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Also curious given that Hynix laid off a bunch of people not that long ago in the US and Korea.
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Work with hazardous and poisonous chemicals all day long, with questionable safety mechanisms, after you needed months of training to do it right, and all that for a slave wage?
Yeah, people would rather work at McD. At least the hazardous substances there are FDA approved.
Re:job requirements will be worded so that only H1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, given the trend in America of belittling and shaming anybody who aspires to being an actual subject matter in an academic discipline, H1B might eventually be your scientific lifeline. Better open those doors wide and prop them open with cement blocks.
There are few things more symptomatic of the stupidification of America than people doing their own "scientific research" with the internet, and distrusting the opinion of a pro because that person is actually educated...
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Yup, that's pretty accurately the shaming and belittling Petersko talked about.
Re:job requirements will be worded so that only H1 (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, hell with the H-1B program. It needs ripped out by the roots. For people that are deemed so valuable that they need a special visa, they need to be given permanent residency and not beholden to a single employer, so if they are laid off, they don't need to fear deportation. If they are so valuable to national security, then give them a fast path to citizenship.
Otherwise, H-1B people are just abused, indentured servants, and hired solely to price out US workers.
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But that would require the government to enact regulations and the government doing anything is bad. Unless of course it's related to religion, guns, or abortion.
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Anyone who IS actually valuable with a rare skillset in high demand does not fear deportation. Deportation? Before you can deport them, they already have another job, potentially in a hostile country, you think your country wants to deport someone like that? Or that the "threat" of deportation is something they won't just laugh at?
The mere fact that your country threatens these people with deportation (remember: So rare and valuable that it's literally impossible to find ANYONE in the US who could do it ins
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Anyone who IS actually valuable with a rare skillset in high demand does not fear deportation. Before you can deport them, they already have another job, potentially in a hostile country,
The fact that they can get a job in another country easily doesn't mean they don't fear being required to leave this one. Most immigrants like the US and don't want to leave it, and even if they didn't care about the US in particular they've often built lives here that they don't want to uproot. I've seen several really smart, talented people get booted out of the country over bizarre rules or immigration snafus, even with help from expensive immigration attorneys. It's stupid.
And, of course, many more a
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Even with this in place, it's very useless to try to gang-press such people into an adhesive contract that exploits them. They know their value and, no matter how much I love a country, if a company in another country makes a better offer, I'm out of here.
A work contract is just that: A contract. It's not a relationship, it's not a friendship, it's a business contract. I will uphold it for as long as it is beneficial to me and if it ceases to be, I'll go to a place that is more beneficial to me.
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Otherwise, H-1B people are just abused, indentured servants, and hired solely to price out US workers.
That is exactly what they are and why they exist. Everything is working is intended.
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To be honest, hell with the H-1B program. It needs ripped out by the roots. For people that are deemed so valuable that they need a special visa, they need to be given permanent residency and not beholden to a single employer, so if they are laid off, they don't need to fear deportation. If they are so valuable to national security, then give them a fast path to citizenship.
Otherwise, H-1B people are just abused, indentured servants, and hired solely to price out US workers.
Ah yes, of course, remove their ability to compete on price. Or in other words, "how to finally get rid of all those pesky brown people in tech sector while pretending we're doing it for their own good".
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For people that are deemed so valuable that they need a special visa, they need to be given permanent residency and not beholden to a single employer, so if they are laid off, they don't need to fear deportation.
This is only part of the problem and does nothing to stop imported workers from memorizing as much IP as they can and returning home.
That doesn't happen much, not unless the worker is forced to go back because of crappy H1B policies. The fact is that nearly all foreign workers would love to stay permanently.
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There are few things more symptomatic of the stupidification of America than people doing their own "scientific research" with the internet, and distrusting the opinion of a pro because that person is actually educated...
Then maybe the pros should stop fucking lying for their own benefit or to control others so that people could actually trust those pros? Or is that too much to ask?
On a non-political topic, go ahead and try to convince me there is something called Dark Matter and that the term isn't just a placeholder. It would be easier to convince me that a dollar is worth a dollar (it is not).
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Putting a name on a thing as a placeholder is called "making a word". You not liking it doesn't mean it needs to be changed. You're mistaking the name as applying to a thing rather than the cause of a phenomena. The phenomena is real.
Anyways, yes - you're the person my post was directly pointed at.
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Putting a name on a thing as a placeholder is called "making a word"
I have no problems with words themselves.
You not liking it doesn't mean it needs to be changed
What I have a problem with is people saying that such a thing is "real" when it is just a placeholder.
The phenomena is real.
Indeed it is. The issue is with the explanation of that phenomena. Dark Matter is NOT an explanation; however, some people seem to think it is. "It must be matter!", ok then, what properties does this matter have? "It is matter that does not interact with the EM spectrum". Ummm, whatever. Go smoke your dope somewhere else.
Anyways, yes - you're the person my post was directly pointed at.
;)
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Dark Matter is one proposed answer. Nobody's pretending it's a settled question. BUT... I appreciate your response, even if it's a tangent from the actual topic of distrusting people "because" they're actually educated on a subject. Thank you for a tactful, reasoned reply.
My apologies for the tone of my own response. Perhaps my growing distaste for almost all of the online community is a tad unreasonable.
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Bro, I used rude and uncivil language. Not towards you, but it was used. It is easy to mistake the message when such language is used. I hope your day is good.
This. So much *this*. (Score:2)
But anything to avoid paying for Americans to go to college. Hell, they're starting to go after grade school funding.
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https://pr.tsmc.com/english/ne... [tsmc.com]
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That's the first thing I noticed in TFA. 'engineers will be needed to operate...'.
It's now sop to hire engineers to operate equipment? That used to be the role of technicians. A different strata.
They're just going to import them (Score:2)
Is there some reason we have to pretend there will be some grand effort to educate, train and employ US citizens for this? They're just going to multiply F-1s and E1,2,3s and import a bunch of Asians. What are we even talking about? What constituency exists to hinder this beyond non-college whitey? The D's get lots more POCs to pander to. The R's get kudos and campaign bucks from their paymasters in industry. The chip companies get their visa slaves. The US gets it's fab industry back. What else is
Need people? (Score:2)
What? Can't they fill those jobs with some kind of AI? How quaint.
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You could, but all the chips would have 3 thumbs.
If my skater friends are any indication (Score:5, Informative)
Also, personally, I've been recruiting for systems programming (what I do) for about 4 years straight, now. I've interviewed about 60 people, most of whom lied outrageously about their skills and backgrounds.
Of course, I also worked at IBM, Cisco, and Oracle during the worst period of offshoring. I don't see it as nearly as much of a problem now, because if anyone manages to hire a competent person, they are terrified of losing them and having to re-recruit (I understand!). So, I really don't see the truth in the hype around all the recent layoffs. If you are halfway skilled and aren't a dick, you're going to land on both feet.
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Look around again.
the "New" management thinks we are all slaves.
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If you're halfway skilled and not a dick, why did they lay you off in the first place?
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If you're halfway skilled and not a dick, why did they lay you off in the first place?
Turns out that sometimes corporations change product lines or abandon previously proposed directions for new product lines, and the people doing work that's been cut are no longer needed. Sometimes corporations merge with, or acquire, entities with that do the same work, and workers become redundant. So, yes, corporations sometimes lay people off even when they're "halfway skilled and not a dick."
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Turns out people take out mortgages and have children. They have car payments and insurance and *cough* grocery bills. Clothes, furniture, yard care. They put down roots and would like to raise a family.
My parents had that. In fact they made it all the way through the 70s without a single layoff.
When do we get to that part?
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Companies get tired of paying people so they will lay you off and hire someone who will work cheaper.
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"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey."
--John Ruskin
This is true for goods and services, but also for your workforce.
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"Macroeconomic headwinds" is typically the reason given by those doing the layoffs.
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When a microeconomic headshot is all they really need to effectively solve that problem.
Same, been that way since 2007 (Score:1)
Interviewed hundreds of developers for web, back-end, Azure cloud, MS stack, etc. Only a very few, less than 5, were willing to learn, willing to work, willing to produce quality - better than cut-and-paste from the web - code. And had to train them on the basics of database design, WebAPI / API / RPC design, parameter validation (really?), database consistency/referential integrity, .....
Findings:
- Lots of people are great at following very detailed business requirements
- Lots of the same people are not
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One girl works at Starbucks and said they've had to fire 3 workers in the last six months because they *literally* could not correctly count change.
That's not new. I saw the same problem when I was working at a convenience store in the late 80s.
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I suppose some of that may be down to the difference in the value of the change. It was worth about 2.5X what it is today back when I was working convenience store night shifts, so people might have cared more about getting it correct.
Even more, people at Starbucks are paying $7 for a cup of coffee, so they're clearly not very price-sensitive. If the customer doesn't bother to look to see whether they got the correct change, should the cashier waste everyone's time getting it right? I think yes, but I co
If only there were a way to entice workers (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely there must exist some mechanism wherein potential workers might choose to do this job, versus whatever other job they are doing. Surely there must be a way to encourage future workers to consider an occupation in a field that has a considerable future ahead of it. I can't imagine what might encourage people to do this.
Well, I've tried nothing and I'm out of ideas. Let's just indenture some foreigners and put them on 3 year catch and release plans.
in house university (Score:3)
"Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers." (Score:2)
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They would not even need "university level" training, just the normal on-the-job training thing that companies naturally did for decades, before it became fashionable to demand "Fabs need a ready supply of skilled workers", which translates to "our shareholders want tax payers to pay for training people for exactly the skill profile we need right now (and probably no longer than for a few years)".
So, your point is that public education is bad, and it should be handled by private entities? Or that the only education the govt is allowed to provide is something that absolutely no private entity will ever profit from, so public universities should cut all STEM and make only gender studies majors? Because otherwise some private capitalist bastard might *gasp* benefit from his worker having been trained by public university?
Have they tried paying them yet? (Score:2)
A lot of workers in the NE (Score:2)
There are a plenty of laid off chip workers in the NE, people who worked on DEC's Alpha, Various IBM fabs n NY and VT and many other small companies that use to exist for custom chips, all gone now. But none of the people will relocate to where the plants are being built. They would have been useful to train younger kids. Oh well as they say, location location location.
More then likely, as others have said elsewhere, it will be another Wisconsin with plenty of stock buy backs with tax payer funds.
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they were in their 40's and 50's 30 years ago when that stuff died out
Massive subsidies are (Score:2)
Does an American really want to base his/her career on an industry that’s only alive because of subsidies? Those subsidies can dry up. Almost overnight. Priorities can change. Societal attitudes can change. Government finances can change. That specialty degree that paid well last year could be almost worthless next year. Very risk
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Predictable Outcome (Score:1)
The Slashdot crowd, along with Reddit and pretty much any other 20 or 30-something on the Internet will fight to the last EBT card to prevent solid career-track jobs from emerging anywhere a U.S. citizen can get at them.
Any attempt the U.S. makes at being competitive will also be categorically opposed, including tariffs, education programs, job fairs or startups.
It's not about the economics. Where the chips are made is irrelevant. There's another agenda at work.
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The Slashdot crowd, along with Reddit and pretty much any other 20 or 30-something on the Internet will fight to the last EBT card to prevent solid career-track jobs from emerging anywhere a U.S. citizen can get at them.
What?
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"your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I wouldn't want to do this kind of work (Score:2)
What a surprise (Score:2)
There is no great mystery. The chip companies destroyed their local expert workforce by moving everything offshore. That then destroys the links to Universities etc.
Now they are crying wolf and want it back but it's too late.
Starting pay is 500K with all the exec level benes (Score:1)
aint nobody got time for dat (Score:1)
America's Chip Renaissance Needs Workers
theyre too busy saying no cap and bussing