Comment by CleanedStar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CleanedStar | Hacker News Reader

Obviously this is something good for the millionaires and billionaires and heirs in the US, and bad for workers. Workers are in an economy which is still at a historically high unemployment rate that has not been seen since the summer of 1992, and before that 1984. In a profession with a mass of data of age discrimination over the age of 40, with plenty of able older programmers looking for work. With interviews where candidates with necessary programming experience and necessary language experience and even necessary API experience are nixed because they're not so familiar with the specific areas of the job required API that people need. Unemployment is at a historic high, and they want tens of thousands of more open jobs on the market to be whisked away. Means more unemployment, lower wages, longer hours.

There is no argument here, there is nothing to argue about. It is not like some scientific enquiry where scientists sit around and argue a matter all honest and searching for the truth. This is a struggle over how the pie is divided up. The heirs who provide the majority of money to VC funds and the public markets are the ones who created and wrote this legislation. It is for their benefit and against your benefit. If one makes "arguments" against this in this struggle over money, in this carving up of the pie, it all basically boils down to the statement "I am, or on the benefiting side of, the billionaires looking to profit off your labor". Those opposed are those doing the work like myself. There's no real arguments, just declarations of which side of the fight you're on.

As for maudlin, mawkish comments about the dreams of immigrants and the like - fine, we will keep the H1-B cap where it is, and make a lottery of all people who seek to immigrate, of any skill level, and let more people in that way. I'm sure immigration will mean more to some poor Guatemalan then some Indian IIT graduate who can live a decent life in India with his CS diploma. These mawkish comments about how the H1-B visa is for foreigners never mentions that these people making maudlin comments are blocking the poor people who could really benefit the most from immigration from immigrating. Some "humanitarian" move.

> It is for their benefit and against your benefit

Because immigrants just "take jobs" and add no value to the world, right? You can't think of any Americans who have become wealthy thanks to companies founded by immigrants?

> This is a struggle over how the pie is divided up.

This is economically illiterate. The economy is not "a pie", because it's not a zero sum game. The pie can grow, leaving more for everyone.

>The economy is not "a pie", because it's not a zero sum game. The pie can grow, leaving more for everyone.

But in the short term (multiple years) the biggest swings will likely be in terms of allocation of wealth rather than increase in total wealth. The majority of immigrants aren't going to be the likes of Elon Musks or Sergey Brin. They're going to be the rank and file IT workers that absolutely will cause stagnant wages and increased unemployment.

> The majority of immigrants aren't going to be the likes of Elon Musks or Sergey Brin.

If you look at numbers, they will tell you that more immigrants than "natives" start businesses.

Ah, the downvote: for when the facts irritate you.

Well, here they are, from an admittedly biased site, but from everything I can tell, they're accurate:

* Immigrants started 28% of all new U.S. businesses in 2011, despite accounting for just 12.9% of the U.S. population

* Over the last 15 years, immigrants have increased the rate by which they start businesses by more than 50 percent, while the native-born have seen their business generation rate decline by 10 percent

* Immigrants are now more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born

* Immigrants start more than 25% of all businesses in seven of the eight sectors of the economy that the U.S. government expects to grow the fastest over the next decade. These include health care and social assistance (28.7%), construction (31.8%), retail trade (29.1%) and leisure and hospitality (23.9%), among others

http://www.renewoureconomy.org/index.php?q=open-for-business

> Ah, the downvote: for when the facts irritate you.

For when the facts are absent and even if they were there fail to adequately address the point that was made. I did not feel like a tedious debate. But since you insist and were helpful enough to provide some data:

> Immigrants are now more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born

The point was: most immigrants do not start companies. Based on your quoted fact: if native-born people have a x% chance to start a business, immigrants have a 2x% chance to start a business. That means 100%-2x% of immigrants are not likely to start businesses. If x is 5, that means 90% of immigrants will probably not start a business.

To say it in plain English: your facts support the point that most immigrants to not start companies.

> your facts support the point that most immigrants to not start companies.

Neither do must "natives". That wasn't my point. The point was that immigrants tend to be a bit more entrepreneurial, and start more companies. Many of those companies are not 'startups' like we discuss here, but still, some of them grown and provide employment.

> The economy is not "a pie", because it's not a zero sum game. The pie can grow, leaving more for everyone.

The interesting question is: what causes the pie to grow?

There is really only one thing that can fundamentally increase the size of the pie and that is natural resource income. The other thing that increases the virtual size of the pie is improving the efficiency of converting natural resources to things people want (standard of living).

It's also important to remember that after natural resource income (mainly energy) the next economic fundamental is food, housing, and basic utilities (heat/water/sanitation/electricity).

Workers are required to convert natural resources to improved standard of living. But workers also have wants and needs.

Generally, productivity is a better match to a country's wealth than natural resources. Certainly, at some ultimate level, things depend on the latter, but what you make with what you've got seems to matter far more in practice. That's one of the reasons a country like the Netherlands is rich despite not having a great deal in the way of natural resources.

> Generally, productivity is a better match to a country's wealth than natural resources.

It's not an either/or question. The natural resources are still the foundation of the economy, even if you don't gather them directly yourself. And in the Netherlands I suspect a very important natural resource for the local economy is land. I don't have time for research at the moment but I would guess that simply to live in the Netherlands is very expensive.

While you are correct that H-1B visa's benefit employers of tech workers, and harm American tech workers, you are wrong to claim that this means it is a matter of billionaires vs "workers".

Most of these companies are public, and therefore pay money to shareholders, and also pay taxes. The distribution of wealth is a separate issue, that could be dealt with by changes to the tax system.

Both sides on the H-1B debate come up with bad arguments for their cause, but the economics is very simple: labor is like any other commodity, and free trade is optimal, ignoring externalities. In this case the main externality is having a bunch of foreigners living in the US, and possibly staying: it's up to Americans how costly (or beneficial) they think this is.

I realize it sounds hyperbolic to call some of your terminology Orwellian, especially since it is so commonplace in the US media, but it's kind of amusing how corporations took a look at citizen-voted, government-financed public broadcasting, public libraries, public schools, public transportation, public works etc. and decided to try to grab that adjective for themselves.

That the median blue collar worker in the US can buy a token stock of a company means nothing. The last survey by the Federal Reserve of wealth distribution that I'm aware of, the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances, shows that the wealthiest 1% of Americans own 42.2% of the stock market, the wealthiest 90%-99% own the exact same same amount - 42.2%, and the other 90% of the country owns only 15.6% of the stock market, and most of that at the top. Almost all studies indicate this disparity has increased, even credible conservative/liberatarian studies don't dispute the disparity. The stock market is a rich man's game, your talk about being public and shareholders is part of that.

So what exactly was Orwellian about my terminology? I missed the point where you said that.

You have basically dodged my argument about taxes an economic efficiency. By your logic, a policy that destroys $1 worth of real goods in a randomly selected company, and provides 10c of wealth to a "worker", would be justified. This in spite of the fact that the taxation system could accomplish a much more efficient redistribution of wealth.

Why are you arguing about H-1B visas when you really should be arguing for higher taxes (for the top 10% of income earners).

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