Today’s New York Times carries an article entitled “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career” about Bill Gates going around to universities encouraging young people to major in computer science. The chairman of EECS at MIT worries about the decline in enrollment (10 years ago his predecessor fretted about the explosion in enrollment; sic transit gloria major). All too close to home…
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Young people are well advised not to listen to interested parties telling them to go into this or that field. Predicted shortages have a funny way of turning into gluts.
Why is this surprising?
As a professional programmer, I’ve been replaced three times now by cheaper programmers in India (and Mexico) or from H1-B imported labor. But I’m blessed as I’ve latched onto a service partner gig that has me traveling across the country but at least I’m “economically viable” for the present time. Unlike many of my friends and ex-colleagues who’ve been forced to pursue alternate career paths. Or the few that have managed to hang on and are hoping to last a few years until retirement. In the service of some of the biggest corporations, I’ve had executive management tell me to my face that “programmers were a dime-a-dozen” and they desired nothing more than to send all technical positions to “offshore vendors”. When I asked one VP if there was any future for someone technically inclined, he replied that I should pursue opportunites with one of the approved “offshore vendors”. Another IT VP at another company said flat-out he’d outsource his mother if he could. Even Gates M$ has undertaken a big campaign to outsource to India.
At my current consulting site, hundreds of Indians on visas have been brought in. Many are making the same wages as we used to pay college interns in the 80s. Why would any young person, unless they were super passionate about the profession and tossed caution to the wind, choose to enter a career path that is unsecure, requires long hours and with pay dipping down into the range where retail service jobs are. The assault on future youth prospects started in the 90s with the large scale importation of H1-Bs. Training programs for entry level programmers were shelved. The late 90s saw established programmers sacrificed at the altar of cheaper labor. Parents like me steer their children away from computer science study, instead recommending another discipline and study in computers to augment that field. Or they witness first hand what is going on.
In addition, most studies have revealed that college age youth are the most money conscious and focused in history. This should not shock anyone either, given the fall in standard of living for those with high school educations or college degrees that don’t provide big bucks. In two generations, the U.S. has economically receded – my father, approaching 70 now, grew up in an age where someone who didn’t even have a high school diploma, could get a manufacturing job and provide for his family as a single breadwinner.
In addition to the outsourcing issue, a large number of recent-ish CS graduates, many of whom made their field-of-study decisions during the .com boom, find themselves out of work or “underpaid” at the moment. In many cases, they are very, very vocal about this fact. Whether or not it is true, the perception is being created that there is, in fact, already a glut of CS educated talent. Combine that with the concerns (well-placed or otherwise) about outsourcing and we have a discipline that is, for practical purposes, very uninspiring at the moment.
I hear about doctors steering their kids away from medical school, and now computer scientists steering their kids away from computing. What should I steer my kid toward?
I hear about doctors steering their kids away from medical school, and now computer scientists steering their kids away from computing. What should I steer my kid toward?
How about high-end sales and marketing? Who is going to sell colored sugar water to the next generation? Will this be sent overseas too?
Who sits down with the CIO to sell SAP, or Oracle applications?
Customer facing jobs are hard to send overseas.
John
Dangerous manual labor jobs seem to pay well. Underwater construction and welding, hazardous waste cleanup, bank robbery, etc. Actually, being a lawyer seems to still be a good gig even with all of the new lawyers just now coming out of school (as happens when people retool after every recession.)
>> hear about doctors steering their kids away from medical school, and now computer scientists steering their kids away from computing. What should I steer my kid toward?
Well, at least doctors and lawyers have a professional association that secures their future. Yes, it may be sacrifices, long hours, and expensive education cost but once one gets there, the ranks are bearing protective armor of sorts…
Naum brings up an important point. It used to be that a single breadwinner was able to support a family. Today, even with both parents working, families need to go into deep debt to buy a house. And that’s families where both parents have college degrees, nevermind the highschool dropouts.
Where’s all the money going? What’s changed since the 50s? According to Steve Harris, the biggest influence is a huge increase in taxation and regulation. In other words, the USA has simply become far more socialist than it used to be. Here’s just one example:
You spend a huge amount of tax money on farm
price supports, a lot of which goes to pay farmers to raise food high on saturated fat. Then, because of these, you pay more at the grocery store for stuff. The USDA budget makes the NIH budget look like your kid’s allowance. You pay for all the beef commercials with the Aaron Copeland music. You pay for the WIC food disbribution programs to get rid of the butter and other nasty stuff. Then you pay for the
government’s anticholesterol and staturated fat campaign. Then you pay for the cardiac bypasses under medicare. Very soon you’ll be
paying tax dollars for “prescription drug benefits” aka anticholesterol and antihypertension pills.
Konrad, according to the latest research, Americans pay less for food, clothes, toys, cars, than in the 1970s. But they pay much more for mortgage, loans, and credit card interest. Bankers (Bad Witch from the East) are skimming the cream. Even for the taxes you pay, a sizable chunk goes to pay off the national debt. It is amazing how Americans who are born here in the U.S. do not see obvious trends such as these.
By the way, the kid in the “Microsoft” article was so funny because he wants to become a business analyst instead of computer scientist. It is a well known fact that the upcoming outsourcing wave is moving analysts to India.
Doctors will last for the next 10-20 years at most. Right now, Indian doctors analyze X-ray images. It is just a matter of time when your physician will be in India, examining you through a proxy nurse (probably non-RN). That is unless we get a president who would break the back of HMOs (“and I heard a snowball can last in hell much longer if you keep it under your hat” – Dilbert)
Plumbing is a good suggestion, Demetri. A Federal Trade Commission study done 20 years ago found that the best return on investment was on medical school. Trade schools were pretty good as well, e.g., for people who learned how to operate heavy equipment or cranes.
I find it ironic that someone whose company only hires the cream of the crop is so concerned about producing more talent. But then, I guess he (Gates) doesn’t have to pay for the wasted years and time (not to mention money) that some of these idiots who actually believe him will invest in following his advice. He should lower his standards…He would no doubt be surprised what would happen when otherwise “ordinary” programmers are given similar opportunities and positive reinforcement.
Art, philosophy or some other ultra creative field would not be a bad choice, since that really depends on people being themselves and is usually (if you are good enough) hard to duplicate.
Otherwise, move over…I need a slot in that HVAC track down at the technical college.
I particularly love the following line: “What we have to emphasize is that a good computer science education is a great preparation for almost anything you want to do…”
This is *precisely* the line people were giving me 15 years ago when I went into physics while weapons labs and academic departments were scaling back as the Cold War was ending: “Physics education teaches you how to think, so you’ll do great in any career!”
I thought that was hooey even at the time, since what I wanted to do was physics, not use a physics education to pursue some other career. Since then I’ve become even more convinced that while you *can* use a physics education to do just about anything, a physics PhD is probably the longest, most painful way I can imagine to get there. If I’d spent ten years getting my degrees and then jumped into finance, say, watching 23-year-olds make just as much money would probably leave me rather angry and feeling that my education was wasted. Now that I’m a physics professor myself, I don’t recommend that people planning a non-physics career go for a physics degree. The irony is that now, as physics enrollment is going back up on its own, the “get a physics degree and you can do anything” calls are much quieter.
Now the CS people, faced with dropping enrollment, are making the same old argument. It’s pretty funny to see it, but I hope not too many people take their advice.
College advice from Gates, that’s like getting military service advice from Clinton. have no fears about CS shortage, India will more then make up for it.
College advice from Gates, that’s like getting military service advice from Clinton. have no fears about CS shortage, India will more then make up for it.
College advice from Gates, that’s like getting military service advice from Clinton. have no fears about CS shortage, India will more then make up for it.
Re: Matt’s comment about MS hiring the cream of the crop. As Philip has written, successful organizations don’t(in fact, can’t) just hire the best people, they have a system in place for turning people into the best, and this is definitely the truth at Microsoft. Their interviewing questions seldom focus on specific CS topics like databases, but more programming skills and “see how you think” questions/brainteasers. I think anyone who likes learning and is willing to work hard at it is as competitive as anyone else.
And I don’t think the objective is to deceive people. Technical jobs have gotten a bad rap recently, both because of the dot com fall out and outsourcing trends. But it is still an exciting field and the impact one person can have is amazingly high.
I think the thing that has been overlooked is the real power of CS is the ability to create scalable services or software that can generate money. Look at Google as an example. They never took shortcuts. They did things the “right” way from the start.
The passion and opportunity are still there. The commoditization is taking place where using CS theory does not apply to creating scalable solutions with a corresponding revenue growth. I have a hard time believing you can be a “programmer” working in an Oracle or SAP framework and create something of value. You are just a pair of hands like the employee in a steel mill.
On the other hand, if you can create a better Oracle Financials or SAP; more power to you. You’ll be rich, famous and quotable…
dc
When I first ‘stumbled’ into computer science I had an opportunity to work with a community of people that worked with automated mapping software. They came from a diverse background (environmental, petroleum, military) and for the most part had not been degreed in computer sciences.
They were the most passionate, innovative and dedicated group of people that I have had the pleasure to work with.
From ’98 to ’00 I worked with a consulting company doing y2k work, I had been brought on as a ‘unix expert’ and I worked with a bunch of people who had made their career decisions based on ‘there are lots of jobs in computer science’. They were all degreed in computer science and had been in the workforce for just a few years, at most. They had to be the most bored, lackluster bunch of web-browsers I have ever worked with. They (for the most part) lacked focus, desire or ambition, or at the most, their ambitions had very little to do with the jobs that they were performing.
So, I would say that it coud not possibly hurt you to get degree in computer science (unless they, finally, bulldoze all the electronics into a ditch, but that’s another story), but use it to do something that you are passionate about. For me it was creating digital maps and the occasional fly-though that lit my fire, each person has to figure that one out on their own.
Just a quick change-o-the-gears here. The US educational system should take a very close look at the higher education system in India. It seems that (in India) an individual can graduate with a masters, and direct skill with oracle applications, at the age of 22. What an awesome advantage.
Is this something that US universities can replicate?
Why is there such a unwillingness for academic staff to teach to a particular commercial platform? (Phil G excluded, ’cause we all know he love Oracle).
Of course, it would help if the students had a love for ERP applications (who doesn’t) and tuning sql statements 🙂
My eyes burn from the curry being heated in the microwave, here at work (can’t cook popcorn though). The next cube, the DBA support all bring sounds and smells of Bangalore. It’s just a matter of time till someone shows up with some boxes and two weeks pay thanking me for my service.
Bill Gates may as well have been telling folks in the South that if they keep working on their stitching, they’d be making Levi’s again any day now. I hear the mills are openning up in Lowell again too.
Hmmm, Bill Gates advocating for some poor schleprocks to “stay in school and create something super-cool” – maybe they can even work for MS. I hope they like curry.
Zoran: Site the research. I’d be very surprised if modern Americans pay less for cars than they did in the 70s. Remember, we’re not talking about straight dollars but dollars after taxes. Making 70k a year doesn’t mean much when half of it goes to taxes and then you have to pay extra “hidden” taxes due to regulation such as mandatory airbags.
Zoran: Cite the research. I’d be very surprised if modern Americans pay less for cars than they did in the 70s. Remember, we’re not talking about straight dollars but dollars after taxes. Making 70k a year doesn’t mean much when half of it goes to taxes and then you have to pay extra “hidden” taxes due to regulation such as mandatory airbags.
Jeesh, between John Ruberio and Konrad I can see why the US is in such deep doo doo.
They are either begrudging the hard work of others or griping that too much is being taken from them.
Heck, take the examples from the hard working dba group, and apply yourself to learning more, working harder, etc…
Take the example from India too and invest in EDUCATION!!! If it means paying more taxes (and it does), then DO IT AND QUIT COMPLAINING! It is not about, well – my kids go to private school, or I don’t have kids, so why should I pay for others to go to school, or those damn public schools will just waste my money teaching (place undesired curriculum here).
It is about remaining competitive as a person and as a nation in a radically changing world market.
So, learn more, work harder, support your society and quit yer complaining.
We need to stop thinking that a CS degree is going to make you rich. This is the same crap that makes people go for “buisness” and useless cookie-cutter MBA degrees. It’s just that the gold rush is over and earnings are equalizing. Sure, some of the grunt work is now done by lower paid offshore or immigrant labor, but this has always been the case in the U.S.
Tweaking the AR package to produce a new report is not why you go to school for 4 to 8 years to learn computer science. It never should have been. It is only an accident of supply and demand that if you knew how to tweak SAP rather than BPCS, you could ask for $1,000 a day.
What does a librarian earn? An accountant, or a chemist? These are all professions that require lots of training and skill, but the pay is average. There are lots of these kinds of jobs, and it’s no shame to aspire to one. You do something because you love it. Otherwise buy a gas station franchise. I hear there’s going to be an oil shortage real soon now.
Heh, what Eric said.
I remember in physics grad school, my PhD advisor, all of whose PhD students for the last 5-10 years had left the field, frequently repeating the “physics is great preperation for any field…” line. Of course he had never worked a day for private enterprise.
As for physics teaching you to think, thats only true up to a point, maybe to your first year or two of grad school. Then it just become increasingly esoteric applications which don’t have much general value. The degree itself may impress some people and open a few doors, but not enough to make up for the time invested.
Plumbing?
While plumbing work is not intellectually challenging, in most states there are significant barriers to entry. For example, in New York, you must work as an apprentice for 4 years, then as a journeyman plumber for another 5 years. Only then can you take the test to become a master plumber (you must be a master plumber to get permits, etc.). As an apprentice or journeyman you will make wages that make McDonalds look great. You must endure 9 years of this before you can hang out a shingle and have your own business.
But when you do… around here, in Westchester, there are quite a few plumbing firms which make their owners 7 figure yearly incomes.
I firmly believe that such “service” jobs have the potential to earn more than any “creative” job will for some time to come.
Konrad, as Bill Gates might say; that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The top marginal tax rate for corporations has declined from 52% in the 50s (it’s peak level) to 35% today; the top marginal tax rate for individuals has declined from 92% (also it’s peak level) to 35% today. People lived on single incomes in the 50’s because they lived in small houses and had less stuff – not because taxes were lower. They weren’t.
Enrollments for CS courses (or any branch of study) is of course a lagging indicator – the question is whether this is a cyclical downturn after a recent boom, or a permanent trend.
Don’t forget dentistry! They can’t send your mouth overseas for work. Cosmetic dentistry in an affluent area of the nation – but the jobs are limited. My dentist friends tell me you don’t want to be an “insurance dentist.”
Interesting off-shoring rant over here:
http://www.tompeters.com/toms_world/observations.asp
I hope Bill Gates will take some measure of responsibility to those he advised.
– Make Windows more programmer-friendly, softening the sharp social distinction between “programmer” and “user.”
– He hired away a bunch of research guys from (presumably) teaching. Are these guys sufficiently happier that they give back more to people?
– Give bi-monthly talks.
If he does not take any responsibility for those he advised, then we can only see this as work to increase the supply of CS labor. Of course, I didn’t see any of his talks, so perhaps the news articles took a slanted tone. But this is my impression from the article we read.
I did take the time to read an interview about his talks, and at least he’s more bullshit-free than his counterparts at other companies.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5167590.html
However, a common problem you see on forums is technies who don’t know anything else than programming — Joseph Weizenbaum’s claim about “computer bums.” Doomed to work on computer plumbing for the rest of their lives.
Hi Gary,
You make a striking set of assumptions about the US worker as compared to the foreign worker.
You believe that US workers (me in particular) do not work hard and are unwilling to learn new skills in order to compete with foreign workers. This would presuppose that all of the decisions about laying off US folks were made based on ability and motivation. I am going to assume that you don’t work with many programmers and don’t know many. Because, if you did you would quickly find that most of those people that you know to be competent are being replaced with less competent and much less expensive employees. I’ve worked with several shops in the US and India in particular and the skill level is much greater here in the US. Cost is the sole factor in determining who is employed. If a project takes twice as long to complete but costs one quarter, you do the math. IT jobs going overseas is an inexorable process and while I don’t enjoy the prospect of losing my job to someone in another country, its the way of all mature industries (hence the reference to the long emigrated textile industry – I suppose you think those people were just whiny bums too?). What is unexcusable is a US worker losing his job to a foreigner on a visa. Don’t tell me that every H1B is more qualified than every US worker that he has repalced. It simply doesn’t fly.
You’re obviously a tax and spend socialist who believes that all the public schools need is more money to produce a talented, competitive workforce. You cannot have taken any kind of close look at the educational system and the corrupt collusion that exists between the Democratic party and the teacher’s unions. We spend more on education per pupil than any other G-7 nation (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/eiip/eiipid43.html) and we compete well with them in respect to aptitude – contrary to popular misconception. This misconception fuels the mentality that we need to spend more on education.
My prior post is a commentary on the life of a programmer in these United States. It is fact and is played out every day. Our time is short and we will have to retool, no question. But to disparage a whole group of professionals as lazy and looking for handouts and entitlements is irresponsible – but in this forum (the internet) we are entitled to our uninformed opinions.
Lenny Susskind, the highly regarded physicist at Stanford, started out in plumbing.
Coming soon from Bill Gates
Its interesting that Gates is going around the US trying trying to get students pumped up on Computer Science.
When asked if he would study CS Gates answered “computational biology”
or “artificial intelligence”. When asked if there could be another
Microsoft he said – a breakthrough in AI would be 10x as big as MSFT.
By saying that Gates has basically admitted that the opportunites for big advances in CS for the next 15 years are limited.
To be really good at computational biology (aka Bioinformatics) you
are better off with a MS degree in Biochemistry and learning python or
perl for hacking.
With AI there hasn’t been any breakthoughs in 20+ years when the hot
stocks were all AI companies. Progress is slow. Handwriting recognition
works ok. Voice/Vision recognition is limited. We are at the cockroach
level and need to get to the human level. There are less actual jobs
than in the 80s and the programming tools are more primative. (Java +
C# vs LISP).
Marvin Minsky the grandfather of AI called AI Brain Dead and that there hasn’t been much progress since the mid 1970s. According to him Clippy and OCR don’t cut it.
Gates uses progress in hardware as a proxy for progress in computer programming.
* Harddrives with Terabytes of data
* LCD screens are getting cleaner and may be used as ebooks
* Wi-Max (802.16) extends connectivity from 200 feet to 30 miles.
* SPOT watch which receives data via FM
Web services standards are supposed to be the next big thing in
software according to Gates. His example was scheduling. When will
Microsoft open Outlook/Exchange to webservices? I see proprietary
companies loath to open their proprietary APIs.
Personally I think that real opportunities are in “disruptive
technologies”. Open Source and specifically applying OpenSource to
Financial Services. Or perhaps students should just follow the
opportunist Larry Elison’s recommendation and get into Biotech.
Larry: “This is just the beginning of the biotech revolution. It’s going to change our world even more than computers did.”
As the parent of two children soon to be leaving for college, I’ve already advised them against considering computer science as a career. Given my personal experience with layoffs while working in IT at a Fortune 100 company, and coupled with statements such as those made by leaders of some top technology companies (IT companies focus on Asia to expand jobs), I don’t see how anyone can expect there to be many US job opportunities in this field in the very near future.
They all now realize it is much more fun, profitable & secure being photographers.
John,
Thanks for your well thought out response. Admittedly, I was being inflamatory…
But, I have been using programming languages since basic on a coco3, and I am currently employed as a lead programmer/analyst, having once enjoyed a project managment role in the dot.com/telecom boom.
I have worked with programmers from around the world and I have even remotely managed projects that were programmed in bangalore. I want to offer a few points.
1. I am greatly dismayed at my loss of earning power.
2. I warmly welcome anybody that wants to come to america, work here, pay taxes, etc…
3. I have pesonally experienced the logistical overhead of outsourcing, and I believe that most companies rushing into outsourceing programming projects overseas will not realize the profits that they envision.
4. If we, as stateside programming staff want to keep our jobs, then we will need to develop a set of well-reasoned and logic arguments that can stand up to any cost saving dreams that our management foist apon us.
5. Simple, derrogatory and ill-reasoned arguments based on stereotypes will not cut it.
Furthermore, my biggest beef with the us educational system is their tendency to NOT train people towards a particular set of tools. There would be no management argument to outsource oracle applications to india if us universities trained students to use and understand those tools. The learning curve is difficult and I currently work with staff from india that have had hands on training, and extremely deep knowledge of the application framework and table structure. I rarely interview a college grad from the us that has near the understanding, much less the usage, of the same sets of tools.
I do not disparage the us programmers, I just want to seem them get a grip of the situation and quit beefing about the issues in a unsupportable manner.
Cheers!
As the VP of Engineering at a small software company, I get at least 3 calls per week from people tring to sell their offshore services. I think this is of note because in the years before, I would receive SPAM — no phone calls. It looks like they realize they have to call the decision makers repeatedly to get through and they are being proactive about it.
Most people who approve offshore projects do not know what it takes to develop a robust application. The just want to see an end result and with software, the end result they see is only 1% of the actual functionality of the application. If there are any problems, it’s too late by then.
The companies who will successfully leverage offshore work are those companies who establish a presence in the foreign markets. The people performing the offshore work must be indoctrinated in the companies culture or it won’t work.
Look at it this way: have you ever hired a consultant to come in and help develop a software application? More often than not it ends in sub-optimal software. The reason? Consultants don’t subscribe to your culture. They have their own and more often than not, they believe that their way is the best way. Besides, they operate under a totally different set of contigencies.
You think it’s bad now? Have you ever been to India? I was there in 2000 and it was the most surreal thing. In every city, even in small towns, banners and posters proclaiming “Learn Java now” were everywhere. Absolutely bizzare.
I would never outsource to India. Sorry, I want control. My reputation is on the line with every product we develop and there is no way I am going to put that in the hands of someone I can’t control. Put it this way: if the project fails, they walk away… but I’m screwed.
(forgive the misspellings. I don’t feel like proofing this)
I believe that we can start even earlier than college here in the US. Someone made the point earlier, and I believe Matt from the story is putting this to work, if students come into the workforce with a specific product knowledge or general programming skills, they can pursue any career path and utilize their technical skills there.
I would like to think that what is being learned from outsourcing now is that some projects can be shipped off-shore, at the risk of losing control and that others do not lend themselves to packaging for off-shore development.
I’ve often thought that a technology based high school offering different disciplines, networking, programming, desktop applications along with the usual curriculum would better prepare our young people for the challenges facing the next generation of workers.
Gary – after I submitted my comment I re-read your post and, realizing your experience in the programming industry, I eagerly awaited your response.
Matthew: You may think it’s dumb, but it’s also the truth. Whatever may have happened to to the top marginal tax rate, the percent of the GDP that goes to the government has gone up in every decade since WW2 and never once gone down. The fact that you even chose to pick the top marginal rate as a metric of taxation shows rather than more obvious choices shows that you’re only looking for data that fits your interpretation.
Gary: When the problem is socialism, you can’t fix it with even more socialism. Despite all the wonderful things you hear from leftists about socialized education in Europe, it’s the USA that’s producing the most published papers and patents (per capita). Do you really want the government to have more influence in education? The same government that runs the post office? Be honest now, cause it’s your kids that are going to face the consequences.
Konrad,
Based on what I hear from the right-wing press, all of academia is littered with leftists. This _must_ be the group that you hold up so highly as “it’s the USA that’s producing the most published papers and patents (per capita)”.
And, yes this is the result of an educational system that was recreated after wwII to educate all those returning soldiers (GI Bill anybody) and keep educating all them kids that resulted during the econmic boom that followed. Yep, socialized education at its finest.
In fact, this last century has been chock-full o’ socialist ideals… There was the trust-busting at the end of the 19th century, followed by the growth of the unions (what a truly bolshevik idea), then there was the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, National Parks, etc… even implementing the beloved Income Tax
And each and every one of these things stemmed from very real pressures on society, the collection of overwhelming power into the hands of a few industrialists, the oppression of the common man, the poisoning of the food system (read ‘The Jungle’), the misuse of public lands… Oh, and a way to pay for these new services.
I bet that you call yourself a Conservative, but I think that I, with my socialist ideals, am the true conservative. You on the other hand are another radical looking to tear apart the america that I love.
p.s. John, I agree that technically oriented high-schools are a great benefit. Right now I am trying to help my eldest figure what they ‘want to do with their life’, then find a way to pay for it. The creator must be a comedian…
Gumint reciepts as percentage of GDP, 1934-present:
http://taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/TFDB/TFTemplate.cfm?Docid=205
Total is pretty much in the same band since WWII. Goes up some years, down others.
So, Konrad, you lose. Though I’m sure you can find some way to cook the numbers to support your preconceptions.
Interesting trends evident in the data, after smoothing out year to year fluctuations: over time, the percentage of income from social security steadily increases, percentage from corporate and excise taxes steadily decreases, percentage from income taxes stays about the same.
So there you have it.
Gary: Let me get this straight, you want socialism to take the credit for the boom of the 50s, yet not for the problems we see today when we have far more socialism. You can’t have it both ways.
As for academia, yes they tend to be leftist, but so what? The question is not whether leftists are publishing research but whether leftists countries produce more research than ones that have more laissez-faire policies. So far the United States, which is by far the least leftist country of the big industrialized nations, has produced the most research. How do you explain that? I think the results speak for themselves.
And before you get too caught up thinking about academia, remember that they’re not the only who do research. For example in the medical field, private companies spend far money on research than government-funded institutes. It’s not the NIH that’s making the big breakthroughs in cancer research, it’s Merck. Yeah, that’s right. A big evil corporation. They’re the ones who invent the things that are gonna save your life when you come down with some disease.
If you say you’re a “true conservative” then you must be using the word in a funny way that no one else does. Are you related to Humpty Dumpty?
Also, I suggest you do some reading about the FDA. It’s real power came from the incidents of thalidomide birth defects. The only reason those didn’t happen in the USA was that the FDA delayed thalidomide for a completely unrelated reason. In other words, it was just dumb bureaucratic bumbling that happened to get lucky by delaying some drug until the Europeans tried it and found the problems with it.
Anonymous coward: Sorry, try again. Those aren’t “gumint reciepts”, they’re federal receipts. IIRC, the total percentage of the GDP taken away from people in the form of taxes at the federal, state and local levels was at about 40% in the late 90s.
Ah here’s the problem. The 40% figure I was thinking of is not the percentage of the GDP but rather the percentage of income from the median family. Some nice graphs are visible here:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/prmedianfamily.html
Now tell me, what government services do you have today which you didn’t have in 1955 that are worth 20% of your salary? The war on drugs? Dairy subsidies? Steel subsidies? Those “the other white meat” commercials?
Konrad: From 1950 through 1959, federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP averaged 17.2%. From 1990-1994, it had ballooned to 17.8%. Source: Office of Management and Budget, 2002.
A man said to the universe:
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’
— From War Is Kind, 1900
— Stephen Crane
A man said to the universe:
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’
— From War Is Kind, 1900
— Stephen Crane
If offshoring continues to accelerate, the dollar must inevitably decline.
I suggest you steer kids in the direction of industries that will thrive in a collapsed-dollar
economy. Energy, perhaps? When oil’s over $100/barrel there will be great demand for substitutes.
Konrad,
You’re a pretty funny guy, what with that broad brush and the complete certainty that you make your claims with.
Of course, I’m not as expert as you, so I will stick to the things that I understand.
When I talked about socialism and its positive influences in america I referred specifically to the beginning of the 20th century and the role that trust-busting and unions played in spreading the wealth and improving the life of the common american.
There is also a great point be made about the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and the recovery from the great depression.
Both of these events were in response to rampant free market economics.
Of course, things are not that simple, there were certainly broad swings of policy and economics before, during and after those events. The point is that american democracy is a flexible instrument, and it is important to play both sides of the political aisle to reap the benefits. Too frequently single-minded political mothpieces play ony one side of the aisle and play off of peoples emotions by denigrating the other side.
When I see people like Ann Colter making money feeding people a one-sided diatribe, I hear nothings but echos of Joseph Goebbels, what do you hear.
There were many factors that lead to the boom of the fifties such as the greatly increased industrial capabilities following the war, these were mediated by union protections and readily available education to create a powerful middle class.
This middle class also appreciated the ‘good times’ (having lived through the depression, war, etc..) and had a much deeper commitment to america than we see today.
Too many soo called patriots today are just flag waving opportunists that will play any angle they can to make a buck.
As far as the FDA goes, thalidiomide was just a drop in the bucket that made it into the press because the results were so stricking. The reason that the us delayed the use of thalidiomide had more to do with the requirements of the FDA than mere bungling. What the FDA had been instrumental in was the creation of a safe food supply, elimination of ‘patent’ drugs and improving the blood supply, and all of that was in the early 1900’s.
Obviously, you and I disagree on the ‘meaning’ of conservative. All support for your case is eliminated when you reduce yourself to name calling. But that is how the ‘conservative’ side of the aisle seems to make their living these days.
Gary, if you’re telling me that socialists are the true conservatives then it’s not just a matter of disagreeing with me on the meaning of the word. That’s simply not what the word is commonly taken to mean. If you’re telling me that you’re right and everyone else in the English-speaking community is wrong then the onus is on you to show your reasoning.
Now apart from bringing up the Nazis and complaining about flag-waving rhetoric, I notice you haven’t actually responded to my arguments about why the USA is producing so much research.
As for FDR and the great depression, now it’s my turn to remind you to have a little humility. Even today, there is a lot of disagreement among prominent economists about the value of FDR’s policies. There is a good case to be made that the great depression would have been just another minor dip in the market were it not for the fed’s interference in the free market. Is it just a coincidence that the worst recession in history happened the first time the federal reserve strongly interefered with the free market? Still, I suppose you’re much smarter than all those economists so the *real* reason for the great depression is obvious to you.
About the FDA, are you really claiming that thalidomide was delayed due to suspicions about birth defects? If not, then what exactly are you implying by saying it had to due with FDA “requirements” rather than bureaucratic bungling?
Now, for all your talk about unions I have just one response: what’s your point? Unions have nothing to do with socialism and are a perfectly natural part of the free market. It was places like the USSR that banned unions. Care to remind when that happened in the US?
Konrad,
The views that you express are truly Orwellian and I find myself wondering why I continue responding. To that putpose consider this my last post on this discussion topic.
just a quick check of merriam webster:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=conservatism
2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change
Current ‘Conservative’ policy of reducing taxes, eliminating government services and modifying social services are a change from the status quo, and therefor radical, not conservative.
re: FDR and the New Deal, I will stick to what I learned from legitimate history and not the revisionist history of Thomas Sowell, etc…
re: The FDA and Thalidimide
I must apologize, the restraint against thalidimide was due to the herioc efforts of one FDA employee, Frances Kelsey, M.D., Ph.D.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-75-88-461/science_technology/thalidomide/clip8
These efforts led to increased vigilance. The act that I was originally referring to was the FOOD AND DRUGS ACT of 1906, here is a timeline:
http://www.fdacompliance.net/free/overview/mileston.htm
re: Socialism and Unions
The fact that Stalin, a psychotic totalitarian, crushed unions has little to do with the theories of socialism, past or present:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1901/04/unions.htm
http://www.newsocialist.org/
In regards to research, I am not familiar with that to any great degree, so I have not offered any comment.
Have a great day!
For those of you suggesting biotech as the answer, and for those of you who mentioned plumbing, this story about a molecular biologist in England who quit his job to become a plumber might interest you (surprised it wasn’t mentioned already):
http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/lecturerspay/story/0,5500,1154654,00.html
In brief: amazed that his plumber was earning twice what he was, this molecular biologist decided to switch fields.
Following up on the “if you can create a better mousetrap” thread started by DougChang, unfortunately, just having a superior technical product is not enough, nor even as Demetri mentions, is VC funding or the like.
You need to be able to get managers to listen to your pitch, then convince them to buy your stuff when they may have a substantial investment in existing technology, which means you need to convince them that you’re stuff really is so much better that it’s worth changing what they already have, and that you’ll be around long enough to support the technology and that they’ll be able to find people to hire who know the technology and so on. And you need to do this while the competition may be attempting to block you at every turn and so on.
And: even if you could just sit down and make money by developing a better SAP or whatever, chances are that it is the domain knowledge that is the most important thing and not the computer science knowledge–a crappy Visual Basic app that actually solves the user’s problems will sell while a perfectly architected app in an advanced language that doesn’t meet the user’s expectations will not.
David Cohen, the article about British researchers hanging up their jobs seems much less to do with the extraordinary high pay of plumbers than the extraordinary low pay of researchers in Britian. The pay for the plumber (after converting pounds to dollars) seems to be reasonable and in line with US wages. The pay of the researchers seems to be lower than in the US, to the best of my small knowlege in that area. This points to a problem in Britian, not here. That is not to say that we do not have our fair share of problems, however. I would not debate against that point. But I think the biotech, especially in the private sector, is quite bright here.
Article: http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/lecturerspay/story/0,5500,1154654,00.html
Great article though. I fear for Britian and even more so for the socialist paradises on the Continent. When their baby boom generation retires and there is one worker for every two on the government tit their problem will be even worse than ours.
The coming 10 years will see a great shift in American jobs. Most of the ‘low level’ tech jobs will go somewhere else overseas, maybe 3 million of them. At the same time, 15 million Americans will retire and leave the job market. And those americans will need a lot of services done for them. What we are seeing as far as offshore work is that all the jobs that are one-level-removed from the actual tool are going overseas. The jobs that will remain over here are teh higher level jobs that require DIRECT CUSTOMER INTERACTION, i.e. face to face. Americas workers affected by the outsourcing boom are well advised to grow more into a mediator role, that allows them to do service work to the customers here, while overseaing work done overseas. At the same time, the skills that will be needed more and more are problem solving, creativy, and innovation. Can those be taught? Many think no. I think yes. Out of the box thinking often comes down to first recognizing the box, and then playing with its boundaries. The key to this is critical thinking. Unfortunely, Americas are not used to critical thinking amymore; the good news is that it CAN be taught.
Outsourcing will be ended by three things:
1. Trade tarriffs.
2. Currency instability.
3. Hubbert Peak.
Unfortunately, these things will also end a lot more than just outsourcing. In time, you may wish outsourcing was all that you had to deal with.
The dollar has fallen some 30%, and it still has a ways to go. At some point, foreigners won’t look as attractive as they do now. Even so, that’s not the real issue with Big Company management. It’s all about using foreigners as a club to beat the domestic labor market over the head, so that it’ll sit, fetch, roll over, play dead. Putting them pasty geeks back in their place.
Trade tarriffs haven’t happened yet, but if you scan the news stories, it’s just a matter of time, before they do.
And honestly, it’s not the furriners at fault here, but the Bubble, mismanagement, malinvestment, and the Little People paying for the mistakes the Big People made. These jobs didn’t go overseas, they just vanished. The economic recovery that the news keeps touting, is nothing more than cooked numbers. Your government is lying to you. Film at 11.
All of this is unimportant. The Hubbert Peak is upon us, and who cares whether your job is oursourced, when there’s no electricity in your tent camp, and the bicycle you managed to hold onto from your bankruptcy and divorce is the only way you can get around, other than walking. Maybe the diesel trucks that brought by food last week will be by again, but even diesel supplies are getting tight. Rumors abound. A man on horses rides by in the distance – you look at him enviously. Unfortunately, he’s armed, or you and your buddies might try stealing it from him.
You hear there’s food to be had out in the country, and you think maybe you can reach one of the farming towns on your bike in a day. However, you have nothing to trade for food, and you hear the farmers have banded together to keep the city people away. The farmers have stopped accepting dollars as payment, because they are worthless, and are now demanding either payment in kind, or gold coins. Not that there’s that much farming going on anymore – the factory farms are all shut down, from the gasoline shortages and most have gone bankrupt.
i do agree for that reson
yep
gates is stil doing a good money on our career ,
we are the pigs , and hus the big wulf that want always to take control of all .
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