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ROHRABACHER TALKS TECH WITH BILL GATES TO PREDICTABLE RESULTS
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates had a conversation with Long Beach’s kinda-sorta congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Misfortune) in Washington, D.C., today, and it was as much of a mismatch as you’d expect.
Gates was on Capitol Hill pleading for reform of the H-1B visa program that Microsoft and other companies use to hire foreign workers in the United States. Gates contends that the ability to employ the best minds—wherever they were born, especially since most of them have been educated in the best U.S. universities—helps stimulate the employment of Americans because four or five support jobs are created around each of them. As evidence, he cited a recent study of technology companies in the S&P 500.
Rohrabacher, who somehow is sitting on the House Committee on Science and Technology, had some trouble getting his head around that concept—about as much trouble as I’m having with the fact that Rohrabacher has a seat on the House Committee on Science and Technology! When it was his turn to question Gates, here’s a partial transcript of what transpired:
Rohrabacher: If we bring in more people from the outside, realizing that we’re bringing the most talented people from other countries, will it not hurt those countries? And will it also not depress the wages in our own country that people like yourself would have to pay your employees in order to get quality people or in order to train people within our own society?
Gates: No, no. These top people are going to be hired. It’s just a question of what country they do their work in.
Rohrabacher: I’m really not talking about top people here. You know … there’s a lot of other people in society rather than just the top people. It’s the B and C students that fight for our country and kept it free so that people like yourself would have the opportunity that you’ve had. Those people, whether or not they get displaced by the top people from another country is not our goal. Our goal isn’t to replace the job of the B students with A students from India, because those B students deserve to have good jobs and high-paying jobs.
Gates: That’s right, and what I’ve said here is that when we bring in these world-class engineers, we create jobs around them. … The B and C students are the ones who get those jobs around these top engineers. And if these top engineers are forced to work, say, in India, we will hire the B and C students from India to work around them.
Rohrabacher: But according to BusinessWeek, almost 150,000 computer programmers have lost their job in this country since the year 2000. Now, my reading of all of this is that there are plenty of people out there to hire but people want to have the top quality people from India and China and elsewhere, and they’re willing to have these 150,000 American computer programmers just go unemployed.
Gates: Actually, BusinessWeek doesn’t do surveys. I think you’re referring to a quote in BusinessWeek from an Urban Institute study …
Rohrabacher: That’s what I said, according to BusinessWeek, yeah.
Gates: It’s not according to BusinessWeek. There was a study that a group at Urban Institute did that was deeply flawed in terms of how it defined what an engineer is. When we say that these jobs are going begging, we’re in business every day. We’re not kidding about it. These jobs are going begging, and the result is that in a competitive economy …
Rohrabacher: You’d have to raise wages.
Gates: No, wages are –
Rohrabacher: If a job’s going begging, you raise wages, now in a –
Gates: No, it’s not an issue of raising wages. These jobs are very, very, very high-paying jobs. And we are hiring as many of these people as we can.
Rohrabacher: Well, let me give you one example –
Thankfully, nobody had to endure Rohrabacher’s example because at that point, committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tennessee) announced that Rohrabacher’s time was up.
Would that it were truly so.
Tags: Bill Gates, dana rohrabacher, H1B visa, House Committee on Science and Technology, Microsoft
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Which isn't fair, because I like Huell.
How on earth did Dana "dinosaur flatulence" ever get on the Science and Technology committee? Isn't there a Surfing and Fish Tacos committee?
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Perhaps Bill should just say look you douchebag, if i was Indian wouldn't you have wanted me here seeing as how i created Microsoft and the money/jobs/economic power that came along with it.
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Gates muddled and incoherent testimony that US universities are not producing enough STEM graduate was pure perjury: studies by Rand, AP Soan, Urban Institute has shown that there is a glut of STEMs and no shortage. Gates testimony that he pays most of his H1Bs over $100K/year is also a lie: according the LCA database 85% of H1Bs employed by MS are paid < $50K/year and are not even doing technical work. I applaud Rohrabacher for standing for use native born Americans who invented just about every modern technology. The computer industry that made Gates rich was invented by us native had born Americans NOT Gate's cheap, unimaginative, non-innovative $9/hour Chinese and Indian flunkies.
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And I think claiming that Chinese and Indians are "unimaginative" and "non-innovative" pretty much puts you in that class.
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Look around your home, find all the technological artifacts that were INVENTED in China and India. I did. I found none. The point is that these cultures compared to Europe and America have no proven track record of major technological innovation. So why should workers from these countries be given preference for tech jobs in the US?
>> And the point .... that Rohrabcaher’s questions and responses were
>> rhetorically pointless and generally incomprehensible.
Can you tell me exactly what he said you think is wrong? Do you dispute:
that H1B depresses wages and displaces American workers? That H1Bs are overall paid less by MS? Rohrabcaher is not the most articulate critic of H1B, but Gates is such a coward that he will not share a panel with them. I am referring to Dr. Norman Matloff and Dr. Ron Hjra. Gates is allowed to commit perjury because he is rich NOT because he is right.
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>> Standardized testing?
That's it? Is that the BEST you can do? You missed noodles! Please note that nothing you mentioned came from India - the biggest source of H1Bs. The innovations you mentioned were done thousands of years ago-none are recent and all of them had analogous independent developments in Europe and the Middle East. Modern rocketry was developed in America and Russia: we landed on the moon and fifty years later China can barely get someone into orbit. Guttenberg independently invented moveable type press and started the publishing industry the revolutionized Europe - that didn't come from China. Cars were invented here NOT in China. Standardized testing? That was an extension of standardized parts which was invented by Henry Ford - is that a Chinese name? OK, you’ve got paper; if you want to give an H1B to an ancient Chinese mummy I help you. But, as for replacing American engineers with cheap help from China/India, consider this list of recent American innovations:
Thomas Jefferson(Democracy)
Ben Franklin(Electricity, BiFocals, Fire Dept, etc.)
Robert Morse(Telegraph-Digital Communication),
James Fergason(Combat Submarine),
Charles Goodyear(Vulcanization Rubber),
Herman Hollerith(Punch Cards,IBM)
Cyrus Field(Transatlantic cable)
George Eastman(Kodak,Roll Film)
Henry Ford(Auto Industy,Standardized parts),
Thomas Edison(Phonograph,Motion Pictures, Light bulb),
The Wright Brothers(Powered Flight),
Robert Goddard(Rocketry),
Philo T. Farnsworth(Electronic Television)
Lee DeForest(Vacumn Tube, Radio)
Edwin Howard Armstrong(FM Radio)
Vannevar Bush(Search Engine, Internet?)
Hewlett & Packard( HP)
Atanasoff &Berry(First Programmable Computer)
Edwin Land(Polaroid Camera)
Percy Lebaron Spencer(Microwave Oven)
Shockley, Brattain &Bardeen(Transistor)
George Pake (Xerox Parc)
Jack Kilby/Robert Noyce/Gordon Moore(Intel,Integrated Circuit)
Douglas Engelbart(Computer Mouse, Windows)
"Ted" Hoff Jr(Microprocessor,motherboard)
Tim Paterson(DOS)
Bricklin & Frankston(VisaCalc spreadsheet),
Rubenstien & Barnaby(WordStar word processor)
Ivan Edward Sutherland(Sketchpad)
Metcalfe & Boggs(Ethernet)
Alan Shugart(Floppy Disk)
Bill Joy(BSD, Java)
James Fergason(LCD Imporved)
Roberts & Mims(Altair personal computer)
Jobs & Wozniak(Apple Computer),
Gates & Allen(Microsoft,Windows)
Codd & Date(Relational Databse Model)
Larry Ellison(Oracle,Relational Database)
Marc Anderseen(Web Browser,Netscape)
None of these guys were guest workers from China or India. Most were notorisly poor students or largely self taught; the kind of people that Bill Gates would not hire. What would the world be like if the H1B program started in 1990 had been around a hundred years ago and these people had been displaced before they had the opportunity to make their great contributions? How many future members of this list will simple never go into STEM because of the abuses caused by H1B? That scares me, how about you?
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>>Look around your home, find all the technological artifacts that were INVENTED in China and India. I did. I found none.
...if there was ever an example of the need for a good liberal arts education.
As for that (highly selective) list of major cultural accomplishments culled from some John Birch website: I think that you are confusing TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES with PATENTS.
Every study and every expert confirms that science and math education in places like China and India is light years ahead of those disciplines in the US. So yes, the US is great, rah-rah, and yes, other cultures--european and asian--have been hamstrung by intellectual orthodoxy, but Americans aren't learning the basics anymore. So while we may continue to be an *employer* of the world's most innovative thinkers, we won't necessarily produce the majority of them.
We can't even really pat ourselves on the back for democracy (nice try, though)--the US is rather late in a relatively long line of representative democracies. (Again, you might need a little humanities education to round out your linux guru-ness.)
Go ahead: explain to me how every American invention is proof of our greatness, and every non-American invention was either (a) inevitable and therefore unimpressive, or (b) too far in the past to be relevant.
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I haven't checked this out, but if memory serves, the first programmable computer was actually the invention of a French weaver.
The Romans had fire brigades.
You'd thin out that list even more if you didn't give out a major award anytime someone came up with a new computer model.
you also write:
"What would the world be like if the H1B program started in 1990 had been around a hundred years ago and these people had been displaced before they had the opportunity to make their great contributions?"
We did have an H1B program. It was called "give me your tired, etc." Open up any history of labor and you'll get a whole list of protectionist rants against immigrants, like those from china (an wang, who invented a whole shitload of stuff), ireland (john holland, the submarine), germany (einstein, relativity), italy (enrico fermi, neutron reactor).
And that's not even counting Levi Strauss.
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so tell me how this guy doesn't count...
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Yes, it's selective because I selected the major technological( NOT cultureal) advances that have radically change human culrue and all of them have been made in American and Europe - not India or China.
>> Every study and every expert confirms that science and math education in
>> places like China and India is light years ahead of those disciplines in the
>> US.
Academic performance and the ability to be innovative are not NECESSARILY the same thing. History is peppered with examples of academic failures that have gone on to create many new innovations. The best example is Einstein who was at best a C student, blacklisted by his peers and only managed to do his work when he landed the patent clerk job. Sadly, in the world of Bill Gates, Einstein would not be able to get a job with Microsoft which is the problem with H1B. Had Einstein’s patent clerk job been given to a cheap worker from India or China, modern physics might not have been born.
>> but Americans aren’t learning the basics anymore
That's not true; there are many American's who do very well academically. One could argue that due to glut of STEM graduate both domestic and from abroad, that a degree in STEM just doesn't guarantee a good paying secure job anymore; due to H1B you can be replaced almost instantly from a worker from abroad. Why would a smart person waste 8-12 years getting an advanced degree only to work for very little money in a career that lasts only a few years?
>> Go ahead: explain to me how every American invention is proof of our
>> greatness, and every non-American invention was either (a) inevitable and
0>> therefore unimpressive, or (b) too far in the past to be relevant.
I just pointed out that almost all of the major technological innovations in the last 100 years occurred in America and Europe; these are the ones that have done more to change how we live than all the ones in the previous 10000. To me that's a sign of greatness and a credit to all humanity. Most of the examples from China ( and none from India) are centuries old. Why the gap? Gun powder and paper were invented centuries ago with not much after that. Then suddenly staring in Europe in the middle ages ( and later in America) technology takes off.
The point is this: no one is saying Asians or Indians are any smarter of dumber than Europeans or visa versa. Bill Gates is telling us that if we don't import these cheap workers America sill go into technological decline. Where is his proof of that? Since 1990, not a SINGLE H1B has started a technology company. So, based on the examples above why should we replace native born workers with workers from cultures that haven't made and major technological advances?
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I never said Chinese and Indians did not count;. Wang was not an H1B; he immigrated as a child to the US fleeing oppression in China in the 1940s; he wasn't a guest worker. He as enculturated here in America.- years before 1990 when the current H1B program took its form. I have said that the guys coming in under H1B from China and India simply are not starting companies and industries like the lobbyists in DC are claiming. In fact, they are being used to outsource jobs to China and India not inventing new products and services.
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>on the examples above why should we replace native born workers with workers
>from cultures that haven’t made and major technological advances?
Gosh. Most native-born Americans haven't started technology companies either.
What makes them preferred? Why do we have to treat the many-sigma tails of the distribution like those guys are representative of some special national trait?
Maybe you have been to China and India and have seen their tech companies?
In the end there is simply work/labor that needs to be performed. Nobody is asking every worker in America to start a tech company, but the work needs to be done. This debate should be about why we pay H1b workers less than native-born American workers, not about who the workers are. In fact, if Americans are supposed to be inherently more innovative, then what's the problem with replacing them with mindless robots when the innovative American can go out and do better things by, for example, starting a new tech company? [Mind you I do not believe that is a tolerable position, but it seems to be a logical extension of your reasoning.]
Is this an issue of an H1b worker not spending the money here, in local economies? Or is it just nativism? Is this just the hi-tech version of complaining that Wal-Mart has been putting local businesses out of business? Any help in explaining why this isn't just nativism would be very much appreciated.
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An overwhelming majority of tech companies are started by native born Americans NOT H1Bs which lobbyists try to imply by muddling the issue of legal immigration with guest worker programs.
>> In the end there is simply work/labor that needs to be performed
That’s the labor side; on the other end people need to invent the new widgets like iPods, cars or computers. For some reason probably related to language and culture, that kind of thinking is not currently occurring in those countries.
>> This debate should be about why we pay H1b workers less
The reason is that the government lets them; the H1B program has so many loopholes that prevent paying a prevailing wage that some are paid as little as $9/hour for jobs that used to go to American for $100K/year.
>> what’s the problem with replacing them with mindless robots when the
>> innovative American can go out and do better things
Because Americans need money and leisure time to do that innovation. H1B caused wage suppression, displacement and working longer hours for less pay. Tech used to provide the kind of patent clerk jobs that supported Einstein. For example, Jobs and Wozniak had low level jobs at Silicon Valley tech companies in the early 1970s that gave them income, time and access to technology that ultimately lead to the formation of Apple Computer. Those kind of jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate; outsourcing by H1B is making it worse.
>> Is this an issue of an H1b worker not spending the money here, in local
>> economies?
85% of H1Bs earn less than $50K/year; your barber makes more. Only the top 10% are in the $100K/year category and are spending significant money in local communities.
>> Any help in explaining why this isn’t just nativism would be very much
>> appreciated.
It’s not “native vs. immigrant”; its “cheap guest worker vs. permanent resident”. Green card holders are pretty much being displaced by H1Bs like native born workers. H1Bs don't leave much of a foot print; they come here take jobs at low wages and then move the jobs over seas. If we eliminate H1Bs and give these jobs to permanent residents then we are creating a pool of good paying, long term jobs that allow people to innovate and pump money back into the local economy.
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Am I less valuable because I'm a "native born" worker who hasn't made a gazillion bucks? Have I let down all my "C" student brethren? Am I only worthy of working in East Patagonia?