90 Miles From Tyranny

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Friday, November 24, 2017

Trump Keeping His Word on H-1B Work Visas


The pro-immigration lawyers are apoplectic, which is always a sign for celebration. As in other Trump achievements during his first year, the President is accomplishing a cutback on foreign tech workers displacing Americans entirely on his own. The Republican Congress remains stubbornly opposed to the immigration restrictions Republican voters want. 

The main tool at President Trump’s disposal is the appointment of a new agency head, in this case Francis Cissna as director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who came on board in October, followed in swift order by the novel idea of actually following the law and scrutinizing visa applications.

Unsurprisingly, the law calls for high-skilled visas for foreign workers to fill critical jobs. Instead, Silicon Valley and the Obama Administration abused the privilege and used it to import cheap STEM workers to replace higher-paid Americans. H-1B visas are heavily used by outsourcing firms. First, they bring a worker here to be trained by skilled Americans. Then they shut down the American facility and outsource the jobs to India. Not a nice policy for the U.S. government to actively support.

Wages in the IT industry rose rapidly throughout the 1990s, but have been essentially flat or declining in the past decade, which coincides with the rising number of guest workers on temporary visas.

(snip) Companies so routinely evade protections in the visa system designed to prevent displacement of American citizens that immigration lawyers have produced videos about how it is done. For instance, tech companies that import temporary workers, mainly recent graduates from India, commonly discard more expensive, experienced employees in their late 30s or early 40s, often forcing them, as Ron Hira and other labor-force researchers note, to train their replacements as they exit. Age discrimination, Hira says, is “an open secret” in the tech world.
Controlling the abuse of H1-B visas is a core part of Trump’s agenda to bring jobs of American companies back home.
Outsourcing companies use the temporary visas to bring workers to the US to learn the jobs that the client company is planning to move to temp workers’ home country. The 10 firms with the largest number of H-1B visas, the most common visa for high-skill workers, are all in the business of shipping work overseas, and former Indian commerce minister Kamil Nath famously labeled the H-1B “the outsourcing visa.”
These practices have helped to reduce incomes and career prospects in STEM fields drastically enough to...

The Trump Effect: China Slashes Import Tariffs on Consumer Goods In Boost For Trump And Western Exporters

China announced it is slashing import tariffs on 187 consumer products starting next month.

The Finance Ministry pointed to the cuts being concentrated in products in short supply domestically which, it believes, will prompt local producers to improve quality. The items in the list which, includes baby formula, diapers, electric toothbrushes, medicines, cosmetics, coffee machines and whisky, are part of the broader category of consumer goods which account for roughly 30% of total Chinese imports. Of all 187 tariff reductions, the biggest was on vermouth and similar alcohols, like Martini, which were cut from 65% to 14%. The strangest was the cutting tariffs on electronic toilet seats, where domestic production must be truly appalling from a quality perspective, or markedly insufficient.

Notwithstanding the Finance Ministry’s comments, it raises the question whether China is responding to loud and frequently repeated complaints from Donald Trump about the Middle Kingdom’s unfair trade practices. In 2016, the US trade deficit with China was $347 billion and is expected to rise to around $370 billion in the current year. In October 2017, the US accounted for 70% of China’s total trade surplus. More from...

Morning Mistress

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #85


You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside? 
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific, 
from the beautiful to the repugnant, 
from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed, 
you could be inspired, you could be appalled. 

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. 
You have been warned.

Hot Pick Of The Late Night

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Berkeley Loves Communism


Girls With Guns

Sex, Uranium & Rock & Roll





Vegetarian Thanksgiving?

Let's all take a moment to mourn on  this day for

Thanksgiving 1919


Aliens Analyze Halloween And Thanksgiving On Planet Earth...


PROPERTY RIGHTS SAVED PILGRIMS FROM STARVATION


Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog hosted by the Washington Post, revisits the story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth and how instituting private property rights saved the community from ruin.

There is much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. One lesson of the holiday that we should try not to forget is how the Pilgrims were saved from starvation and misery by private property rights. Economist Benjamin Powell summarizes the story here:

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that “young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.” Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the ...