5 ms·

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreig

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? And if being hired = increase worker happiness, than equal pay will decrease foreign worker happiness. If all people are equal than whos happiness should we optimize for?

CamperBob2 10y ago
How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." I find that attitude pretty disgusting, but that's just me. The same people who complain endlessly about H1Bs, outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor will then cheerfully drive to Wal-Mart and buy a new DVD player for $12. It will never, ever occur to them that there are two sides to every transaction, and that Mother Nature abhors an arbitrage opportunity even more than she abhors a vacuum.
- Clubber 10y ago
  Yes, but US labor and citizens fought generations for those wages. Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. US taxpayers paid for our economy through blood and toil. You don't think high wages just happen because companies feel generous do you?
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Your post is precisely what I mean by "entitlement." 500 million not-so-red Chinese don't give a hoot about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. To understand the position of workers in the rest of the world, see above.
    - Clubber 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
  - Hondor 10y ago
    Does what your ancestors might have done really make you more deserving of a better life? I understand that it gives you more chance of a better life, but just by the luck of the lottery of birth, not by any actual fairness. Did civil war soldiers really know they were fighting for high wages 150 years later? Were taxpayers really choosing to pay tax because they expected it would give their grandkids a higher salary, or because it was the law and they'd be fined or imprisoned if they didn't? Every country had wars, and they're just meaningless wars. They weren't fought for the good things we eventually got. They were fought for a meaningless feeling of needing to support whatever group each soldier belonged to. If you don't want other people to use your country, how do you tolerate babies being born? They never contributed anything. They're just like immigrants - appearing and competing with the existing people.
    - invalidOrTaken 10y ago
      >If you don't want other people to use your country, how do you tolerate babies being born? They never contributed anything. They're just like immigrants - appearing and competing with the existing people. The phrase "grandfathered in" refers to familial relations for a reason.
    - Clubber 10y ago
      >Does what your ancestors might have done really make you more deserving of a better life? Look at it this way. I work hard and I pay a lot of taxes. I pay attention to elections and I petition governments because I want an opportunity for a good life for my kids and my kids' kids. I think soldiers who fought in the Civil War certainly wanted a better life for their kids. This has been going on for generations. This generation is the first generation, I think in US history, that isn't expected to have a better life than their parent's generation, excluding possibly the depression. There are more young adults living with their parents since 1880. I'm certainly not anti-immigrant, I think immigrants are the bloodline of the US economy and culture. What I'm against is companies outsourcing labor to other countries to save a little money while excluding US workers for consideration of those jobs. It's the companies I'm dissatisfied with, not the labor. If I was destitute in China or India, I would take those jobs too. It's bad short term planning. Not only is it gutting our market, but China is stealing billions of dollars of our IP for their own use, and that includes military IP. Very few people benefit form this and the cost is great. Had US companies not outsourced and politicians not gutted labor unions, the US market would be much bigger. That's good for big business, small business and labor. Why do you think Trump and Sanders are so popular? There is massive dissatisfaction with opportunity in the US. It's about to bite us in the ass.
- HelloMcFly 10y ago
  > It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." Sure, if you don't want to think critically about the issue at all. Absolutely agree under that circumstance. But since many foreign workers are not able to job shop, they become a lower-cost source of labor that depresses wages for everyone (other foreign workers included) because their commitment to their host company is like a figurative gun to the head. I have literally no problems with the H1B system except for when companies bring them on primarily to lower their own personnel costs. I don't even mind when companies use them despite there being existing labor in the talent pool for them (which is usually the case, despite protestations), but then to pay them below going market rate* is my issue. I'm not a software engineer here like most, though I dabble for fun. I am, however, experienced in labor market analysis and workforce planning. And, again, I don't care how many foreign workers any given organization has provided they aren't used primarily as a cost-reduction mechanism (if they are onshore). If a company wants you to work in America they should pay you like an American. *This isn't a terribly fuzzy metric. Typical compensation for a given job in a given geography is readily accessible. Market-specific salary surveys, benchmarked by contribution level, are a transactional norm for any company with a competent compensation team. They typically guide vs. determine and are often 18 months out of date (at least in my experience), but they're not a white whale and very useful.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    My point is that you're competing with those unwashed, underprivileged foreign workers whether they work here in the US or not. Our economy is, and should be, global in nature. If we build the wall that some posters in this thread apparently want, we'll find that instead of locking everybody else out, we've locked ourselves in. There is simply no way to ensure that an American engineer is innately more valuable than a Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or African engineer, unless we deny ourselves the benefits of the work done by the latter. To the extent geography or national boundaries come into play, these are artificial factors that we will all ultimately be better off without.
    - HelloMcFly 10y ago
- Terr_ 10y ago
  > It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." Fuck no, it's about getting your "membership benefits" from a communal system that you've contributed to. Americans get paid more by Americans because those Americans pay more to Americans, and invest in the American economy and interact with American laws. Who you ought to be disgusted with are the people who break the rules in order to enrich themselves from "arbitrage" opportunities. On a fundamental level, that's called theft, the only difference is the kinds of rules being broken.
  - yen223 10y ago
    Wait, do y'all think H1Bs don't pay taxes?
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      There's not a whole lot of thinking going on in this thread, in general.
    - Terr_ 10y ago
      Wait, do y'all just ignore the part about "outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor"?
  - _audakel 10y ago
    Ideas such as "membership benifits" and "Americans pay more to Americans" seems to create an us vs. them mentality and imply that the us party receive govnt benifits. The idea that country A receives befits over country B can be abstracted to simple free trade theory. If you abstract a skilled worker to be a countrys "resource" and accept the idea that country A and B can ingage in "trade", than it is easy to see how US h1b style imigration worker laws are basicly tariff. They distort the price to protect domestic, by making foreign more expensive. David Ricardo (Supply/Demand economist) and many other economists have shown countless times that countrys are better off in the long run by engaging in free trade. If we removed the worker "tariffs" we would get more engineers, companies would be able to make more / do more. In the end US consumers would be better off by having more/better choices.
ajmurmann 10y ago
Your equations aren't telling the full story though. The salary for foreign talent isn't only lower because of potential cultural issues out education, but because ability for foreign workers to change employees is artificially limited. This artificial market inefficiency hurts both local and foreign workers and benefits corporations who exploit it.
xiaoma 10y ago
>If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? Yes, it's diversity. Having people with a variety of cultural backgrounds on the same team will sometimes lead to more creative or more robust solutions.

CamperBob2 10y ago

How do you define "fair" in fair market wage? It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." I find that attitude pretty disgusting, but that's just me. The same people who complain endlessly about H1Bs, outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor will then cheerfully drive to Wal-Mart and buy a new DVD player for $12. It will never, ever occur to them that there are two sides to every transaction, and that Mother Nature abhors an arbitrage opportunity even more than she abhors a vacuum.

Clubber 10y ago
Yes, but US labor and citizens fought generations for those wages. Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. US taxpayers paid for our economy through blood and toil. You don't think high wages just happen because companies feel generous do you?
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Your post is precisely what I mean by "entitlement." 500 million not-so-red Chinese don't give a hoot about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars, company / labor riots, taxes to subsidize industry, taxes for infrastructure, taxes for education, legal systems, all that. To understand the position of workers in the rest of the world, see above.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you are trying to say.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Does what your ancestors might have done really make you more deserving of a better life? I understand that it gives you more chance of a better life, but just by the luck of the lottery of birth, not by any actual fairness. Did civil war soldiers really know they were fighting for high wages 150 years later? Were taxpayers really choosing to pay tax because they expected it would give their grandkids a higher salary, or because it was the law and they'd be fined or imprisoned if they didn't? Every country had wars, and they're just meaningless wars. They weren't fought for the good things we eventually got. They were fought for a meaningless feeling of needing to support whatever group each soldier belonged to. If you don't want other people to use your country, how do you tolerate babies being born? They never contributed anything. They're just like immigrants - appearing and competing with the existing people.
  - invalidOrTaken 10y ago
    >If you don't want other people to use your country, how do you tolerate babies being born? They never contributed anything. They're just like immigrants - appearing and competing with the existing people. The phrase "grandfathered in" refers to familial relations for a reason.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    >Does what your ancestors might have done really make you more deserving of a better life? Look at it this way. I work hard and I pay a lot of taxes. I pay attention to elections and I petition governments because I want an opportunity for a good life for my kids and my kids' kids. I think soldiers who fought in the Civil War certainly wanted a better life for their kids. This has been going on for generations. This generation is the first generation, I think in US history, that isn't expected to have a better life than their parent's generation, excluding possibly the depression. There are more young adults living with their parents since 1880. I'm certainly not anti-immigrant, I think immigrants are the bloodline of the US economy and culture. What I'm against is companies outsourcing labor to other countries to save a little money while excluding US workers for consideration of those jobs. It's the companies I'm dissatisfied with, not the labor. If I was destitute in China or India, I would take those jobs too. It's bad short term planning. Not only is it gutting our market, but China is stealing billions of dollars of our IP for their own use, and that includes military IP. Very few people benefit form this and the cost is great. Had US companies not outsourced and politicians not gutted labor unions, the US market would be much bigger. That's good for big business, small business and labor. Why do you think Trump and Sanders are so popular? There is massive dissatisfaction with opportunity in the US. It's about to bite us in the ass.
HelloMcFly 10y ago
> It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." Sure, if you don't want to think critically about the issue at all. Absolutely agree under that circumstance. But since many foreign workers are not able to job shop, they become a lower-cost source of labor that depresses wages for everyone (other foreign workers included) because their commitment to their host company is like a figurative gun to the head. I have literally no problems with the H1B system except for when companies bring them on primarily to lower their own personnel costs. I don't even mind when companies use them despite there being existing labor in the talent pool for them (which is usually the case, despite protestations), but then to pay them below going market rate* is my issue. I'm not a software engineer here like most, though I dabble for fun. I am, however, experienced in labor market analysis and workforce planning. And, again, I don't care how many foreign workers any given organization has provided they aren't used primarily as a cost-reduction mechanism (if they are onshore). If a company wants you to work in America they should pay you like an American. *This isn't a terribly fuzzy metric. Typical compensation for a given job in a given geography is readily accessible. Market-specific salary surveys, benchmarked by contribution level, are a transactional norm for any company with a competent compensation team. They typically guide vs. determine and are often 18 months out of date (at least in my experience), but they're not a white whale and very useful.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  My point is that you're competing with those unwashed, underprivileged foreign workers whether they work here in the US or not. Our economy is, and should be, global in nature. If we build the wall that some posters in this thread apparently want, we'll find that instead of locking everybody else out, we've locked ourselves in. There is simply no way to ensure that an American engineer is innately more valuable than a Chinese, Indian, Japanese, or African engineer, unless we deny ourselves the benefits of the work done by the latter. To the extent geography or national boundaries come into play, these are artificial factors that we will all ultimately be better off without.
  - HelloMcFly 10y ago
Terr_ 10y ago
> It eventually has to come down to, "I'm an American, so I'm entitled to get paid more than everybody else on the planet for doing a given job." Fuck no, it's about getting your "membership benefits" from a communal system that you've contributed to. Americans get paid more by Americans because those Americans pay more to Americans, and invest in the American economy and interact with American laws. Who you ought to be disgusted with are the people who break the rules in order to enrich themselves from "arbitrage" opportunities. On a fundamental level, that's called theft, the only difference is the kinds of rules being broken.
- yen223 10y ago
  Wait, do y'all think H1Bs don't pay taxes?
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    There's not a whole lot of thinking going on in this thread, in general.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    Wait, do y'all just ignore the part about "outsourcing, and cheap foreign labor"?
- _audakel 10y ago
  Ideas such as "membership benifits" and "Americans pay more to Americans" seems to create an us vs. them mentality and imply that the us party receive govnt benifits. The idea that country A receives befits over country B can be abstracted to simple free trade theory. If you abstract a skilled worker to be a countrys "resource" and accept the idea that country A and B can ingage in "trade", than it is easy to see how US h1b style imigration worker laws are basicly tariff. They distort the price to protect domestic, by making foreign more expensive. David Ricardo (Supply/Demand economist) and many other economists have shown countless times that countrys are better off in the long run by engaging in free trade. If we removed the worker "tariffs" we would get more engineers, companies would be able to make more / do more. In the end US consumers would be better off by having more/better choices.

ajmurmann 10y ago

Your equations aren't telling the full story though. The salary for foreign talent isn't only lower because of potential cultural issues out education, but because ability for foreign workers to change employees is artificially limited. This artificial market inefficiency hurts both local and foreign workers and benefits corporations who exploit it.

xiaoma 10y ago

>If foreign talent = domestic talent and foreign wage = domestic wage; is there a compelling reason to hire foreign? Yes, it's diversity. Having people with a variety of cultural backgrounds on the same team will sometimes lead to more creative or more robust solutions.