> I'd also point out that Japan and South Korea also have an extremely competitive and intensive educational
Just a few interesting stuff (partially relevant to the discussion).
The Russian Federation has a higher average performance in mathematics than the USA (TIMMS study 2007 on Grade 4 and 8 - it is available here: http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/mathreport.html). This is interesting since the USA would probably have more money to spend on education (since it is a lot more affluent). Hungary also have a higher standard than the USA at grade 8.
It would be interesting to see what these poorer countries do to get their educational standard above that of the USA.
There is a simple alternative – remove the stupid restrictions on H1B visas. The restriction that if you loose/quit your job that you have to be out of the country in 60 days is bad for three reasons.
The first reason is that the employer knows his worker is dependent on him – he can thus get away with a lower salary, etc... The second reason it is bad is that you cannot quit and start a start-up – if you do not have a sponsoring company you must be out of the country in 60 days.
The third reason is that it deters people from going to the USA. I really want to go to California next year – but with that Visa system it is not going to happen (probably going to London). Compare the US system and the UK's General Highly skilled Visas (e.g. http://www.workpermit.com/uk/uk-immigration-tier-system/tier...) – it is really no fuss and valid for a time period.
There are already more than 5 million Mexicans in the US. Would 1 million engineers and scientists really be a bad thing?
Downvote for the "Mexicans" reference. Perhaps saying, "There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Would 1 million engineers and scientists be a bad thing?"
And, 1 million engineers and scientists would depress salaries in the US. That's a plus for founders, but a minus for engineers and scientists trying to find work.
I'm almost always on the side of greater immigration into this country, but I can see the downside of it as well.
> Downvote for the "Mexicans" reference. Perhaps saying, "There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Would 1 million engineers and scientists be a bad thing?"
Saying there are over 5 million Mexicans in the USA is a completely factual statement. It is true that you have much higher immigration (both legal and illegal) from neighbouring countries than parts of the rest of the world.
> And, 1 million engineers and scientists would depress salaries in the US.
Maybe. But either companies move to where the engineers are (outsourcing, new companies) or the engineers move to where the companies are. In the latter case they still pay tax for the US.
And American engineers will have a depressed salary in any case.
This might be a strictly American "politically correct" interpretation, but I think your last sentence assumes that being Mexican and being an engineer is exclusive, which it obviously isn't.
How are H1B visas an alternative? I don't see any reason to believe that if H1Bs were less restrictive then we'd see H1B holders leaving their jobs to create startups. You obviously have personal feelings about the H1B, and I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you, but it really has nothing to do with the idea of a founder's visa.
Comments of the form "the article is loosely related to one of my pet issues, so I'm going to say my schpiel" are not interesting.
For what it's worth, I think the founder's visa is a great idea. I know this sounds corny, but it's an extremely American (entrepreneurial, meritocratic) idea.
> How are H1B visas an alternative? I don't see any reason to believe that if H1Bs were less restrictive then we'd see H1B holders leaving their jobs to create start-ups.
A lot of people start startups while they are working. This simply makes sense, because getting capital for a start-up is fairly difficult.
A lot of people also try a startup and if it fails, re-enter the job market (after 6 months for example) and start again when they get a new idea.
A general visa that would allow a person to move from employment to starting his own company back to employment would be much more useful than just allowing people to either work or only have a founder's visa.
Also, how many start-ups where founded when a group of employees broke away from an employer and started their own thing? Neither a founders visa or H1B would make provision for such a situation.
> Comments of the form "the article is loosely related to one of my pet issues, so I'm going to say my schpiel" are not interesting.
That may be true. But I see little use in commenting on something that is not relation to any issue that I am interested in. If the comment is out of line then that is what the moderation is for (either flag it or downmod it then).
Well, part of the reason for my tone is that I very much don't want this to become reddit, and one of the things that characterizes reddit is that the best quality comments are often halfway down the page because so many people upvote irrelevant rants and one-line jokes.
On the other hand, if the restrictions doesnt exists:
(1),(2)Employees can quit anytime for a better paid offer , effectively nullifying the value of efforts and investments the original employer made on the individual.
(3)Huge inflow of foreigners will hurt US citizens.
If a foreigner is ready to accept a job with a company offering him a lower salary,it depicts that just he want to get into US somehow.
> Employees can quit anytime for a better paid offer , effectively nullifying the value of efforts and investments the original employer made on the individual.
I don't get your point, are you saying this is a bad thing?
I agree with you that it tastes nice. However, either your bananas taste different or your pawpaws taste different - it doesn't taste like a banana at all!
> . or for that matter how would we go about to teach the animals how to reproduce? Are they to live among animals or similar character while they are young?
Most lower animals are ruled by instinct. A bird never 'learns' from his parents how to make a nest.
For interest sake, this was done for a while with a completely different species. Domesticated cows were implanted with fertilized Buffalo eggs (this was because Buffalo's carried Bovine TB and a TB free Buffalo is worth a lot more $$).
I think one of the arguments raised in one of the Jurassic Park books was that parents are necessary to teach "culture"; in the novel, the raptors were incredibly aggressive, going as far as fighting each other and killing each other over food, instead of just fighting hard enough to show the beta male his place.
> To make matters worse, almost half of Russia’s treated tubercular cases over the past decade have been the variant known as extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).
This can not be right. XDR (Extreme Drug Resistant TB) is fairly rare (definitely not 75,000 a year). Multiple Drug Resistant TB (MDR TB) is a lot more common.
Most people with XDR TB die in a month.
>Russia’s patterns of death from injury and violence (by whatever provenance) are so extreme and brutal that they invite comparison only with the most tormented spots on the face of the planet today. The five places estimated to be roughly in the same league as Russia as of 2002 were Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Congo? Which one?
Russia's murder rate (while appalling) is below Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica and Venezuela:.
I did not read the whole article - just scanned through it (it is long). Firstly, it Focusses on a reactor in Finland and most of those costs are very recent.
Your stats of the above is probably based on this part:
> In October 2007, Moody’s Investor Services piled on with a report projecting that new reactors would cost $5,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt to build, or up to $12 billion per unit. This figure, which was based on actual bids for new reactors in the United States, caused considerable sticker shock.
Current prices for nuclear reactors shot up extremely over the past 5 years. This is because nuclear power became an option for a lot of countries (with global warming fears). The problem with this is that it increased costs significantly.
Being a very specialized field, construction of new nuclear power stations can not just be increased as demand increases. As a good example - there is only one company that can forge a reactor vessel in one step - and it has a backlog of more than 5 years.
Just a few interesting stuff (partially relevant to the discussion).
The Russian Federation has a higher average performance in mathematics than the USA (TIMMS study 2007 on Grade 4 and 8 - it is available here: http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/mathreport.html). This is interesting since the USA would probably have more money to spend on education (since it is a lot more affluent). Hungary also have a higher standard than the USA at grade 8.
It would be interesting to see what these poorer countries do to get their educational standard above that of the USA.