Disqus - Latest Comments for Allen

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Allen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:17:42 -0000

". By world and historical standards, a software engineer making $80,000 a year is obscenely wealthy."

That's nice to know but conflicts with the idea of free markets. That is, what matters is how that salary compares in today's markets. Today, $80k is nice but it's not going to allow you to have a family, a $300k mortgage, 2 cars, 2 kids and other aspects of a modest middle class lifestyle without a spouse working another job full time.

More so, the reasons for issuing more visas should not be "so we can drive down wages". Otherwise your motivations are no different than those tech workers who want to block the visas because they think it'll hurt them. That is, both sides are looking to use force via the government to bring about what they want.

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Allen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:55:41 -0000

Tim, you're forgetting that those $80k / year software jobs are rarely nationwide. They're frequently in areas like San Jose, Denver, Boston, suburban DC, Seattle, etc. Median housing prices in those cities is those cities is $250k - $500k+. Now, you can get that $200k house in Boise, Indianapolis or Albuquerque. But you'll struggle to find many opportunities. And those you do find more often than not will be paying $60k / year and not $80k.

But overall there are several issues with these claims :
a) Calling laws that regulate the movement of people across the borders "protectionism". We're not talking about free trade of goods but actual human beings. A few of these wanting to move about are murders, thugs, drunk drivers, thieves, child molesters, etc. Sure, most are not but there are plenty of valid reasons for regulating who can and can not enter the US or live there.
b) Lack of any evidence of how much, if any, this alleged lack of supply is driving up wages. What constitutes a lack of supply? How short handed is the US, if at all? How much more are wages being driven up than they would be if the demand level was met?
c) Are they're enough qualified candidates in other countries to meet these demands?

I also have issues with claims like this :
"What virtually all of the commenters seem to be missing is that the costs of protectionism for high-skilled Americans falls not only on immigrants who are unable to make better lives for themselves, but also on less-skilled Americans who are forced to pay higher prices for goods and services produced by high-skilled workers."

So how is it that low wage workers pay more? If anything JIT manufacturing, more efficient retail distribution, etc - all things highly dependent on skilled workers coordinating and managing them - have LOWERED the cost for goods and services. Surely you're aware of studies that have shown Wal-Mart's affects on prices, correct? Or look at trading stocks. 20 years ago if Bob The Builder wanted to invest some of that overtime into stocks, what would it have cost him? $50? $100 per trade and with what? A $500? $1000? $2500 transaction minimum? Today Bob The Builder has all sorts of options from $20 / trade to programs that let him invest just $20 / month into a stock.

I'm all for opening things up, I just think you're making a lot of at best un-cited and at worst incorrect claims.

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Allen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:22:36 -0000

The problem with opening the borders is that we're not talking just about jobs. We're talking about opening up our hospitals, our schools, our chartiy, et al. Unless the government does a whole sale turn about and goes 95% Libertarian, we will end up bearing the costs of educating the world, healing the world, etc, etc. Sure, not all the poor will pull it off. But as we've seen there are plenty of poor people who do find $5k to be crammed into a container at risk of dieing at sea just to get to America. Now you make it legal and remove that risk of death?

Sorry, there is an important difference between unrestricted movement of people within a country and within countries. I'd be more than happy to let anyone immigrate who could pay, or have an employer pay, their $3k / year "green card fee" or whatever the new system would have.

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Allen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:28:45 -0000

Good point.

Question - Why limit it to just H-1B?

Re: Fat People Cause Global Warming

Allen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:15:25 -0000

Fat people contribute more? Shit, they can't even follow their own logic. If eating more food is a problem, athletes contribute a lot more too. For example, Le Tour is going on right now. Can you imagine how many calories those guys are using? They're biking 100 miles in a day at speeds most of us couldn't sustain for 5. Their metabolisms are through the roof. And that's on top of the butt ton of calories they burn by biking that 100 miles.

Re: Kick the Great Unwashed Off the Planes!

Allen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:40:05 -0000

Another example of people using "global warming" as an excuse to micromanage other people's lives. That said, I get a kick whenever I see stories about the growth of air travel in Western Europe. Someone will say "we should take the train like they do in Europe" and I'll retort "Actually they're flying in Western Europe". And apparently it isn't just a bunch of Germans surrounding me during a trip to Bryce NP last fall.... they're flying around within Western Europe too!

Re: Buy Amway Products, Get Drink, Play Pool. And They Take Away Your Credit Cards.

Allen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:01:14 -0000

I too am skeptical that they're using the best of science when judging their risks. But that's their problem. What gets me is when people imply that this could lead to racism. Why would it? Credit cards are greedy and greed is color-blind.

Max --> I agree it feels creepy. But the credit card companies aren't providing health care. They're assessing the risk of loaning people money. At that it's an unsecured. FICO tells them about a person's past but it doesn't help with what is going on right now. Divorce isn't cheap; if someone's headed toward one surely they're more of a risk.

Where does it stop? I don't know. Should their be legally defined boundaries?

Re: Global Warming Thought Crimes and Double Standards

Allen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:03:47 -0000

I can see James Hansen going back in time and standing at The Pope's side as the Church went after Copernicus for going against "scientific consensus" and being a denier.

Re: McCain’s Colombian trip: Strong support for free trade

Allen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:55:43 -0000

The pisses on economic science. I wouldn't call him a "strong" supporter of free trade.

Re: One foot on the accelerator, one on the brake

Allen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:25:51 -0000

The problem with the use of the word "addiction" is it implies that it is not only unhealthy but destructive. America's use of energy, frequently in the form of oil is neither of those. What has been unhealthy and destructive is the rhetoric about weening the US from it's so-called addiction. Like you said, the oil addiction rhetoric needs to stop.

Re: Philosopher’s Corner: The Justice of Carbon Taxes/Permits

Allen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:32:40 -0000

"Since carbon dioxide is a pollutant, carbon emiters violate rights."

Since when did anyone actually prove that C02 is any more of a "pollutant" than O2 or H20? Heck, even years and years after we had our big save O3 round of regulations scientists are questioning if anything humans did before or after is having much of an affect on O3 levels.

Re: Al Gore Gives Me Hope for a Better World

Allen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:27:02 -0000

So how much "effort" is needed to meet this contract stipulation?

*"Gore requests that speech sponsors make every effort to use a hybrid vehicle for his transport."

Re: Muni Fiber: Even Worse Than Muni Wi-Fi?

Allen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:11:59 -0000

Did you catch this claim at the end of it?

"When 74 percent of town's voters want to build themselves a fiber network, but the telco demands that they 1) not do it, and then 2) accept that the telco won't do it for years, either, the market (such as it is) doesn't appear to be functioning well."

I've been to Monticello a few times and drove through it a bazillion times. It's a small town. $25 million is a big chunk of change for a city that size. I suspect they already have DSL and cable available. How large of an improvement would fiber be over those two?

Re: Fruits and Nuts in California

Allen — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:28:27 -0000

A couple weeks ago there was some press about this. A buddy said no way will anything happen, just some city council nutt job getting attention. I disagreed. After all Chicago banned fraux graux [sic] and Wal-Mart. Looks like it is, if anything, gaining momentum.

This is one of the problems when you have the government instead of private organizations providing services. One of the core arguments is that it's costing govt more to provide health care. It becomes an excuse to micromanage individual peoples lives.

I caught a story about this on NPR yesterday morning too. Maybe I misunderstood but it seemed that either some officials, or at least the reporter doing the story, simplified the situation to the point where they said that sit down meals were more healthy. Now I thought it was pretty clear that just because you sit down at Applebees, Macaroni Grille, or TGI Fridays that the food is often just as "bad for you" as the "fast food". I suppose that shouldn't be surprising when they're simplifying an issue as complex as obesity along the age oldmis perception that skinny === healthy and that too much food === obese.

And does this mean that places like Chipotle can not open stores there? Are they "bad" fast food or good?

Re: Which way on FasTracks? 4 letters

Allen — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:09:05 -0000

What is most frustrating about the current Fastracks debate is how it becomes black and white; it's all or nothing. RTD is wrong to imply that we get nothing without doubling the original tax for Fastracks. As we've seen on the West Corridor, a lot of cost cutting can occur without having a large impact on ridership.

We can tell RTD that we would rather spent another $7 billion (or whatever it is after interest is paid since that is part of the cost) on addressing the 25% of Colorado kids that don't complete high school or shore up the increased medicare/Medicaid costs we will be facing in the coming years. And they can take the money they already have and lay the foundation for a good network. It may mean that they only buy land for the east corridor, it may mean they don't have duplicated rail / BRT service on the Boulder turnpike, and it may mean that 30% of the track is single track. But as we've seen on the West Corridor, this system will serve tens of thousands of riders every day. And going forward we can address expansion with smaller, more manageable projects.