Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Someone in the Gold Forum posted a link to an article entitled Endangered specials: US Programmers from the Christian Science Monitor, which I have long thought of as one of the more intelligent and thoughtful newspapers, but which I have not read much in recent years.   I have a problem with the premise partly because it sounds like thinly veiled racism (or culturalism, perhaps) to draw this line so clearly between "US programmers" and "foreign H-1B" workers.  In particular, the following paragraph seems to suggest that US programming jobs aren't disappearing so much as being taken up by new people:

Although computer-related jobs in the United States increased by 27,000 between 2001 and 2003, about 180,000 new foreign H-1B workers in the computer area entered the nation, calculates John Miano, an expert with the Programmers Guild, a professional society. "This suggests any gain of jobs have been taken by H-1B workers," he says.

Now, it is possible that there are problems with the H-1B visa program, but look at the paragraph lower down:

The average wage for an American programmer runs about $60,000, says John Bauman, who set up the Organization for the Rights of American Workers. Employers pay H-1Bs an average $53,000.

.  The wage difference is not so large that I think it poises a fundamental problem, the way a $25/hour being replaced by a $0.75/hour worker in a third world country does.  The H-1B workers may be a bit cheaper, but at 88%, their wage differential is less than the wage differential between women and men (usually quoted as 73% these days), so I don't think the competition should drive US programmers out of work as much as into a lower tax bracket.  That may be serious, but it does not an "endangered species" make.

Any thoughts?

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

I guess I am constantly amazed at what people, and especially the media, consider outrageous.  Dick Cheney talks about his lesbian daughter in a debate, and yet the papers are all in an uproar that John Kerry mentioned that same fact, even though he did it in a sensitive, polite manner.  Yet there is much less outrage over George Bush's direct denial of his previous outrageous comments about Osama Bin Laden.  Watch these two clips (in various formats for your convenience):
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I'm not even as appalled that Bush would forget what he said earlier as that he doesn't see how obviously this is not an exaggeration, and also obviously not a matter to joke about and score cheap political points with.  He could have answered totally seriously and said, rightly or wrongly, that Osama Bin Laden has been marginalized, but this is no joking, smirking, laugh a minute matter.  I really wish that President Bush would treat this seriously, and that it would cause even a tiny bit of outrage when he does not and then derides John Kerry about it.

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.