We are stagnant! And I'm not just talking about the economy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

Unless we evaluate the contradictions that are setting policy in this country, we are on a direct course for stagnation. And the two forces that are to blame are uniquely American: Capitalism and Fundamentalist Christianity. It reminds me of the destruction of Rome.

Look at the evidence: What is the latest capitalist trend? Outsourcing. Forget about the income drain, has anybody stopped to think about what this means down the road when it comes to discovering the next cutting edge idea? If our labs are being outsourced to India, that means that our best and our brightest here in America don't have the tools, research or capital to do what America was once best known for: INNOVATION.

And Science and Math are taking a hit as fundamentalist Christians work hard to dumb down the curriculm in our public schools by fervently demanding that we teach creationism as a science.

We're in the final days, like Rome. And the forces that are destroying us, are strictly American in nature.

I think it's time we begin to see this outsourcing for what it is. It's corporations giving up on America because the Almighty dollar is about to take a hit and they want to go where the Yens and Euros will balance out their portfolios. At the rate we're going, a copper penny will be worth more. Our country is being abandoned, and we have the extreme ideologies which are uniquely American to blame for it.

[BlooInBloo]

1. (shrug) Americans LIKE being stupid. Equals job security for me, though I'd happily give that up.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Job security?

Would you happen to work in the prison industry? That's the only field that seems to be booming.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Nah. Any job that requires an advanced degree in math or the hard sciences...

... is WIDE open for Americans. Because the rest of us are so stupid - those with such degrees win job security almost by default. If it wasn't for those pesky well-educated Europeans, various-flavors-of-asians, and Indians, I could write my own paycheck.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Something is not adding up here.

Are those records of the people they're insourcing in for American jobs, are they public record?

[BlooInBloo]

7. ?

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. I should have written that better, but it's way past my bedtime.

I'm not sure I'll do a better job this time either, but to clarify, I'm saying that it just doesn't add up that we have workers from other countries being insourced to do American jobs. I think we should look at their applications for their green cards, or whatever records they use to get approval into this country, to make sure that we're not getting snookered, or atleast to determine what other countries are doing better to prepare their kids.

[BlooInBloo]

9. All I can speak from authoritatively is my experience conducting interviews....

... and working in an advanced-hard-science degree field. It was full of imported workers for the simple reason that there are exceedingly few qualified Americans. I would guesstimate that 2/3 of my coworkers were 1st-gen or visa, while 1/3 were 2nd-gen or later Americans. When conducting interviews for my own group, the "good Americans" were essentially always idiots. We almost invariably hired someone from another country simply by default - he/she was the first qualified person we ran across.


EDIT: Thanks for clarifying - very helpful! :)

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. "idiots?"

It means that they sucked at interviewing because of their attitudes?

[BlooInBloo]

15. No, it means they sucked at interviewing because they were idiots.

[The Backlash Cometh]

20. And you're telling me that hiring other Americans would end up with the same results?

What about you? You're proof that we have pearls in some of our oysters.

[BlooInBloo]

21. Not enough, obviously. At these comparatively high-level jobs, Americans simply aren't qualified....

... *as an aggregate*, and they show no interest in BEING qualified at them. Rather, there's simply whining about the jobs going to foreigners. Such whining falls on deaf ears when the American candidates can't coherently explain what "least squares" and other basic concepts mean.

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. What kind of qualifications does it require?

Maybe you're advertising in the wrong forums?

[BlooInBloo]

25. MS/PhD in math, finance, or physics is the most straightforward way to get an interview...

... maybe CS, if we're scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. And you're telling me that we don't have a core group of people, let's say

around the NASA areas, which meet those qualifications?

[BlooInBloo]

28. Um, they already have jobs.

EDIT: Or to put it another way: if you're imagining the zero-sum situation of companies doing nothing but poaching each other's qualified American employees, then that means there aren't enough qualified employees, which brings us full circle to what I said in the first fucking place.

[The Backlash Cometh]

29. I understand your point of view. And appreciate the time you took to explain it.

I use to have an engineer friend who worked at Lockheed and she told me that they hired based on an assignment. They were like gypsies. Once the assignment was up, they were out of a job. Which gave me the impression there was a lot of churn going on. I just assumed one of them would have been happy to land a job like yours, which had security. Thanks for the info!

:hi:

[BlooInBloo]

30. np. We had a mechanical engineer PhD who converted to a financial engineer...

... It's little more than demonstrated intellectual horsepower that is required - and advanced degrees in math, finance, or physics are among the more straightforward ways to satisfy that requirement.

[entanglement]

31. What you call 'insourcing' has been going on in one form or the other since 1930

Most people have heard of Einstein and Werner von Braun, but we got a huge influx of other extremely talented physicists, mathematicians, chemists and engineers who helped the American scientific enterprise *immensely*. We got Paul Erdos (most prolific mathematician of the 20th century), John von Neumann (phenomenal computer scientist, mathematician, physicist), Kurt Godel (famed logician), Theodore von Karman (theoretical aerodynamicist and innovator), and I could go on and on.

We welcomed these people with open arms and rightly so. In recent times the numbers have increased and the newcomers are largely non-European - which IMHO is one reason more people are noticing 'foreigners' in the sciences and technology. Obviously, with the larger volume the average quality isn't quite what it used to be. But we still manage to attract some very smart people - One of the winners of the 2006 Fields Medal (the highest honor in math), Terry Tao - is an Australian who is now at UCLA.

[The Backlash Cometh]

33. I'm not talking about the usual legal immigration.

First, the illegal immigration problem hasn't been limited to "Mexicans." There were also brit and irish illegals, for example. I use to debate with one of them on the "internets," for several years and in a heated discussion, it became obvious he was illegal. He claimed that that no American can possibly do my job; and another complained bitterly that they were working for peanuts, but couldn't do anything about it because they might get deported. In both cases, the corporations knew they were illegal.

My argument to them was always, how do you know an American can't do your job if you're working under the radar and for all we know, your corporation isn't going to make an effort to even advertise for someone to take your job.

And, second, there was a video on you-tube which, I believe, was called, "How not to hire an American." It was a video of an actual seminar held by lawyers teaching lawyers how to counsel the corporations they represented on how to intentionally sabotage themselves when it came to advertising and interviewing for jobs that they really wanted to give to people outside of America. They just needed to hit certain legal benchmarks, before they go outside.

So, I'm inclined to believe that if a lawyer allows himself to be videoed in this manner, that this practice is far more common than we realize.

[hfojvt]

18. if a BA is an advanced degree, then I find that to not be true

at least for math. Are there really such jobs? Way back in 1985 the Air Force hired me as a 'mathematician' but then had me writing computing programs in accounting - a job which required none of the math I had been taught. And after I quit that job, I might as well have been a high school drop out for the job prospects I had. I did finally get another job making $5900 a year teaching at a University while I got another useless degree.

[BlooInBloo]

19. A BA is certainly not an advanced degree - lol. Ph.D. and M.S. are the relevant avd. degrees here...

... A BA/BS is close to worthless, except being a sine qua non.

[stillcool]

5. I've been trying to read up on the...

end of empires but so far I haven't found much. Maybe the USSR is an example of our fate?

Patterns of Intervention
excerpted from the book
Intervention and Revolution
The United States in the Third World
by Richard J. Barnet
World Publishing, 1968, paperback edition
In 1918 Joseph Shumpeter painted a haunting picture of imperial Rome caught up in the terrors of an aging civilization:
Here is the classic example of that kind of insincerity in both foreign and domestic affairs which permeates not only avowed motives but also probably the conscious motives of the actors themselves-of that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest-why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always / being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a '> breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people....
Shumpeter goes on to argue that Rome's wars of conquest made no sense "from the point of view of concrete objectives."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Insurgency_Revolution/Patterns_IAR.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. If we end up dividing our country, I would forever blame Bush and Cheney.

That never needed to be inevitable. They exploited America by exploiting its fractured divide.

[Yupster]

36. The book Collapse

would be a good one to read. Jared Diamond is the author.

[newportdadde]

11. Another parrellel with Rome is our Fiat currency.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. We desperately all need to get on the same page in this country.

But I fear that there will be groups who will resist it, because, you see, our economic environment is so bad, that you can't make money, unless you know something the other guy doesn't.

[The2ndWheel]

13. You have to take the good and the bad of globalization

Unfortunately we don't get to cherry-pick. Want fast travel? You're going to get outsourcing. Want easy communication that spans the globe? You're going to get outsourcing.

Why was America known for innovation? Simple answer is that we were the most free country in the world(how we got that way is another topic). Well, now more of the world is becoming free, and will work much cheaper, and America doesn't have to lead anything. We're becoming more irrelevant each day(not just Americans, but everyone). Mostly because there is no here or there anymore, the globe is increasingly the same place no matter where you are. It matters less where things are made, as long as they're made. It matters less where things are invented, as long as they're invented. The more that is made and invented, the cheaper that it is, so wages don't need to be as high.

It's not about America because there really is no America. There isn't a China or India either. Various sociao-politico-economic systems went to war a few decades ago, and ours won. The entire globe increasingly lives under the same umbrella. There is no longer a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th system to compete against. America no longer needs to lead in innovation, because the globe is a whole(or at least that's the endgame, not quite there yet).

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Unfortunately, nationality does exist.

And unforeseen circumstances do occur that will tip over this free-market mentality. Take the lead in the mattel toys sent to American children. Expect the unexpected from American prejudices. Not all of them can be micro-managed.

[The2ndWheel]

17. Like I said, the project isn't finished yet

It's not something that happens overnight. It's not even necessarily a conscious action. If we have the energy required to do it, the general trend of the last few thousand years will continue. The lead won't be in "Chinese" toys eventually.

"Not all of them can be micro-managed."

Not yet. The next generation of Americans will be even more micro-managed than the current one. Why? Because that's how the current one was raised. They may not even want to raise their children that way, but they will be. Everything is more micro-managaed than before. Every t crossed and i dotted. Why else would we need to have a "theory of everything"? Why do we constantly want/need/desire more and more information? So that no detail is missed in our relentless pursuit of perfection.

[Vilis Veritas]

23. You raise an interesting point...

While visiting China recently, I had a discussion with a very well educated Chinese friend of ours who is sending his son to America go to school. I asked him why.

He said "because Chinese schools do not teach children innovative thought. The free American culture and education system is conducive to the process of original thought."

No way I said. Some of the brightest people I know are Chinese. He then told me that there has never been a Chinese Nobel Laureate in the hard sciences. All of their science and innovation is second generational thought. It seems that he believed that the chinese people have a very difficult time coming up with new ideas. Original thought. His words not mine.

In his mind, America is still known for innovation and he wanted his son to benefit from the process.

It was an interesting conversation and probably not relevant to the OP...I should probably get back to him and see if he still feels that way...Although, his wife just got transfered here for an extended contract and they were extremely happy...

Peace.

edited for spelling errors...sheesh.

[Selatius]

32. Hate to say, but his son probably would do better in Western Europe than the US.

Their schools don't load you down with 20,000 in debt on average. 20,000 is not a lot in US currency, but it's quite a huge chunk of change in Yuans.

[Vilis Veritas]

35. Actually, they are quite well off...and they are thrifty to boot.

Translations for foreign companies and he is an Engineer. Wife is an Engineer with American company doing business in China.

We have some very good schools here, sure they cost money. Of course that is my opinion. You have yours and I respect that; no reason to think I would be offended by your comment, I understand there is a lot of anti-American sentiment these days, even by Americans.

Peace.

[porphyrian]

16. I'm not stagnant.

Capitalism and Christian fundamentalism aren't the problem, power-hungry leaders without a conscience are. Both of the former are no problem at all when we can keep the latter from wielding them against us.

[Vilis Veritas]

22. There is a good side!

Plenty of un-educated people to manipulate thereby making it easier to do whatever it takes to manage the Global Corporate State.

Peace.

[ThePowerofWill]

26. Stagnant ? i would call it full reverse for those of us in the working class.

Got my cost of living increase raise today. I got .24, or 1%. Yet the cost of living is up 6% or better.

[JVS]

34. "And Science and Math are taking a hit as fundamentalist .."

I know some fundamentalists who can do wicked math. It's pure abstraction and thus considered a safe science.