America’s Lack of Vision for Global Economics (and a quick update)

So I have posted for a while, life has been hectic, traveling, working and not sleeping.

Apparently my tiredness is to do with sleep apnea, will be going in for tests soon and hopefully they will have some solutions so I don’t wake up tired and always have to sleep when I stop. That said on with a rant.

I was reading on Slashdot about how a US senator is urging Microsoft to fire it’s H1B visa (that’s immigrant) employees before it’s US one, that means I pay all the same taxes as you do without the benefit of voting.

First of all I’d like to make it clear that I am a British Citizen working in the US, but not on an H1B visa.

Second and more importantly…. If an American built a TV, it would be a piece of junk and cost $5000, if someone from Japan builds it, it costs $1000 and lasts for 10 years. So the American consumer goes out and buys the $1000 and then complains that foreigners are taking their jobs.

Working in Washington DC a few years back you notice all of the cleaning staff are Hispanic, why is this? because there are no white or black people there who want to do the job for the money.

I was once told  “This world has a job for everyone, we need dustman as well as lawyers, presidents and painters”

Why can’t politicians and people get their heads round global economics. If people want to have their bargain priced commodities they have to allow for the fact that bargain rates are paid for labour and that may not be them. If they want to earn more, become more useful or compete with the global economics.

In terms of American there is this very patriotic notion of Americans first all other nations second (everyone seems to forget that modern Americans are all immigrants anyway). But no one deals more locally, No one ever says Hire from this town before looking outside the town, hire from this state before looking outside the state, but they do say hire in the country before outside. I’m damn sure that the rates for someone in Alabama is less than those in Seattle, perhaps Microsoft should outsource there and see what that does to the economy

Part of the stink is coming from the fact that the government actually wrote the H1B rules right, they said you can not discriminate against H1B visa employees versus regular employees, so they are having to back peddle.

As a company owner I have hired my fair share of employees and I have to say the biggest problem with American employees is the expectation of everything is there for them. I had one whose “S” key on their keyboard didn’t work, they didn’t tell anyone, just sat there waiting for someone to fix it for them and read a book. Another non-American employee (Actually Naturalized but raised elsewhere) got stuck and no one was around to help, so got out the brush and swept up the area and wiped down the kitchen.

Who do you think got more respect round the office and who do you think survived a round of firings?

So my suggestion is, America, either get with the fact that Global Capitalism is here and work with it. Or close your borders and see how long you can survive without your ipod, Toyota and Toaster that will now cost 20 times more!