I'm completely sympathetic with the implications of the WTO essay. For the record, however, that last paragraph is kind of strtange. The rules of H1-B visas dictate that foreign employees not earn less than domestic prospects. (The wage offers, for example, have to be publicly posted for all to see, so anyone who chooses can object to any undercutting of citizen candidates.) While this means that any individual decision is driven by qualifications, that does not at all mean domestic wages are unaffected by foreign competition -- obviously. More supply, lower price. That some wages are impacted by competition comes nowhere close to supporting an argument for restraininf the free flow or resources, of course. But the free trade cause isn't really advanced by off-the-mark arguments like that last bit in the WTO passage.

I'll bet half of the electrical engineers and IT geeks I know over the age of 50 are unemployed or severely underemployed.

The visa process allows corporations to practice age discrimination and get away with it. Cheaper is better. Ask the Bush administration.

More offshoring hooey!

See: Profits, Not Jobs, on the Rebound in Silicon Valley
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/ 0...wqQY006nVc6Epag

Pish on the corporations, and their economisty sycophants!

The link above isn't. Here is the link for
"Profits, Not Jobs, on the Rebound in Silicon Valley":

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/business/03valley.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1120413884-eYYx5BhwqQY006nVc6Epag

Sample quotes:
"In the last three years, profits at the seven largest companies in Silicon Valley by market value have increased by an average of more than 500 percent while Santa Clara County employment has declined to 767,600, from 787,200. During the previous economic recovery, between 1995 and 1997, the county, which is the heart of Silicon Valley, added more than 82,800 jobs.
....
The issue is not just outsourcing, though, but also big leaps in productivity. Cisco, the behemoth maker of Internet equipment, now has annual sales of $680,000 per employee, compared to $480,000 in 2001.

One key measure, known as value added per employee, rose 3.7 percent in 2004, to $222,000 in economic value per worker. That compares with $85,000 per worker in the rest of the country, according to data reported by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional economic research group.

By a number of other measures, companies are watching profits and sales rise. An analysis published in April by The San Jose Mercury News found that the top 100 public companies in the region had revenues of $336 billion in 2004, an increase of 14 percent from the previous year.

Mr. Henton said that measure, while not entirely indicative of what is going on because it includes worldwide sales, gives a good sense of the growth here.

"It's a clear recovery," Mr. Levy said. "It's a high-productivity jobless recovery."

In the past, much of the job growth has come from investment by venture capitalists in start-up companies. That engine is starting to rev up again, with venture capitalists putting $7.4 billion into 724 Silicon Valley companies in 2004, according to the National Venture Capital Association.

That is up 17 percent from 2003, but still far below the $34 billion invested in 2000, at the peak of the phenomenon.

Also, newer start-ups are under pressure from their venture-capital investors to outsource work to lower-cost regions..."

I suppose all this makes Dan Drezner a happy clam. I think supporting this kind of thing is akin to being a scoundrel.

"... and the resilience of wages of computer occupations, do not support the view that offshoring services of high-skilled IT specialists had a marked impact on overall US employment in these occupations up to the end of 2004 ..."

Tough stuff to try to separate out all of this stuff in a rigorous way. Resilience of wages seems like a tough way to back up this position though as wages are usually a bit sticky downward (take awhile to adjust). Would also be interesting to tease out questions like 1) did the numbers for employment levels rebound as much as they would have without offshoring, 2) if overall levels did not get hit with a "marked impact", any hints at which areas within the IT sector got hit the hardest, 3) can the BOP numbers and relative changes in offshoring numbers be normalized to a per company basis or a per company that offshores basis, etc. -> some way to support a position that there has been less than a marked impact.

In the past 4 years, George Bush and the Republicans have pissed away $2 Trillion of our savings and yet the US economy is still limping along and we have 7.6 million unemployed citizens.
See http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

One out of five of those unemployed citizens are long term unemployed.

As I've documented earlier, the bulk of the money from Bush's tax cut for the rich is going into foreign investments, NOT into renewing the US industrial plant.

We know that older industries are constantly shedding workers due to decline in demand, greater efficiency from maturing technology and economy of scale, etc. High Tech is important because that is the source of new jobs. So why should jobs needed by workers in transition be given to foreign workers?

Yet Daniel Drezner blandly assures us that things are peachly keen.

Why in the hell do US voters support our universities? What thing of value --what iota of real truth -- does the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science provide to us in exchange for the annual funding by the taxpayers?

“What thing of value --what iota of real truth -- does the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science provide to us in exchange for the annual funding by the taxpayers?”

U of C is a private University. To imply that sole funding comes from federal government is false.

Re Johnny Upton's comment:"To imply that sole funding comes from federal government is false."

a) I never implied anything about "sole funding"

b) If Upton looks up FACTS he will see that U of Chicago got roughly $145 Million in federal R&D funds a few years ago --I assume their annual take is in the same ballpark

c) That doesn't include the huge sum of money coming in via student tuition/fees/boarding paid for by federal tax money (loans/scholarships with students as middlemen)

b) I never realized that the Poli Sci department was a big draw for R&D grants.

Per http://researchadmin.uchicago.edu/about/fp_division_long.pdf it appears that their “take” was closer to $362MM. Based on the above, the Social Sciences department received $19MM split between 12 schools. My uneducated guess would be that the School of Economic receives the bulk of the above funding.

c) Tuition, room and board is now paid for by the Feds? Damn I sure missed the boat.