It's also important to understand our ruling class are Globalist venture capitalists who understand the world as a sea of human biomatter (brown helots) who can be used to keep prices low and also reduce political and social pressure on their own hyper-elite status by atomizing the societies they rule over.
A "sane", nationalist and restrictionist immigration policy would deny them both of these, and also make them less different from the people they rule. They want to be Spartans over Helots. They dont want to be "Wealthy Americans". They are the Abrahamic God's mother-fucking Chosen.
English fluency I’ve discovered is the single best predictor of WEIRD values and American-ness among Indian immigrants. We can select the best and stop the $65K Indian coders if we allow ourselves to be creative in how we select.
How sure are you that you are seeing a Northwest-European-style psychology-worldview and ethics ("WEIRD values"), when you encounter the English-fluent Indians of whom you speak?
Or...the US could just restrict them from coming in, and slash the H-1B Visa program, period and...actually hire Native Born Americans. They do exist, especially in a nation of 330 million people.
They should be put in a car on a six-lane highway. Whoever screws up traffic the least should be put on a plane back to India with every one of their fellow sub-cons. Except Razib, he can stay.
I haven't laughed at a Substack comment in a while. If you subjected Indian-Candians to that test, especially around the GTA area and in Brampton, Ontario, 95% would fail, I think lol.
I really hope that you have not carefully thought about this proposal:
“One possibility would be to auction off draft picks to American firms: you have to pay the US government X dollars to get the #1 pick in the draft and so on and so forth down to #11,000.”
If you enter the NFL draft, your choices are to play for the team that drafted you, or do something other than NFL football. If you enter the immigration draft, your choices are to work for the company that drafted you, or … what exactly? Not work and starve? Return to your home country? Surely it would be better just to impose an extra 3% tax on the income of these immigrants. Most will have the ability to become multi-millionaires.
Pretty sure the intention was that the highest bidder gets the first opportunity to offer their pick a job at their company which the immigrant may then choose to accept or not, not that they’d be forced by law to either take it or go back to wherever they came from as you seem bizarrely to have understood it.
I dunno. It feels different. Perhaps if the immigrant is still in their home country it would be equivalent. Also, an H1B holder can move to a different H1B sponsor.
They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. If they hate their job or get laid off, they should return to their home country. There is no right to work in the USA.
Musk, who likes cheap tech labor, is trying to triple-bank shot defend H1B1. It won't work, and it may lead him to some nasty reprisals against his former allies on the right.
Merry Christmas.
P.S. Steve, when is your mea cupla on your relentless defenses of Biden's cognitive competency since 2019?
The problem we have in America is that we don't graduate as many people in STEM as we need, largely but not entirely because we push too many unqualified people into STEM education who flunk out and then because we reserve jobs for the unqualified who actually get a STEM degree. Reorganize those incentives and we'd probably be able to graduate many more people qualified to take STEM jobs, even with an H1B program. (Don't overlook the fact that the H1B program probably isn't affected by DEI hiring concerns, and also produces good DEI employment numbers)
Engineering could do a lot better job advertising itself to the general public, especially with pay rates.
When I was in college, I had no idea what an engineer was or did. I knew of them of course --- we had a nearby engineering school -- but what exactly they did, and how much money they made doing it (and that's a big factor), was not something explained generally, even in college.
Today I realize that with my strengths and weakness it might have been something I would have been intrigued to think about as a career, but back then it was opaque so I didn't bother. I think that engineering is something that is something families of engineers know about and therefore push, but to outsiders it is never explained. It might be a very engineer-type thing to assume people know about what you do without realizing most don't, or to not realize that outsiders need it explained to them.
They could do a much better job talking about themselves is what I'm saying. Doctors and lawyers are higher-IQ professions (save the lawyer jokes for later) who's jobs are well-known. And their remuneration is believed to be high by John Q. Average. Engineering needs to put both in the public consciousness day in and day out so more kids are drawn to it. In other words, engineering needs to recruit -- and not abroad.
(Steve, again, please either allow me to respond to this anklebiter's cheap shots or delete *his* cheap shots as well as my response. Its quite unfair to allow him free reign to assail me but if I respond to have it deleted. Makes it seem like you're on his side, frankly. Turnabout is fair play, after all. )
What's the Substack problem here? Are you not given equal access (powers?) to post, reply, edit, delete that all other subs have? I thought we were all either equal, banned, or the owner of a Substack channel. What gives?
"Ted Kennedy’s Diversity Immigrant Visa program that randomly lets in 55,000 high school graduates per year. Senator Ted came up with this brainstorm a third of a century ago because he wanted to let in more Irishmen to vote for future Kennedys running for office."
This is a Sailer-joke. It doesn't like a very rational reason Ted Kennedy would have done this. As with many Sailer-jokes, though, there is more going on than meets the eye.
The real reason Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) sponsored the creation of a "Diversity Visa Lottery" in 1989 was his inherited attitude of "immigration is good because it undermines the Protestant Establishment." That attitude you'd have seen in the 1880s among the Kennedy ancestors and Kennedy-like, basically-demagogic "ethnic politician" figures of that time. (The difference is that in the 1880s these types of figures were much off-set by an actual Protestant Establishment and huge, self-confident Protestant-supermajority population.)
The cleverness of the Sailer-joke here, at least I read it, is that the explanation would be sort-of or largely true "as is," -if- one century earlier in time. By the late 1880s (one century before Ted Kennedy's "Diversity Visa Lottery" bill), native-born Americans of Protestant stock, and some others, were beginning to talk of major and comprehensive immigration-restriction laws. It took until the 1910s for the culmination and the severe VDare-moratorium-like conditions of the 1920s-1960s. Versions of Ted Kennedy of the 1880s slammed immigration-restrictionist talk.
As often ends up being the case, in the figure of Ted Kennedy his pro-immigration (anti-immigration-restriction) views held over-- or, better stated, they "recombined" to surface again, an ethnopolitical instinct -- long past any reasonable "expiry" date.
> The real reason Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) sponsored the creation of a "Diversity Visa Lottery" in 1989 was his inherited attitude of "immigration is good because it undermines the Protestant Establishment."
And thus makes it easier for Irish Catholics like Ted Kennedy to get elected.
Ted Kennedy himself never ran in a competitive race. He was a shoe-in every time, from his first race for Senate in 1962 until his final election in 2006.
In 1962, Ted Kennedy (b.1932) won, 55-42, his first race for Senate in a special election, against a Protestant who, with a the George Cabot Lodge II (b.1927), was emblematic of pre-"Ellis Island era" New England and the USA itself.
The only reason that the seat was available and that Ted Kennedy was seen as a realistic option was: his brother, John F. Kennedy, had won the seat in 1952 and held it until assuming the presidency on Jan 20, 1961, and the Kennedy family had effective control of the seat, making it a strange sort of ethnopolitical "rotten borough," not a good legacy of ethnic politics.
Ted Kennedy was re-elected nine times and held the seat near half a century. Their "dynasty" itself needed no help from Diversity Visas. Ted Kennedy's backing for open immigration between the 1960s and the 2000s was political atavism.
The 2020s revival of a "Kennedy" in high-level U.S. politics has been a little strange. The critics of RFK Jr. (who was an eight-year-old boy when uncle Ted was elected to the U.S. Senate) say he's trading on a name but at-least-nominally unqualified to be talking about the specific things he's talking about. This was also, I suppose, true of Ted Kennedy from the start.
We can place Ted Kennedy squarely in a box of anti-WASP or anti-Protestant ethnic-politician of the Ellis Island type, the usual traits recombined into late-20th-century forms. With RFK Jr. -- who, in his twenties had fit the "deadbeat scion of an elite family" mold -- it's more like he (RFK Jr.) is a social-media star or the like. RFK Jr. is not so far off from Donald Trump in terms of how he "got famous."
Yes, I think a case can be made that both Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are other-side-of-the-coin examples of the Failure To Produce Good Elites phenomenon that some focus on as being the province of the Left, but may actually be more a general-sociological phenomenon. Ted Kennedy was a bad elite for reasons we can at least understand; RFK Jr. is (in this line-of-argument) a bad elite we can't as easily understand.
"During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the Act, said, "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
If Ted Kennedy in the 1960s held dear the value he seemed to be championing -- I refer to "the ethnic mix of [the USA] will not be upset" -- why didn't he come out for immigration-restrictionism at some point, by the 1990s or 2000s in his later career? (At times there were real moments of opportunity for a restricionist success.)
I think I know the answer, and it's not that he was "lying" in 1965, necessarily. IMO, it's the politically atavistic instinct I described in the earlier comment.
Here's the thing that Elon doesn't mention: America more or less pioneered the modern STEM fields. For the most part, the US tends to take the lead in these fields. So far so good.
In a nation of ca.330 million people, isn't it reasonable to assume that there are more than enough native born American students majoring in Engineering and graduating at sufficient rates that can more than fulfill these jobs? In other words, this "shortage" isn't really a shortage at all, but rather a personal decision on the part of top 1% not to want to have to actually pay Native Born Americans the going rate for an Engineering job?
Answer: Yes
Context for the answer: But the globalists, and unfortunately this would tend to include Musk as well, do not want to have to actually PAY native born American Engineers the top wages IF they can import more immigrants, to fill out the H-1B Visas, and then they get to pay them anywhere from 30-66% less than they would have to pay a native born American who recently graduated in Engineering.
And to top it all off, foreign Engineers under H-1B Visas aren't getting a US Pension, and neither are they getting most of the benefits like US Healthcare that they'd automatically qualify for if they were native born Americans.
This is the inverse of Mexican/South Americans coming in to take jobs at the low end from Native Born Americans. So either way, whether its jobs at the low end, or jobs at the top end, the result is the same: the 1% prefer not to have to hire Native Born Americans to fill either of these jobs.
The way K12 and University education is structured in the US, the US underproduces. In engineering, as in top science all over (and I mean top science, like recruiting for research group leader positions where these people need to publish lots and attract lots of grant income) you basically have global recruitment. For that, the education costs in the US too high and education quality too low to staff enough entry level positions.
In parentheses - this applies more to the blog author - The primary reason US could recruit Toscanini and Fermi was due to Nazi Germany gradually gaining influence in Italy in the 1930s.
The problem is not so much the presence of unqualified employees but the need to obfuscate and not neutralize their presence. If you look at 18th century Royal Navy - they had their share of unqualified aristocratic midshipmen and officers. Still, for over the century it was still the most lethal navy.
Uh, the 1990's Oligarchs (top 1%) called, and they want their Free Trade Talking Points returned immediately, so that they continue their scam on the US populace into actually believing this nonsensical claptrap.
330 Million total population. Logically speaking, there would have to be a few million in Universities majoring in STEM fields, particularly in Engineering.
Also, there just may come a day that China and other nations decide "You know what? As Engineering majors at university, or with E degrees starting out, we're gonna choose instead to remain in our own nations and work to help make their nations economically better."
Oh, someone might say, that kinda thing would never EVER happen! After all, the US has the largest economy in the world and everyone wants to come here to help improve the nation indefinitely.
Until the day comes when they dont want to continually come here indefinitely and would prefer to remain in their own nations and improve the economic health of their own homelands.
Then we has pickle we does.
So its best to not continually fall for the claptrap of the oligarchs, and cultivate even more STEM students, grads, and workers for the US's long term future.
After all, that's the same argument the 1% use for a rationalization for importing workers for low end jobs (e.g. fruit pickers, etc) "Oh, Americans won't do those jobs."
Uh, NO....Americans will do most every kind of job, just not at 1960 or 1980 wages, with no benefits or pensions.
If you actually had experience at employing people you would know that as an employer in a knowledge-based industry you are looking for a trifecta - someone who is cheap, who is complacent AND who is smart (or at least skilled).
The main problem with American (and British) workers from the 1960s and 1970s onwards was they were neither particularly complacent nor particularly smart. This is what led to offshoring. In contrast, Germany and Japan avoided the deindustrialization for quite a number of decades.
Again, the Oligarch Talking Points apparently have strong roots in some.
Yes, this is what they are looking for.
For the entire 20th century, American workers have been among the world's best skilled and, uh,...at least smart enough. After all, the US has had for most of the previous century the world's largest and most prosperous economy, and you don't get that without having a well trained productive workforce. Like duh.
Cheap and complacent only makes the point even stronger--if 1% can avoid not paying benefits, pensions, having to comply with worker safety laws as well as environmental laws later on, then they will most eagerly do so.
Japan is a unique case. For most of it's history, they have avoided having significant immigration. They tended and perhaps they still do (at least compared to Western nations) to keep immigration levels very, very low. Japan is thus a monoculture, and like Germany, unions businesses and the government have a more harmonious relationship. In other words in both countries the top 1% aren't necessarily out to swindle and cheat their workers to the levels that they tend to do in the US. Also bear in mind that from 1945-1990 Germany was literally divided, with the Eastern part under communist rule, and, while West Germany did have lower end workers imported from Turkey, for example, Germany's STEM fields tended to remain exclusively filled by native born German workers. It's also interesting that while today's Germany tends to have outrageously high levels of immigration from various 2nd and 3rd world countries, their higher end jobs remained filled by native born Germans. For some reason their immigrants don't want to, or are unable to have figured out yet, how to replace the native born populace to the same levels that their immigrant counterparts are currently doing in the US.
So once again: It isn't that Americans won't do these jobs. It's the fact that Americans refuse to do these jobs at 1980's wages, with no benefits and pensions.
If the top 1% desire to create a slave labor wage class at the low end job levels, for those that can barely subsist on scraps, and thus must work multiple jobs to survive (and of course other sociological problems then arise due to underemployment, such as higher crime levels, higher drug levels, etc) while simultaneously replacing most of the jobs with illegal workers who remain in limbo regarding citizenship, and thus avoiding having to pay them a living wage and benefits, then...they're doing a most amazing job.
And the same goes for the 1% avoiding having to pay for STEM workers at the higher end of the economic spectrum--at the expense of the native born American STEM workers, particularly in Engineering.
But yes, the talking points regarding the supposed shortage of workers in either the high or low end of professions never get old, but they do however, remain full of claptrap.
Whatever it takes for the 1% to remain at the top of the economic pyramid, then that's the claptrap that they will spew.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but I would like to see some proof that we underproduce in STEM education. Americans tends not to get PhDs in engineering because a masters makes more economic sense. Americans also tend to understand that basic science postdoc->university professor is an underpaid pyramid scheme of sorts.
I tend to think this is about pay. I can hardly believe the money some people I know (younger) are making doing AI stuff for FAANG (or whatever it is these days). Those opportunities did not exist when I was coming up and I think maybe Musk resents having to pay so much for the top talent. I guess it seems unfair to him that a someone with a 160 IQ should be able to get rich as an individual contributor.
Compared to Germany, France or Sweden, where you still have abundant grammar schools, and where university education is more or less free, the US input is at an objective disadvantage.
Anyway, I think one can gauge underproduction by looking at how many US engineers or scientists are long-term employed in Europe and/or rich Asian countries by non-US companies and institutions and vice versa. USA is not alone - Canada and UK are in the same bind.
There could be all kinds of reasons for that other than the US inability to produce engineers.
I agree US college is too expensive (though also recognized until recently as tops in the world). We could bring that down by outlawing student loans and most of the price discrimination.
I might support a government program to give everyone a free ride to university who scores three (or maybe more) standard deviations above mean on one of the standardized tests.
The only plausible way to get the best immigrants is to stubbornly insist on restriction at all levels. Mega billionaires like Musk will always find a way to get the ones they really want, but if we offer concessions they will always be used by crappy companies that sell junk products, like Microsoft, to game the system and import cheap labor.
Note that we got our best immigrants when we were most restrictive.
As an aside, as admirable as Musk may be as an entrepreneur and titan of industry, this clearly demonstrates that he is not a great leader of the people. For that you have to put self-interest aside and sacrifice for your people.
She (Rand) makes a pretty solid case that a society whose focus shifts from self-interest to altruism ends up putting the welfare and future of all its citizens at risk. Sort of a choice between judgmental fathers and can't-we-all-get-along mothers. Contra your assertion, I see Musk as an exemplar of the former rather than the latter, thankfully.
For the longest time, although I think they've woken up over this... liberals truly thought if you put a poor minority kid amongst a sea of high achieving white students, the minority will be magically transformed and lifted to extraordinary heights. All of the minorities. This seems like the same type of thinking that has guided our immigration policy, hasn't it? Give the lowest the biggest opportunity?
If we start selecting based on ability, then you slide into "tracking"... which still goes on at some schools but everyone acts like it doesn't because it is seen as unfair and judgmental. With more women in higher decision making roles, I don't see how many tough issues can possibly get better. Women are so concerned about "feelings" and not hurting anyone's that hard decisions are all but impossible to get carried out.
Where are there high achieving white students any more. In any magnet school, the Asian -American students and Asian immigrants have left the white kids behind.
"These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies."
2024-28 will only be worse for USA.
[I don't think most people have a clue how badly US is doing. Musk is getting thrashed in EV and batteries. No one in west has anything like the Hypersonics Russia have which make carriers and jet aircraft sitting ducks (trillions of US warfare investment is worthless. Generative AI is the only hope - it is a massive hope - and China is much closer behind than most think.)
Any immigration system that permits people to sneak across the border and then apply for and be granted legal status to remain is essentially unregulated, and will remain so. That’s the system we have.
We could require all applicants for benefits of any sort, for asylum, for extended residency, etc., to show evidence of their legal entry, but we do not. We have an army of NGOs and government administrators making a living dealing with the outcome of this insanity…they will ensure it remains unchanged. They successfully resisted during Trump’s first term. They probably will succeed again.
Elon Musk is a cult figure among many Trump conservatives yet I would be wary of the man. He is an international man who seems to have no cultural roots anywhere. Other than his ability to impregnate many different women, he is not a cultural conservative. He is totally ignorant of the many distinct American subcultures, a distinction he shares with Donald Trump.
America should be wary of massive immigration and the replacement of American workers. For instance, Mexican and Salvadoran are dominant in the chicken processing industry on the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia Eastern Shore. Every town with a chicken processing plant becomes a dump that is more Jalisco than American in culture. Immigrant labor reduces the wages of true historic Americans as well.
Yet I can see how certain niches can use immigrant labor. On the Eastern Shore of DE/MD/VA, most of the crab is picked by Mexican labor from the Gulf of Mexico regions of Mexico. Blacks and few whites want to do such work. Whites are the supervisors and owners. The Mexicans come to the Eastern Shore in April just as the season is beginning and usually leave sometime in November when the season dies down.
It seems like immigration is a lose-lose game. For example, if we get the best from other countries, that could mean that the less-than-best remain to run their home country into the ground and create foreign policy issues for America.
On the other hand, if we receive the less-than-best, then we get those who could not make it in their country, so they come to a place with a different culture and weird language and we expect them to succeed.
Guess the only positive it that they are willing to work for less and don't understand US labor regulations.
We should do what s best for our people here ( Black street gangs , Hollywood peds, George Floyd Street narcotics drug dealers already here aren t “ our people “ , neither are George soros and his evil son now engaged to that ugly Saudi Arab who was Hillary s Chief of Staff Abdella or something ).
Japan, Singapore and as always The J ethni state of Israel do immigration 4 what s good for their people in their country . They don t worry about what’s supposedly good or bad for 1.4 unhappy , u healthy people on the Indian sub continent . There a few or no Idiot Liberals Libertarians on the J ethnic state if Israel .
Menachim Begin the ugly , hateful J Irgun terrorist that targeted my Anglo British Kinsmen in 1947 British mandate Palestine - planted bombs in the king David Hotel - he wasn t thinking about what was good for “ the world “ he used murder and mayhem to drive out all ha Wite British then segued into terrorizing the Palestinian Arabs . Ethnocentric Js in Israel made him their PM. Idiot Liberals in Scandinavia and the USA made Irgun terrorist Menachim Begin the Nobel Peace Prize winner .
I don't think that Lucky Luciano is a good example of a less-than-qualified immigrant. The guy went from penniless immigrant to creating the greatest criminal syndicate in US history. He was intelligent, ambitious, had a tolerant view of his potential allies (he brought Meyer Lansky on board after Lansky stood up to his 'protection' offers), and made millions of dollars for himself and his employees. While in prison, he used his money and influence to build a church inside the prison walls. Luciano also cooperated with the American government during WWII by providing intelligence on the US port in NYC and on Italian and German immigrants, and by creating intellegince networks reporting to the US government in the home country of Sicily, which were used in the planning of the Allied invasion of that island. And, in 1998, Time magazine named Luciano in its top 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century. That is a successful career.
According to your description of America's immigration policy it seems as though the making of a globalists society "lite." Maybe that was the agenda all along. Once again the elitists telling us what we're going to get and to be without any input from us.
My second but more important point is that we must take responsibility as citizens to ensure our children are the most competitive of any nation and not wait on the government to do it for us. Our complacency is why we're in such dire straights.
It's also important to understand our ruling class are Globalist venture capitalists who understand the world as a sea of human biomatter (brown helots) who can be used to keep prices low and also reduce political and social pressure on their own hyper-elite status by atomizing the societies they rule over.
A "sane", nationalist and restrictionist immigration policy would deny them both of these, and also make them less different from the people they rule. They want to be Spartans over Helots. They dont want to be "Wealthy Americans". They are the Abrahamic God's mother-fucking Chosen.
Well-written and right on the ball.
English fluency I’ve discovered is the single best predictor of WEIRD values and American-ness among Indian immigrants. We can select the best and stop the $65K Indian coders if we allow ourselves to be creative in how we select.
How sure are you that you are seeing a Northwest-European-style psychology-worldview and ethics ("WEIRD values"), when you encounter the English-fluent Indians of whom you speak?
They are less likely to exhibit low-trust third world behaviors is my observation.
Or...the US could just restrict them from coming in, and slash the H-1B Visa program, period and...actually hire Native Born Americans. They do exist, especially in a nation of 330 million people.
Oh FFS, does no one read Steve on here? It is not the culture it is the IQ.
I'd rather live next to a dumb White American than a genius Chinaman.
Dat raciss.
Yes, I am a racist
Fair enough - that is precisely the choice.
They should be put in a car on a six-lane highway. Whoever screws up traffic the least should be put on a plane back to India with every one of their fellow sub-cons. Except Razib, he can stay.
I haven't laughed at a Substack comment in a while. If you subjected Indian-Candians to that test, especially around the GTA area and in Brampton, Ontario, 95% would fail, I think lol.
screws up the least has to go back?
They all have to go back. Except Razib.
My school district has a Microsoft sponsored STEM academy and we’ve been inundated. Non-driving mfers.
I really hope that you have not carefully thought about this proposal:
“One possibility would be to auction off draft picks to American firms: you have to pay the US government X dollars to get the #1 pick in the draft and so on and so forth down to #11,000.”
If you enter the NFL draft, your choices are to play for the team that drafted you, or do something other than NFL football. If you enter the immigration draft, your choices are to work for the company that drafted you, or … what exactly? Not work and starve? Return to your home country? Surely it would be better just to impose an extra 3% tax on the income of these immigrants. Most will have the ability to become multi-millionaires.
Pretty sure the intention was that the highest bidder gets the first opportunity to offer their pick a job at their company which the immigrant may then choose to accept or not, not that they’d be forced by law to either take it or go back to wherever they came from as you seem bizarrely to have understood it.
As any deal lawyer knows, a right of first offer is utterly valueless.
> what exactly? Not work and starve? Return to your home country?
As it stands an H1B Visa holder must legally only work for the company that sponsored him
I dunno. It feels different. Perhaps if the immigrant is still in their home country it would be equivalent. Also, an H1B holder can move to a different H1B sponsor.
They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. If they hate their job or get laid off, they should return to their home country. There is no right to work in the USA.
Musk, who likes cheap tech labor, is trying to triple-bank shot defend H1B1. It won't work, and it may lead him to some nasty reprisals against his former allies on the right.
Merry Christmas.
P.S. Steve, when is your mea cupla on your relentless defenses of Biden's cognitive competency since 2019?
Huh? (on the last)
Happy Boxing Day.
The problem we have in America is that we don't graduate as many people in STEM as we need, largely but not entirely because we push too many unqualified people into STEM education who flunk out and then because we reserve jobs for the unqualified who actually get a STEM degree. Reorganize those incentives and we'd probably be able to graduate many more people qualified to take STEM jobs, even with an H1B program. (Don't overlook the fact that the H1B program probably isn't affected by DEI hiring concerns, and also produces good DEI employment numbers)
Engineering could do a lot better job advertising itself to the general public, especially with pay rates.
When I was in college, I had no idea what an engineer was or did. I knew of them of course --- we had a nearby engineering school -- but what exactly they did, and how much money they made doing it (and that's a big factor), was not something explained generally, even in college.
Today I realize that with my strengths and weakness it might have been something I would have been intrigued to think about as a career, but back then it was opaque so I didn't bother. I think that engineering is something that is something families of engineers know about and therefore push, but to outsiders it is never explained. It might be a very engineer-type thing to assume people know about what you do without realizing most don't, or to not realize that outsiders need it explained to them.
They could do a much better job talking about themselves is what I'm saying. Doctors and lawyers are higher-IQ professions (save the lawyer jokes for later) who's jobs are well-known. And their remuneration is believed to be high by John Q. Average. Engineering needs to put both in the public consciousness day in and day out so more kids are drawn to it. In other words, engineering needs to recruit -- and not abroad.
*H1B, genius
Child porn says what?
(Steve, again, please either allow me to respond to this anklebiter's cheap shots or delete *his* cheap shots as well as my response. Its quite unfair to allow him free reign to assail me but if I respond to have it deleted. Makes it seem like you're on his side, frankly. Turnabout is fair play, after all. )
What's the Substack problem here? Are you not given equal access (powers?) to post, reply, edit, delete that all other subs have? I thought we were all either equal, banned, or the owner of a Substack channel. What gives?
"Ted Kennedy’s Diversity Immigrant Visa program that randomly lets in 55,000 high school graduates per year. Senator Ted came up with this brainstorm a third of a century ago because he wanted to let in more Irishmen to vote for future Kennedys running for office."
This is a Sailer-joke. It doesn't like a very rational reason Ted Kennedy would have done this. As with many Sailer-jokes, though, there is more going on than meets the eye.
The real reason Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) sponsored the creation of a "Diversity Visa Lottery" in 1989 was his inherited attitude of "immigration is good because it undermines the Protestant Establishment." That attitude you'd have seen in the 1880s among the Kennedy ancestors and Kennedy-like, basically-demagogic "ethnic politician" figures of that time. (The difference is that in the 1880s these types of figures were much off-set by an actual Protestant Establishment and huge, self-confident Protestant-supermajority population.)
The cleverness of the Sailer-joke here, at least I read it, is that the explanation would be sort-of or largely true "as is," -if- one century earlier in time. By the late 1880s (one century before Ted Kennedy's "Diversity Visa Lottery" bill), native-born Americans of Protestant stock, and some others, were beginning to talk of major and comprehensive immigration-restriction laws. It took until the 1910s for the culmination and the severe VDare-moratorium-like conditions of the 1920s-1960s. Versions of Ted Kennedy of the 1880s slammed immigration-restrictionist talk.
As often ends up being the case, in the figure of Ted Kennedy his pro-immigration (anti-immigration-restriction) views held over-- or, better stated, they "recombined" to surface again, an ethnopolitical instinct -- long past any reasonable "expiry" date.
> The real reason Ted Kennedy (1932-2009) sponsored the creation of a "Diversity Visa Lottery" in 1989 was his inherited attitude of "immigration is good because it undermines the Protestant Establishment."
And thus makes it easier for Irish Catholics like Ted Kennedy to get elected.
Ted Kennedy himself never ran in a competitive race. He was a shoe-in every time, from his first race for Senate in 1962 until his final election in 2006.
In 1962, Ted Kennedy (b.1932) won, 55-42, his first race for Senate in a special election, against a Protestant who, with a the George Cabot Lodge II (b.1927), was emblematic of pre-"Ellis Island era" New England and the USA itself.
The only reason that the seat was available and that Ted Kennedy was seen as a realistic option was: his brother, John F. Kennedy, had won the seat in 1952 and held it until assuming the presidency on Jan 20, 1961, and the Kennedy family had effective control of the seat, making it a strange sort of ethnopolitical "rotten borough," not a good legacy of ethnic politics.
Ted Kennedy was re-elected nine times and held the seat near half a century. Their "dynasty" itself needed no help from Diversity Visas. Ted Kennedy's backing for open immigration between the 1960s and the 2000s was political atavism.
The 2020s revival of a "Kennedy" in high-level U.S. politics has been a little strange. The critics of RFK Jr. (who was an eight-year-old boy when uncle Ted was elected to the U.S. Senate) say he's trading on a name but at-least-nominally unqualified to be talking about the specific things he's talking about. This was also, I suppose, true of Ted Kennedy from the start.
We can place Ted Kennedy squarely in a box of anti-WASP or anti-Protestant ethnic-politician of the Ellis Island type, the usual traits recombined into late-20th-century forms. With RFK Jr. -- who, in his twenties had fit the "deadbeat scion of an elite family" mold -- it's more like he (RFK Jr.) is a social-media star or the like. RFK Jr. is not so far off from Donald Trump in terms of how he "got famous."
Yes, I think a case can be made that both Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are other-side-of-the-coin examples of the Failure To Produce Good Elites phenomenon that some focus on as being the province of the Left, but may actually be more a general-sociological phenomenon. Ted Kennedy was a bad elite for reasons we can at least understand; RFK Jr. is (in this line-of-argument) a bad elite we can't as easily understand.
"During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the Act, said, "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
If Ted Kennedy in the 1960s held dear the value he seemed to be championing -- I refer to "the ethnic mix of [the USA] will not be upset" -- why didn't he come out for immigration-restrictionism at some point, by the 1990s or 2000s in his later career? (At times there were real moments of opportunity for a restricionist success.)
I think I know the answer, and it's not that he was "lying" in 1965, necessarily. IMO, it's the politically atavistic instinct I described in the earlier comment.
Agreed on all points. I just pulled that quote out because it seemed apropos to the discussion of old Teddy and immigration
Here's the thing that Elon doesn't mention: America more or less pioneered the modern STEM fields. For the most part, the US tends to take the lead in these fields. So far so good.
In a nation of ca.330 million people, isn't it reasonable to assume that there are more than enough native born American students majoring in Engineering and graduating at sufficient rates that can more than fulfill these jobs? In other words, this "shortage" isn't really a shortage at all, but rather a personal decision on the part of top 1% not to want to have to actually pay Native Born Americans the going rate for an Engineering job?
Answer: Yes
Context for the answer: But the globalists, and unfortunately this would tend to include Musk as well, do not want to have to actually PAY native born American Engineers the top wages IF they can import more immigrants, to fill out the H-1B Visas, and then they get to pay them anywhere from 30-66% less than they would have to pay a native born American who recently graduated in Engineering.
And to top it all off, foreign Engineers under H-1B Visas aren't getting a US Pension, and neither are they getting most of the benefits like US Healthcare that they'd automatically qualify for if they were native born Americans.
This is the inverse of Mexican/South Americans coming in to take jobs at the low end from Native Born Americans. So either way, whether its jobs at the low end, or jobs at the top end, the result is the same: the 1% prefer not to have to hire Native Born Americans to fill either of these jobs.
The way K12 and University education is structured in the US, the US underproduces. In engineering, as in top science all over (and I mean top science, like recruiting for research group leader positions where these people need to publish lots and attract lots of grant income) you basically have global recruitment. For that, the education costs in the US too high and education quality too low to staff enough entry level positions.
In parentheses - this applies more to the blog author - The primary reason US could recruit Toscanini and Fermi was due to Nazi Germany gradually gaining influence in Italy in the 1930s.
A big reason for that is the number of positions we reserve for unqualified applicants both in education and employment.
The problem is not so much the presence of unqualified employees but the need to obfuscate and not neutralize their presence. If you look at 18th century Royal Navy - they had their share of unqualified aristocratic midshipmen and officers. Still, for over the century it was still the most lethal navy.
Uh, the 1990's Oligarchs (top 1%) called, and they want their Free Trade Talking Points returned immediately, so that they continue their scam on the US populace into actually believing this nonsensical claptrap.
330 Million total population. Logically speaking, there would have to be a few million in Universities majoring in STEM fields, particularly in Engineering.
Also, there just may come a day that China and other nations decide "You know what? As Engineering majors at university, or with E degrees starting out, we're gonna choose instead to remain in our own nations and work to help make their nations economically better."
Oh, someone might say, that kinda thing would never EVER happen! After all, the US has the largest economy in the world and everyone wants to come here to help improve the nation indefinitely.
Until the day comes when they dont want to continually come here indefinitely and would prefer to remain in their own nations and improve the economic health of their own homelands.
Then we has pickle we does.
So its best to not continually fall for the claptrap of the oligarchs, and cultivate even more STEM students, grads, and workers for the US's long term future.
After all, that's the same argument the 1% use for a rationalization for importing workers for low end jobs (e.g. fruit pickers, etc) "Oh, Americans won't do those jobs."
Uh, NO....Americans will do most every kind of job, just not at 1960 or 1980 wages, with no benefits or pensions.
If you actually had experience at employing people you would know that as an employer in a knowledge-based industry you are looking for a trifecta - someone who is cheap, who is complacent AND who is smart (or at least skilled).
The main problem with American (and British) workers from the 1960s and 1970s onwards was they were neither particularly complacent nor particularly smart. This is what led to offshoring. In contrast, Germany and Japan avoided the deindustrialization for quite a number of decades.
Again, the Oligarch Talking Points apparently have strong roots in some.
Yes, this is what they are looking for.
For the entire 20th century, American workers have been among the world's best skilled and, uh,...at least smart enough. After all, the US has had for most of the previous century the world's largest and most prosperous economy, and you don't get that without having a well trained productive workforce. Like duh.
Cheap and complacent only makes the point even stronger--if 1% can avoid not paying benefits, pensions, having to comply with worker safety laws as well as environmental laws later on, then they will most eagerly do so.
Japan is a unique case. For most of it's history, they have avoided having significant immigration. They tended and perhaps they still do (at least compared to Western nations) to keep immigration levels very, very low. Japan is thus a monoculture, and like Germany, unions businesses and the government have a more harmonious relationship. In other words in both countries the top 1% aren't necessarily out to swindle and cheat their workers to the levels that they tend to do in the US. Also bear in mind that from 1945-1990 Germany was literally divided, with the Eastern part under communist rule, and, while West Germany did have lower end workers imported from Turkey, for example, Germany's STEM fields tended to remain exclusively filled by native born German workers. It's also interesting that while today's Germany tends to have outrageously high levels of immigration from various 2nd and 3rd world countries, their higher end jobs remained filled by native born Germans. For some reason their immigrants don't want to, or are unable to have figured out yet, how to replace the native born populace to the same levels that their immigrant counterparts are currently doing in the US.
So once again: It isn't that Americans won't do these jobs. It's the fact that Americans refuse to do these jobs at 1980's wages, with no benefits and pensions.
If the top 1% desire to create a slave labor wage class at the low end job levels, for those that can barely subsist on scraps, and thus must work multiple jobs to survive (and of course other sociological problems then arise due to underemployment, such as higher crime levels, higher drug levels, etc) while simultaneously replacing most of the jobs with illegal workers who remain in limbo regarding citizenship, and thus avoiding having to pay them a living wage and benefits, then...they're doing a most amazing job.
And the same goes for the 1% avoiding having to pay for STEM workers at the higher end of the economic spectrum--at the expense of the native born American STEM workers, particularly in Engineering.
But yes, the talking points regarding the supposed shortage of workers in either the high or low end of professions never get old, but they do however, remain full of claptrap.
Whatever it takes for the 1% to remain at the top of the economic pyramid, then that's the claptrap that they will spew.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but I would like to see some proof that we underproduce in STEM education. Americans tends not to get PhDs in engineering because a masters makes more economic sense. Americans also tend to understand that basic science postdoc->university professor is an underpaid pyramid scheme of sorts.
I tend to think this is about pay. I can hardly believe the money some people I know (younger) are making doing AI stuff for FAANG (or whatever it is these days). Those opportunities did not exist when I was coming up and I think maybe Musk resents having to pay so much for the top talent. I guess it seems unfair to him that a someone with a 160 IQ should be able to get rich as an individual contributor.
Compared to Germany, France or Sweden, where you still have abundant grammar schools, and where university education is more or less free, the US input is at an objective disadvantage.
Anyway, I think one can gauge underproduction by looking at how many US engineers or scientists are long-term employed in Europe and/or rich Asian countries by non-US companies and institutions and vice versa. USA is not alone - Canada and UK are in the same bind.
There could be all kinds of reasons for that other than the US inability to produce engineers.
I agree US college is too expensive (though also recognized until recently as tops in the world). We could bring that down by outlawing student loans and most of the price discrimination.
I might support a government program to give everyone a free ride to university who scores three (or maybe more) standard deviations above mean on one of the standardized tests.
The only plausible way to get the best immigrants is to stubbornly insist on restriction at all levels. Mega billionaires like Musk will always find a way to get the ones they really want, but if we offer concessions they will always be used by crappy companies that sell junk products, like Microsoft, to game the system and import cheap labor.
Note that we got our best immigrants when we were most restrictive.
As an aside, as admirable as Musk may be as an entrepreneur and titan of industry, this clearly demonstrates that he is not a great leader of the people. For that you have to put self-interest aside and sacrifice for your people.
What about Ayn Rand and the ancaps?
Not a big fan of her philosophy.
She (Rand) makes a pretty solid case that a society whose focus shifts from self-interest to altruism ends up putting the welfare and future of all its citizens at risk. Sort of a choice between judgmental fathers and can't-we-all-get-along mothers. Contra your assertion, I see Musk as an exemplar of the former rather than the latter, thankfully.
"...whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave."
Wonderful. Shall I respond with some choice Nietzsche...?
I'd like that. I get a kick out of Nietzsche.
Aym Rand is not in the Trump cabinet
Elon Musk is as close as one gets to an earthly John Galt. That Randians/Objectivists don't (can't?) see this is endlessly amusing.
I'm not an Objectivist
Didn't say you were. I try never to insult my interlocutors (unless and until they deserve it).
For the longest time, although I think they've woken up over this... liberals truly thought if you put a poor minority kid amongst a sea of high achieving white students, the minority will be magically transformed and lifted to extraordinary heights. All of the minorities. This seems like the same type of thinking that has guided our immigration policy, hasn't it? Give the lowest the biggest opportunity?
If we start selecting based on ability, then you slide into "tracking"... which still goes on at some schools but everyone acts like it doesn't because it is seen as unfair and judgmental. With more women in higher decision making roles, I don't see how many tough issues can possibly get better. Women are so concerned about "feelings" and not hurting anyone's that hard decisions are all but impossible to get carried out.
Where are there high achieving white students any more. In any magnet school, the Asian -American students and Asian immigrants have left the white kids behind.
it is a bit late to start protecting US technology.
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker
"These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies."
2024-28 will only be worse for USA.
[I don't think most people have a clue how badly US is doing. Musk is getting thrashed in EV and batteries. No one in west has anything like the Hypersonics Russia have which make carriers and jet aircraft sitting ducks (trillions of US warfare investment is worthless. Generative AI is the only hope - it is a massive hope - and China is much closer behind than most think.)
Any immigration system that permits people to sneak across the border and then apply for and be granted legal status to remain is essentially unregulated, and will remain so. That’s the system we have.
We could require all applicants for benefits of any sort, for asylum, for extended residency, etc., to show evidence of their legal entry, but we do not. We have an army of NGOs and government administrators making a living dealing with the outcome of this insanity…they will ensure it remains unchanged. They successfully resisted during Trump’s first term. They probably will succeed again.
Elon Musk is a cult figure among many Trump conservatives yet I would be wary of the man. He is an international man who seems to have no cultural roots anywhere. Other than his ability to impregnate many different women, he is not a cultural conservative. He is totally ignorant of the many distinct American subcultures, a distinction he shares with Donald Trump.
America should be wary of massive immigration and the replacement of American workers. For instance, Mexican and Salvadoran are dominant in the chicken processing industry on the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia Eastern Shore. Every town with a chicken processing plant becomes a dump that is more Jalisco than American in culture. Immigrant labor reduces the wages of true historic Americans as well.
Yet I can see how certain niches can use immigrant labor. On the Eastern Shore of DE/MD/VA, most of the crab is picked by Mexican labor from the Gulf of Mexico regions of Mexico. Blacks and few whites want to do such work. Whites are the supervisors and owners. The Mexicans come to the Eastern Shore in April just as the season is beginning and usually leave sometime in November when the season dies down.
We need to be thinking about the well-being of regular people. Trump seems to understand this; Musk seems not to.
It seems like immigration is a lose-lose game. For example, if we get the best from other countries, that could mean that the less-than-best remain to run their home country into the ground and create foreign policy issues for America.
On the other hand, if we receive the less-than-best, then we get those who could not make it in their country, so they come to a place with a different culture and weird language and we expect them to succeed.
Guess the only positive it that they are willing to work for less and don't understand US labor regulations.
Doesn't appear possible to win at this game.
You re over thinking this :
We should do what s best for our people here ( Black street gangs , Hollywood peds, George Floyd Street narcotics drug dealers already here aren t “ our people “ , neither are George soros and his evil son now engaged to that ugly Saudi Arab who was Hillary s Chief of Staff Abdella or something ).
Japan, Singapore and as always The J ethni state of Israel do immigration 4 what s good for their people in their country . They don t worry about what’s supposedly good or bad for 1.4 unhappy , u healthy people on the Indian sub continent . There a few or no Idiot Liberals Libertarians on the J ethnic state if Israel .
Menachim Begin the ugly , hateful J Irgun terrorist that targeted my Anglo British Kinsmen in 1947 British mandate Palestine - planted bombs in the king David Hotel - he wasn t thinking about what was good for “ the world “ he used murder and mayhem to drive out all ha Wite British then segued into terrorizing the Palestinian Arabs . Ethnocentric Js in Israel made him their PM. Idiot Liberals in Scandinavia and the USA made Irgun terrorist Menachim Begin the Nobel Peace Prize winner .
That s life and sadly …
Death
Death if the West as Pat Buchanan wrote
I don't think that Lucky Luciano is a good example of a less-than-qualified immigrant. The guy went from penniless immigrant to creating the greatest criminal syndicate in US history. He was intelligent, ambitious, had a tolerant view of his potential allies (he brought Meyer Lansky on board after Lansky stood up to his 'protection' offers), and made millions of dollars for himself and his employees. While in prison, he used his money and influence to build a church inside the prison walls. Luciano also cooperated with the American government during WWII by providing intelligence on the US port in NYC and on Italian and German immigrants, and by creating intellegince networks reporting to the US government in the home country of Sicily, which were used in the planning of the Allied invasion of that island. And, in 1998, Time magazine named Luciano in its top 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century. That is a successful career.
Also not for nothin' but no Lucky, no "The Godfather"
Wretched refuse is our strength
You tell 'em, Emma. Not Goldman, the other one.
According to your description of America's immigration policy it seems as though the making of a globalists society "lite." Maybe that was the agenda all along. Once again the elitists telling us what we're going to get and to be without any input from us.
My second but more important point is that we must take responsibility as citizens to ensure our children are the most competitive of any nation and not wait on the government to do it for us. Our complacency is why we're in such dire straights.