May 5, 2013

Mark Zuckerberg's Save the Billionaires fund

Reid Hoffman, $3,100,000,000
The new tech firm lobbying group FWD.us has played a major role in writing the Gang of Eight's immigration legislation to make it easier for technology companies to import foreign computer programmers to drive down the ruinously high cost of American labor. I thought it would be fun to rank the names on FWD.us's "Our Supporters" page by net worth.

 $66,000,000,000 Bill Gates, Chair of Microsoft & Gates Foundation
 $15,200,000,000 Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft
 $13,300,000,000 Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
 $8,200,000,000 Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google
 $3,100,000,000 Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn
 $2,700,000,000 John Doerr, General Partner at Kleiner Perkins 
 $2,700,000,000 Elon Musk, CEO SpaceX and Tesla Motors
 $2,000,000,000 Sean Parker, Founders Fund
 $1,500,000,000 Ron Conway, Special Advisor to SV Angel
 $1,200,000,000 Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners
 $760,000,000 Mark Pincus, Founder, CEO Zynga
 $600,000,000 Drew Houston, Founder and CEO of Dropbox
 $559,000,000 Reed Hastings, Founder and CEO of Netflix
 $400,000,000 Matt Cohler, General Partner at Benchmark
 $400,000,000 Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder of Instagram
 $345,000,000 Chad Hurley, Co-founder and CEO of AVOS
 $300,000,000 Max Levchin, Co-founder of PayPal, Chmn of Yelp 
 $230,000,000 Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!
 $200,000,000 Andrew Mason, Co-founder of Groupon
 $100,000,000 Josh James, Founder and CEO of Domo
 ? Aditya Agarwal, Vice President of Engineering at Dropbox
 ? Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder of The Social+Capital Partnership
 ? Ruchi Sanghvi, Vice President of Operations at Dropbox 
 ? Brian Chesky, CEO and Co-founder of Airbnb
 ? Chris Cox, Vice President of Product at Facebook
 ? Paul Graham, Co-founder of Y Combinator
 ? Joe Lonsdale, Partner at Formation 8
 ? Mary Meeker, General Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
 ? Dave Morin, Co-founder and CEO of Path
 ? Hadi Partovi, Co-Founder and President of Code.org
 ? Alison Pincus, One Kings Lane Co-Founder
 ? Keith Rabois, Partner at Khosla Ventures
 ? Hosain Rahman, CEO and Founder of Jawbone
 ? David Sacks, Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Yammer
 ? Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft
 ? Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology & Strategy Officer at Cisco

(I'm not promising that these are the best and most up to the minute net worth estimates, but they're what I came up with quickly.)

It just doesn't pay to be a billionaire anymore.

I mean, if America's tech billionaires and mere centimillionaires (hectomillionaires?) can't lower programmers' salaries immediately, what possible economic incentive will they have to continue to be rich? It's Econ 101, people!

Please take a moment to thank the Friends of Mark Zuckerberg for somehow carrying on despite having to pay their employees such exorbitant wages that they are forced to bribe Gang of Eight senators with free campaign commercials just to get more H-1B visas. Just think how much richer these poor billionaires would be if the U.S. didn't exist and they didn't have to therefore share so much of their wealth with their employees because the border keeps them from fully utilizing the global reserve army of the unemployed to grind down their workers' pay.

96 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, none of the Indians on the list are rich enough to have their net worth readily available on the Internet. They're probably tokens. Then why didn't Zuck sign up any East Asian tokens?

Jon Claerbout said...

Here's an alternate view from a lower rung of the same pipeline. We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool.

Dave Pinsen said...

"Wow, none of the Indians on the list are rich enough to have their net worth readily available on the Internet. They're probably tokens."

It's not a matter of how rich they are per se, it's a matter of how much of their net worth is in publicly traded stocks, so its easily calculable. Paul Graham, for example, is an early stage investor, and some tech companies don't IPO these days until they can fetch a billion dollar+ market capitalization.

As for the Indians on the list, Chamath Palihapitiya is no token. He was on Bloomberg West last week (everyone on that show to discuss immigration is in favor of it), and is a highly articulate advocate.

Anonymous said...

"We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool."

Well, let's just restructure the constitution around your particular company! As long as your company produces a better product, who cares what the rest of America wants?

Anonymous said...

This whole approach is much weaker than usual.

1. Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages or employment rates. Labour doesn't respond like other goods because it's possible to just increase production and consumption. Ultimately US is a high wage economy because it has high capital accumulation not because it is few people(?!) dividing a fixed lump of wealth or jobs.

2. Mostly you talk about the political externality of leftist voters and the social externality of low IQ citizens. But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican.

It might make more sense to argue why these people want to massively expand Mexican immigration that is minimal use to the computer industry rather than just expanding the very limited H1B category.

Anonymous said...

Just perused FWD.us's Wikipedia entry. I'm always interested in seeing what criticisms of FWD.us they included. The only criticism I found was one from an open borders advocate who argued that FWD.us was too modest in its goals. Interestingly, there is nothing in the "Talk" portion of the page. Nothing positive, nothing negative. Nothing about the page.

Veracitor said...

I hestitate to inflict this pedantry on you, Steve, but better me than an enemy: you probably ought to write "hecto-millionaires" (100's of millions) rather than "centi-" (hundredths of).

PropagandistHacker said...

the commonly accepted term for someone who has hundreds of millions is zillionaire.

stari_momak said...

" Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages or employment rates."

Well, 4% for the lowest paid workers is a pretty big hit -- if you only make $2000 per month, you'll miss that $40.

More importantly, and I've not seen any work on this, I suspect that immigration is effecting (1) benefits (2) amount of time worked and (3) job security, more than wages. A recent study of real estate agents showed that during the receion, they were unwilling to cut their commissions -- i.e. accept lower wages -and therefore just absorved the secular downturn by getting fewer clients. I suspect a similar prcess is at work even among the lowest paid. People are just taking more time off from work, relying on unemployment (or their wife) more.

Long story short, the economic impact on lower wage workers is not puretly, or maybe even mostly, on wages, but on work force participation rates, benefits packages, etc.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

2. Mostly you talk about the political externality of leftist voters and the social externality of low IQ citizens. But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican.

No data to support this at all, merely faith based repetition.

Asians/Jews are two higher IQ groups that there are years of experience with. They definitely skew D, esp. Jews and the higher IQ East Asians.

There is no evidence to suggest that immigrants on average are more intelligent that current U.S. citizens. I'd wager that among the influx since 1970 or so that the average IQs were below the U.S. mean or median.

You might make a case that the immigrants have a higher than average IQ than the average in the sending nation, but, when you are talking about someplace like India, which despite all the vehement propaganda here actually has an astonishingly low average IQ, this is damning with faint praise.

If we are all so stupid here, how come all of them want to come here and enjoy the prosperity that we and our forebears created while their forebears were mired in poverty, superstition, and so forth.

Let's get real about this. This is beggary, envy,and ingratitude on a global scale. I wish that "you people" would at least once in a while acknowledge the slightest bit of gratitude for all the blessings "my people" have bestowed upon the earth. This is inarguable, as evidenced by the desparate desire of all these other people to come and live amongst my people.

rightsaidfred said...

We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool.

A specious claim. How do you know your product would not be as good?

I've been next to some of this foreign hiring fadism. I'm unimpressed with the meritocracy of the whole thing.

Note well that you feel the need to come here and tell us how great things are under immigration. It is not so obvious to me, what with our pathetic GDP growth and numerous other economic indices in the tank. But thanks, I guess.

Friendly neighbour said...

The thing is, what people have to understand is that 90% of the H1-B visa people go home(usually to India and similar places) within 5 years.

They do grunt work, for the most part. The vast majority of H1-B visas issues are for outsourcing, that's why firms like Wipro even exist to begin with.

Secondly, having a genuine high-skilled immigration policy would be beneficial economically to America(the cultural aspect is a whole other ballgame).

For instance, Canada has had a relentless policy of mostly high-skilled immigration. The result is that working-class Canadians, the vast majority of them white, have it far better up North than the American white working class which can never seem to catch a break(and whose life expectancy has even gone down in recent years!).

Now, Canada's right-wing government(with it's cozy relationship with the Big Business lobby) has increased foreign temp-labor too, many of them Mexican farmers and such for the same reasons: push down the wages.

But still, at least there's a ruckus in Canada over the issue. One of their banks started to import a ton of these temp-workers and there was a huge outcry by the left-wing media, so they apologized, saying it "had all been a mistake" /sarc.

Nevertheless, the Canadaian model works a lot better generally speaking. The immigrants who come there do well, they do not impact the wages negatively for the poorest in the country - unlike in America.

But even in Canada, the lesson is that big business constantly wants to undercut the wages and the livelihoods of the nation's people. Big business doesn't care about the country. They're disloyal. They only care about the bottomline.

Do you think it was a coincidence that so much of the American business establishment funded Hitler up to the very end?
Who cares if we fought against him! Profits!

These people are psychopathic. Don't trust them with anything, including immigration but not only. Everytime they go on about "skills shortage" I just want to strangle them, slowly. Plutocratic sociopaths.

Anonymous said...

"sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican", all the evidence points in the other direction. They will overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I just don't get people who claim such things, the Democrats make no secret that they have the non white votes, the last elections numbers make that very clear, yet there are still people who think opening the immigration floodgates is a Republican thing or "conservative value".

Anonymous said...

"We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool."

But if the pool was confined to U.S. citizens, to fill the entire pool you would have to raise the 2,500 a month to pry some 130 IQ people away from some other major you see...and then you would benefit as well and the company would still be fine.

Then with the extra money the people would have more children and at an earlier age and then the pool of high IQ WHITE Americans would continue to expand.




Daniel said...

>>....But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican

Like I or any other American should give a shit about the fortunes of the Republican party.

Mr L said...

"We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get."

Geophysical Engineering is a very in-demand field, with approximately 0% unemployment among degree holders and average salaries for new grads in the $60k range.

You want an elite subset of these students but are only paying about half the market rate. You need to dip into the global talent pool? Gee, I wonder why.

x said...

eat the rich. its time for the right to ditch their alliance with them altogether.

let's nail their balls to the wall. screw 'em. they've been screwing all of us for years now. time to fight back.

bjdubbs said...

Bloomberg has said increase high skill visas, forget amnesty. Here is what he said about two years ago:

“It’s critically important that we create a pathway to permanent legal status . . . But by this point, unfortunately, it is clear that the two sides have reached a stalemate. They are just talking past each other. ...

Independent voters . . . want both sides to stop fighting on what they disagree on and start taking action on the areas where they agree and there are actually quite a few areas."

In other words, why doesn't the right and the tech right agree on more high skill workers in exchange for enforcement? Zuck doesn't care about amnesty, none of them do. So say to them, look, shove all your money in this direction and you can get more high skill workers in exchange for real enforcement.

Daniel said...

>>In other words, why doesn't the right and the tech right agree on more high skill workers in exchange for enforcement? Zuck doesn't care about amnesty, none of them do. So say to them, look, shove all your money in this direction and you can get more high skill workers in exchange for real enforcement.

I would rather have 30 million more Mexicans than these so called "highly skilled" hindus, soviet jews and chinamen. Mexicans are just responding to evident opportunities, they aren't out to destroy my way of life, as the others are.

Anonymous said...

"Wow, none of the Indians on the list are rich enough to have their net worth readily available on the Internet. They're probably tokens. Then why didn't Zuck sign up any East Asian tokens?"

H1B mainly benefits two groups. British working in NYC finance and Indians working in SV. I doubt they are recruited tokens. More likely they support more Indian immigrants and signed up for the movement themselves.

fnn said...

>>....But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican

Lee Kuan Yew has often been quoted on this site:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-singapore-s-lee-kuan-yew-it-s-stupid-to-be-afraid-a-369128.html
(...)
"SPIEGEL: During your career, you have kept your distance from Western style democracy. Are you still convinced that an authoritarian system is the future for Asia?

Mr. Lee: Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that..."
(...)

The Catholic vs. Protestant divide used to very important in US politics.Then in 1960 JFK told Protestant leaders that Catholicism was not all that important to him. A little later US Catholicism became very tame and Protestantized after Vatican II.

Conatus said...

This guy, the Dissentingdemocrat, says it would take 274 years to spend a billion dollars at 10,000 dollars a day.
http://dissentingdemocrat.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/imagine-a-billion-dollars-if-you-could-spend-10000-a-day-youd-need-274-years-to-spend-it/

We have been fooled by Reaganism's Clint Eastwood entrepreneur image into thinking billionaires are good. They are not, it is just a man contest once you get a billion dollars. It is not about self-fulfillment, it is about control. Who can they control? Can they control so many people they impress their fellow Control Freaky Billionaires? That is what it is about. A billion is a thousand million dollars and where did that come from? Not from adding value. Gates just stole Steve Jobs Apple format because Gates' Dad was a lawyer and Gates knew how to tweak and re-patent Apples' format. It was all manipulation, legal maneuvering, regulatory dancing. How about Zuckerberg who stole his idea from the Winkelvoss twins. It was their idea, Zuckerberg stole it like a thief in the night and few would accuse him of anything untoward becasue he is from the Perfect Tribe. How about Carlos'Fatboy' Slim, the only reason he is a billionaire is a government enforced monopoly. They use guns to make him a billionaire.
Anyone who is still on board with Reagan's magical Capitalist Fairy Tale Blimp ought to see the light and jump off, these Billionaire guys see us as a herd of stupid cows, there to be milked and corralled while they drink wine in the ranch house and laugh at us freezing our haunches off in the corral. They manipulated things to get their money and they are still manipulating things to get their way. They will never be satisfied.
No one should have control of a billion dollars. How about passing Public Law 113-999 next year? Public Law 999 would mandate that no one has control of over more than nine hundred and ninety nine thousand million dollars and ninety nine cents.

That might make sense?

Cail Corishev said...

In other words, why doesn't the right and the tech right agree on more high skill workers in exchange for enforcement? Zuck doesn't care about amnesty, none of them do.

Check your assumptions. Obviously they do care about amnesty, or they wouldn't keep bundling it with the other stuff. As Derb has said, if they really cared about enforcement, it would be a separate bill and it would sail right through. Ditto with small increases in certain high-tech areas. (We don't need more immigrants in that area, but it would be much easier to pass that if it were alone.)

But if they did that, a standalone amnesty bill would die in a hurry. That they refuse to split them up tells us that amnesty is the part they really care about. I'm sure Zuckerberg does want his cheap H-1Bs, but not necessarily more than he wants to be liked by the right kind of people for helping to make amnesty happen.

Jeff W. said...

- The U.S. is a consumer economy, which means that its prosperity depends on consumer spending.

- A consumer economy needs consumers who have money. The primary income stream for American consumers is still their wages from their jobs.

- Therefore, for the health of the consumer economy, wages should be as high as possible, consistent with firms staying in business and earning reasonable profits.

High wages for average workers, not profit maximization for zillionaires, should be the goal if we want to strengthen the U.S. economy. It would also help greatly if we had rule of law and if we could minimize the enormous amount of stealing that goes on in this country.

H1-B's might be warranted if that is the only way a U.S. exporter could survive. Economists should study costs and benefits of H1-B's vs. government export subsidies. Subsidies and tax breaks for exporters, which are used by all of our competitors, would require no H1-B's. Service businesses, which are dependent on exporters, should never get H1-B's. In any case, H1-B's should be used sparingly.

Harold Lloyd said...

$2500 a month? That's pud money for pud work. Incentives matter people. This is the whole point.

Anonymous said...

Is it true that the H1B's can bring in their parents after a few years?

That would be a major, major social service cost. Their parents would have paid in nothing to Medicare nor any taxes but they will surely not pay their healthcare costs themselves for those most expensive last 6 months of life.

What kind of health insurance would cover the H1B visa parents that isn't taxpayer paid?

The elites in politics and media have been wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare for the last 30 years. I don't want to see American elderly cut back on while a flood of foreign elderly have to be taxpayer supported.

candid_observer said...

"I hestitate to inflict this pedantry on you, Steve, but better me than an enemy: you probably ought to write "hecto-millionaires" (100's of millions) rather than "centi-" (hundredths of)."

So we can celebrate our centenaries every third or fourth day?

Cool!

IHTG said...

It's interesting to me that the two Google Guys refrain from getting involved with this.

Anonymous said...

We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool.

Sure it would. But you might just have to pay more than 30,000/year to MAs and PhDs in geophysical engineering to attract the same talent as before. So get to it.

Anonymous said...

Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages or employment rates

False. Giberto Borjas's survey of the recent literature suggests it causes a hit of about 12 percent annually to the wages of the lower half of earners.

Anonymous said...

But if they did that, a standalone amnesty bill would die in a hurry. That they refuse to split them up tells us that amnesty is the part they really care about. I'm sure Zuckerberg does want his cheap H-1Bs, but not necessarily more than he wants to be liked by the right kind of people for helping to make amnesty happen.

Immigration undermines white social, political, and intellectual capital, which creates two benefits:

A. It makes whites less attractive to jews as spouses, thereby helping to keep whites segregated from jews.

B. It makes the rise of a nationalist or Nazi party in the United States less likely.

Anonymous said...

It's interesting to me that the two Google Guys refrain from getting involved with this.

Agree. Is it a fact that they are not involved?

Anonymous said...

Can we start a campaign on Facebook to boycott Facebook?

Anonymous said...

We could have went the Barbara Jordon route, being a black Democratic Texan she could have helped the movement more than Pat Buchnan who the media saw as a racists. Pat didn't become anti-immirgation until he visit a sister in the La Area where legal and illegal immirgation were way above the norm. Pat wrote that Orange County which was reliable for Republicans back to Barry Goldwater was flooded with a lot of illegal Hispanics and some legal Asians but the Repubs ignore their warning. Also, Texas is getting some of those Asian immirgants too besides the Hispanics, Houston is 27 percent foreign born.

Anonymous said...

"We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get."

I think that Jon was being sarcastic with that post but was a little too subtle. $2500 a month is laughably undervalued for those kinds of credentials and he was giving us a parody about how H1B employers think.

Anonymous said...

We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get.


The best we can get for $2500/month. But if we were willing to pay real money we could probably get a lot better.


Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool.

Has it ever occurred yo you that if you were willing to pay graduate students something a little less absurd than $30k/yr you would not need to scour the world looking for saps willing to take that deal?

Anonymous said...

It's pee-wee or Dubyez:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/bush-3.0-george-p.-making-rounds-in-d.c./article/2528929

ianh said...

Americans elected Obama and support this corrupt welfare state, so it is best to replace them for any reason at all. Mexican peasants are better than SWPLs who vote for Obama, because SWPLs are traitors to race and country.

Anonymous said...

Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages or employment rates.


No such evidence exists. The US has high immigration and high unemployment and (in historical terms) low wages.

Anonymous said...

It might make more sense to argue why these people want to massively expand Mexican immigration that is minimal use to the computer industry rather than just expanding the very limited H1B category.



There is nothing limited about H1B visas. The number of people currently in the US due to H1B visas exceeds the entire population of many countries.

Anonymous said...

Where would we be without the times helping us find new sources of racism

Also, I don't think Zuck will like being associated with racism.

Anonymous said...

2. Mostly you talk about the political externality of leftist voters and the social externality of low IQ citizens. But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican.

In my experience they are solid Obama voters.

Maybe they think their similarity in skin color will help them with Obama or maybe they understand they need to stick it to whites.

Anonymous said...

@Jon Claerbout:

$2500*12 = $30k. IOW, you want grad students for about 2/3 of what it costs to employ a McDonalds manager (except less, b/c you're not contributing to their health care or retirement). And you'll want them to work constantly in your lab, bring in grant money, and spend 5 years dissertating after coursework...

While I was getting my undergrad degree, I did a co-op term where I worked under a director who was an IIT grad with an American Ph.D. I asked him once whether I should do a Ph.D and he gave me a candid and surprising answer: "I did mine because it got me into the USA and got me contacts with American firms. You'd be better off with an M.S. and four years of work experience -- you'll make more money, you'll have more seniority, you'll learn more."

When I got to grad school, I saw he was 100% right. That's why I don't have a Ph.D and that's why your lab can't find good American Ph.D students. They'll all off getting law degrees to be IP litigators, going MS + MBA, etc.

It's also possible that your potential graduate students read Phil Greenspun's famous piece on women in science: (http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science )

"Why does anyone think science is a good job?

The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s

This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead...."

(part 1)

--bbtp

Anonymous said...

@Jon Claerboat (part 2)

Or maybe they've been listening to Jon Katz: (http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html)

"As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant Professorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school (he didn't get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is brilliant, was 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he offered his first permanent job (that's not tenure, just the possibility of it six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job every two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor typically enters private practice at 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at 31, and a computer scientist with a Ph.D. has a very good job at 27 (computer science and engineering are the few fields in which industrial demand makes it sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence, ambition and willingness to work hard to succeed in science can also succeed in any of these other professions.

Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological sciences and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student stipends are less than half these figures). Can you support a family on that income? It suffices for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know of one physicist whose wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly moving with little prospect of settling down. When you are in your thirties you will need more: a house in a good school district and all the other necessities of ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy...."

Face it, science grad school is a sucker's bet for Americans; many science grad students would literally be better off selling cars or working in oil-patch labor. The Gang of Scabs want a policy that, if adopted, would ensure that top American students never even considered science grad school.

--bbtp

Svigor said...

2. Mostly you talk about the political externality of leftist voters and the social externality of low IQ citizens. But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican.

Wow, so you're a natural-born liar, then. Indian, I assume?

Let's get real about this. This is beggary, envy,and ingratitude on a global scale. I wish that "you people" would at least once in a while acknowledge the slightest bit of gratitude for all the blessings "my people" have bestowed upon the earth. This is inarguable, as evidenced by the desparate desire of all these other people to come and live amongst my people.

I kind of like the fact that they're so immensely arrogant, entitled, shameless, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and immoral. They make a lot of arguments for us with their personalities.

eat the rich. its time for the right to ditch their alliance with them altogether.

let's nail their balls to the wall. screw 'em. they've been screwing all of us for years now. time to fight back.


Yep. You know the first thing that springs to mind in the "how?" department?

De-regulating the market on violence (e.g., Anarcho-Fascism). These WOGs want Darwinism? Let's give it to them.

Mr. Lee: Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave.

Haha.

David said...

In the old days, the US had a chronic, endemic labor shortage. The way to produce more was to fill the shortage by bringing new people in - increased population. Every politician from Lincoln down to Joe Doakes screamed for "more population"; it was the mantra through at least the 1920s. You could get "more population" by birthing babies and/or by taking in a lot of coolies, Hunkies, Irishmen, Jews, Krauts, anybody. Hell, we brought over millions of African slaves to staff our agricultural vacancies.

But by about 1970, we no longer had a labor shortage. So wages stopped rising by about 1978 (though productivity went up). The pie got bigger, but the slices that went to the workers, who made it, stayed the same size. This is why executive salaries went through the stratosphere - and why American workers now work the longest hours of any country in the world (and took on giant debts to keep spending and keep the consumer economy afloat). Here's an interesting little graph.

It's time to put to bed the traditional American panacea for lagging economic growth - "more population." Instead, to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the American people, three things are in order:

1. Reduce population. Close the borders.

2. Restore tax rates to their World War 2 levels - 90+% for the top.

3. End the free flow of capital. You want to move your factory to a collapsing shack in Bangladesh, ok, but your corporate charter is revoked and you can't do business in the US or with any US firm.

This would cause billionaires to shriek in anger, but I'm sure a tick feels similar distress when plucked out of the fur of the animal it's killing.

Cail Corishev said...

We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner.

Why pay so much? People will pick lettuce in the hot sun for $5/hour; surely geophysical engineers will work for that if they get hungry enough. If they refuse, just call them lazy and greedy.

David said...

Forgot to link the Bangladesh reference; it's here.

Anonymous said...

Reid Hoffman looks like Dom DeLuise.

Anonymous said...

"There is no evidence to suggest that immigrants on average are more intelligent that current U.S. citizens. I'd wager that among the influx since 1970 or so that the average IQs were below the U.S. mean or median."

""sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican", all the evidence points in the other direction. They will overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I just don't get people who claim such things, the Democrats make no secret that they have the non white votes, the last elections numbers make that very clear, yet there are still people who think opening the immigration floodgates is a Republican thing or "conservative value"."

Hardly any immigrants since 1970 came in on H1B visas. These are for people with PhDs, elite degrees, or who work in finance or senior management of large corporations.

You lot seem to be lumping them in with the vast number of Mexicans brought in mostly via amnesties and family "reunification".

Anonymous said...

"Hardly any immigrants since 1970 came in on H1B visas. These are for people with PhDs, elite degrees, or who work in finance or senior management of large corporations.

You lot seem to be lumping them in with the vast number of Mexicans brought in mostly via amnesties and family "reunification".

In 2007 I actually used State Dept statistics on countries of origin for legal immigrants to the US and convolved that with the data from Lynn and Vanhanen's book. I applied a fudge factor to half of the Chinese number and to one third of the Indian numbers to account for possible STEM degrees. If my assumptions are correct the average IQ of immigrants to the US is approximately 89.

The good news is that we won't end up the worst third world country on the planet.

Noah172 said...

Reid Hoffman looks like Dom DeLuise

I say Kent "Flounder" Dorfman from Animal House.

Whiskey said...

The problem is fear. Gates and Zuck don't fear people.

It is time to correct that.

We should push for a bill that seizes ALL their wealth, including charitable foundations, money put in their kids/wives names, etc. leaving them only a million. Only a million.

And give every person who is a citizen a check for the money. Why not? We ought to hit them hard -- in the wallet.

A million is plenty for these clowns. They want to make everyone not them live like a Pakistani bricklayer? Lets take all their money. Why not.

Hunsdon said...

Does anyone remember when Henry Ford paid his autoworkers some outrageous wages (by the standard of the time), so that they could buy his cars?

Oh, wait. Henry was anti-Semitic, so high wages are ipso facto proof of anti-Semitism.

Anonymous said...

OT: Former Italian politician and PM Giulio Andreotti who was portrayed in the movie you reviewed "Il Divo" just died:

http://news.yahoo.com/giulio-andreotti-7-times-italian-prime-minister-dies-113502264.html

He was an interesting character, believed to have ties to the mafia and to various assassinations. He also acknowledged before the Italian parliament the existence of Operation Gladio, the NATO operation claimed to have been responsible for various false flag terror bombings in Europe and other activities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Andreotti#cite_note-15

Anonymous said...

OT: Giulio Andreotti, who just passed away:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Giulio_Andreotti.27s_October_24.2C_1990_revelations

Anonymous said...

Hardly any immigrants since 1970 came in on H1B visas. These are for people with PhDs, elite degrees, or who work in finance or senior management of large corporations.


You don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.


The current law limits to 65,000 the number of foreign nationals who may be issued a visa or otherwise provided H-1B status each fiscal year (FY). Laws exempt up to 20,000 foreign nationals holding a master’s or higher degree from U.S. universities from the cap on H-1B visas. In addition, excluded from the ceiling are all H-1B non-immigrants who work at (but not necessarily for) universities and non-profit research facilities.[5] This means that contractors working at, but not directly employed by the institutions may be exempt from the cap. Free Trade Agreements carve out 1,400 H-1B1 visas for Chilean nationals and 5,400 H-1B1 visas for Singapore nationals. However, if these reserved visas are not used, then they are made available in the next fiscal year to applicants from other countries. Thus the number of H-1B visas issued each year is significantly more than the 65,000 cap, with 117,409 having been issued in FY2010,[6] and 129,134 in FY2011.

Anonymous said...

Keep in mind that the 100,000 of so "temporary" workers we get each year via the H1B visa program usually end up staying here for the rest of their lives and getting US citizenship and bringing their relatives from back home to join them. The number of people involved is not small.

Anonymous said...

"Indian tokens" from post 1.

Sanghvi and Agarwal are early FB employees and married to each other. Sanghvi was FB's first female employee/engineer so both definitely are worth 8 if not 9 digits on paper.

As for FWD.US.....it is easy to be behind it when you have that kind of worth..but I'm not sure even if the average Indian-American (2nd or 3rd generation) is for it.

I'm IA and definitely do not support the FWD/Rubio/Zuckerberg ridiculousness.

David said...

H1B is the "just the tip." But there's no way to separate it from the rest of the shaft. At least, I haven't heard of any strong proposals to end mestizo migration while simultaneously preserving and expanding H1B. The truth, which we all know, is that H1B Indians and Chinese don't give a damn about flooding America with millions more mestizos, so long as they personally get their "$2500 per month." Their pious arguments stink of hypocrisy.

Power Child said...

I had a lot of foreign student friends in college, mainly from India. CS and EE students. Prime H1B candidates.

They generally seemed like if they were gonna vote it'd probably be for a Democrat (they didn't expend a lot of energy pushing against the leftist brainwashing they encountered outside of engineering classes). On the other hand, none of them were very political--not enough to tell for sure which way they'd vote. (If I moved to India or South Korea to go to college, I can't say the first thing I'd do is start picking sides in their politics.)

Commenter "Daniel" said he'd "rather have 30 million more Mexicans than these so called 'highly skilled' hindus, soviet jews and chinamen. Mexicans are just responding to evident opportunities, they aren't out to destroy my way of life, as the others are."

In my experience, Daniel's got it backwards. The H1B guys I knew were all after a comfortable suburban lifestyle with a spouse of the same race as themselves (also international students, typically bio-med), kids, family dog, etc., and all were on track to achieving it. The ones I've stayed in touch all have. Plus they're low crime, very social, make a solid effort to learn English, keep their lawns nice, and many of my H1B friends (and their H1B friends) even went to church regularly (yes, Christian church). I don't know about you, but neighbors like that don't hurt my American way of life one bit.

Compare that to a Mexican neighborhood, which is typically brimming with gangs, unwed pregnant teenagers, pitbulls (or yappy chihuahuas), cars modified for street racing, ugly chain-link fencing between lawns, etc. How is that not a threat to our way of life? Maybe 30 million of those people's grandparents, but not those people, Daniel.

Vendikar said...

Ultimately US is a high wage economy because it has high capital accumulation not because it is few people(?!) dividing a fixed lump of wealth or jobs.

The US is a high wage country because it has a population composed of high intelligence, motivated people, at least by world standards.

In other words, white people.

Or, it did.

SFG said...

"Immigration undermines white social, political, and intellectual capital, which creates two benefits:

A. It makes whites less attractive to jews as spouses, thereby helping to keep whites segregated from jews.

B. It makes the rise of a nationalist or Nazi party in the United States less likely."

Yes to B, no to A. Jewish intermarriage rates have soared in the past 60 years, to the point where the rabbis are always bleating about the death of the tribe through intermarriage. I'd argue diversity makes Jews look less 'different' and hence more viable marriage mates--an off-white guy with dark hair and a big nose has more genes in common with you than a yellow guy with slanty eyes or a sepia-brown guy.

Anonymous said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578466311602710742.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

Australia selling Visa/Citizenship.

Forecasted to go to mostly wealthy chinese.

Post-worthy Steve. Surely better than the ridiculously low figure our EB-5 "the visa for sale" program is.

How much do you think the US EB-5 should be valued at (if you think we should even have the program to begin with)?

Anonymous said...

@ anonymous 1107:

The people you're describing are covered under the O series of visas. The H1-B is mainly for code monkeys.

Daybreaker said...

Isn't Steve Ballmer tied up with 24 / 7 partying over the runaway success of Windows 8?

Anonymous said...

"Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages or employment rates."

Supply and demand.


"and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican"

Like Jews?


"I just don't get people who claim such things"

Spreading poisonous memes that harm their competitors is how they wage war.

Anonymous said...

If these millionaires are that bothered they will move to the cognitive powerhouse that is India.

Anonymous said...

Mostly you talk about the political externality of leftist voters and the social externality of low IQ citizens. But H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican.

Much higher than the white average or Americans in general?

Also you've left out the anchor babies, the chain migration and regression to the mean which will make a nonsense of your claims about high IQ incomers in the long run.

Anonymous said...

A million is plenty for these clowns. They want to make everyone not them live like a Pakistani bricklayer? Lets take all their money. Why not.

Whiskey - you're one of us after all!

Anonymous said...

Feed the rich!! See how skinny Zucker is!! He doesn't eat enough because there aren't enough immigrants to open up restaurants that make food to his liking.

Feed the baby! Feed the baby!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbGCNetzfs

Dahlia said...

Steve, off topic, but it does intersect somewhat with some of the themes with corporate/education/political corruption.

A ruling in the Supreme Court case, Fisher vs. University of Texas, is imminent. This is the affirmative action case with a British-looking woman from Texas as plaintiff...

What are your thoughts? I am extremely curious to know, if it is possible that Ron Unz's important and reverberating article on meritocracy and elite admissions could have an effect? Looking at the breakdown in the amicus briefs prompted that question as Fisher needs some serious leverage against all that rich and elite opining and moral preening. The number of Big businesses that took part has got to be seen to be believed. Anymore, perhaps not.

People here with much more knowledge about the Court perhaps could shed light. Particularly, was it published in time. I would think so...
(I miss the all the inside talk, analyses, and gossip that we got when we waited for the Obamacare ruling.)

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/preview_home/11-345.html

Bob Loblaw said...

Here's an alternate view from a lower rung of the same pipeline. We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool.

It might be easier to attract Americans to the field if they didn't feel their wages would be capped by foreign competition.

Dahlia said...

Correction, it's not imminent. We may have to wait until the end of June?

Anonymous said...

It's funny how Stanford professor, content with his university paying $30K/year for 60+ hours/week employees (a.k.a. graduate students), calls his output a "product" and refuses to entertain an idea that a famous American university ought to benefit Americans first and foremost. It benefits its professors and that's all that matters - right, Jon?


Cail Corishev said...

If these millionaires are that bothered they will move to the cognitive powerhouse that is India.

Exactly. If the people in some other country are so much smarter and harder-working than Americans, these companies should move there and get away from our laziness, stupidity, and draconian immigration restrictions. Teach us the lesson we deserve.

They're obviously not keeping their companies here out of some sort of patriotic loyalty, so what are they waiting for?

Anonymous said...

As shown by the comments the USA is doomed. You have a bunch of smart billionaires teaming up with various racial/ethnic minorities and bought-off members of the chattering classes vs. a bunch of rubes, boobs, and short-sighted "I'm all right, jack, fuck you" dumbshits.

Not to mention the "I just wanted watch a football game and have a beer" dummies and the goofy, "Jesus would've wanted Amnesty" numbskulls.

I applaud Steve for his efforts, and I've given him dinero, and hope he keeps on. But judging by his comment section, there is no hope.

DoJ said...

The truth, which we all know, is that H1B Indians and Chinese don't give a damn about flooding America with millions more mestizos, so long as they personally get their "$2500 per month."

If anything, East Asians deserve less blame here than almost any other group, WASPs included. Notice the total lack of East Asians among Zuckerberg's wealthy supporters; this is not because there are no wealthy East Asians in tech.

In particular, elite mainland Chinese have been buying their way into the US in droves due to the quality of life difference. The last thing they want is for US quality of life to be degraded down to China's level or worse. They want their investment to pay off, not become worthless.

Anonymous said...

"Here's an alternate view from a lower rung of the same pipeline. We seek graduate students in geophysical engineering from all around the world. All get the same $2500/month regardless US citizen or foreigner. We just take the best we can get. Our product would not be as good as it is without those foreigners in our pool."

What a load. Immigration dries up citizen applicants at the source: college. When classrooms are filled up with foreign students from low prestige poorly socialized cultures, American students get the idea that maybe they don't want to end up in a cubical ghetto that looks like Bangalore or Shanghai with every one slurping their odoriferous lunch out of a cardboard box and babbling rudely on the phone in alien gibberish in between belching and tapping away noisily on a keyboard.

Anonymous said...

What are the requirements to join the Avaricious Billionaires' Club?

Anonymous said...

We should push for a bill that seizes ALL their wealth, including charitable foundations, money put in their kids/wives names, etc. leaving them only a million. Only a million.

Then one of two things would happen. We'd get the same treatment Putin did for going after the oligarchs. Or these guys facing this tax would flee to a certain, friendly ME nation.

Anonymous said...

Not to mention the "I just wanted watch a football game and have a beer" dummies and the goofy, "Jesus would've wanted Amnesty" numbskulls.

You see these characters among iSteve commenters?

Anonymous said...

"Feed the rich!! See how skinny Zucker is!! He doesn't eat enough because there aren't enough immigrants to open up restaurants that make food to his liking."

Zuck probably has a full time dietitian and a cook to make sure he eats well without getting fat. Also, I doubt this guy puts in a six hour day.

At this stage, he doesn't code (which is strong predictor of obesity), he doesn't attend technical meetings, and he probably knows as much about Facebook as the "blinking yellow eye." He attends maybe a few marketing meetings each week, and regularly meets for brief periods with the CTO and the CFO for size 44 font power point presentations. His light job duties leave him time each day to work out at a private gym for a few hours, play video games, surf porn, and spend some quality time with his spouse, pretending to listen to her talk about her hard day at med school.

Knowing something about the psychology of Chinese women, I wonder if Priscilla Chang secretly harbors contempt for Mark because he didn't finish college or get a graduate degree. Also, Priscilla was a National Merit Scholar, and he wasn't so there is potentially a ten to fifteen point IQ mismatch between them.

Anonymous said...

"We should push for a bill that seizes ALL their wealth"

Is that an agree-an-amplify in response to being called a Commie a few posts back? Or is Whiskey not bright enough to produce intentional humor?

Anonymous said...

"... H1B visa holders are likely to have IQs much higher than the average of the white American population and the sort of incomes that would suggest they will vote Republican."

Wow, you really don't know what you're talking about. Checkout the Democratic ethnic vote in silicon valley sometime! I don't believe your IQ argument either. It's not their Giant Brains. It's their desperation and willingness to do anything, including being a company's indentured servant.

Anonymous said...

2. The rabbis aren't bleating about this "intermarriage" because it's so high, as you imply. The Jewish "intermarriage" rate is much lower for Jews than it is for whites. The rabbis are bleating about it because Jews are far more ethnocentric ("racist," for the plebs) than white people.

Jews have been bleating about intermarriage since there were jews. (Take a look at the Torah.) Hatred by extremist jews of intermarriage was one of the driving motivations behind early Zionism. Jabotinsky spoke of it explicitly--der Judenstaat was conceived as a counterattack against liberalism, acceptance, against gentile hospitality, acceptance, and love.

Anonymous said...

The rabbis who are bleating about intermarriage are predominantly Orthodox. The Reform rabbis, no matter how much bleeting they do, have not restrained their congregants from intermarriage.

Have you ever considered that rabbis might be concerned that intermarriage threatens their livelihoods? If the half-Jewish kids are raised outside of the faith or have weak Jewish identities, they aren't likely to grow up to be committed, dues-paying, donating synagogue congregants.

Truth said...

Highbrow hijinx from the world's greatest intellects...

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2013/05/gaki-no-tsukai-wall-of-boxes.html

Anonymous said...

The rabbis who are bleating about intermarriage are predominantly Orthodox. The Reform rabbis, no matter how much bleeting they do, have not restrained their congregants from intermarriage.

What do the Jewish People Planning Institute and Elliott Abrams have to say about intermarriage?

rob said...

Numbers matter. A few hundred or thousand Indians could come here and turn into Americans if they were scattered across the country. They'd have to give up their primitive counterproductive culture and behaviors. Indian migrants don't want to live around a bunch of Indians in an Indian-created economy. That's why they're here. It shouldn't be too hard to understand that we share their preferences: life in a white, Anglo lands is much better.

Reading the Indian commenters here, it's clear they're pretty hostile towards Americans. The more of them there are here, the more here will be like India. That's not a feature.

Power Child said...

@Anonymous of 8:12pm, 5/6/13:

Good observations about Zuckerberg, but I think you underestimate his IQ. I'm at least very impressed by the second paragraph of the "Early Life" section of his Wikipedia page.

Silver said...

Econometric evidences suggests that immigration doesn't have much effect on wages

Just like the famous bit of econometric data, working class wages 1973-2013, shows.

Silver said...

As shown by the comments the USA is doomed. You have a bunch of smart billionaires teaming up with various racial/ethnic minorities and bought-off members of the chattering classes vs. a bunch of rubes, boobs, and short-sighted "I'm all right, jack, fuck you" dumbshits.

That sums it up quite nicely.

I applaud Steve for his efforts, and I've given him dinero, and hope he keeps on. But judging by his comment section, there is no hope.

The Jon Claerbout comment takes the cake on this thread. It's a lovely reminder that while intelligence is very important, it's most assuredly 'not everything', not by a long shot.

Still, while there's 'no hope' in the traditional sense of what that would have meant, there will continue to be millions upon millions of good people with their heads screwed on right for many decades to come and it's important to strive for as good an outcome for them as is possible within the given constraints. There is 'every hope,' or so I like to think, that a baseline level of racial realism would figure prominently here.

Anonymous said...

"Good observations about Zuckerberg, but I think you underestimate his IQ. I'm at least very impressed by the second paragraph of the "Early Life" section of his Wikipedia page."

I'm not. Have you seen his first web page? It's pretty stupid even given the limited software tools of 1999.

Svigor said...

Is that an agree-an-amplify in response to being called a Commie a few posts back? Or is Whiskey not bright enough to produce intentional humor?

He had me nodding. It might not be my first choice, but if all that stood between that policy being a suggestion and it being implemented was my signature, well...

The only trouble would be what to do with it. I'd sign if it was divvied up equally among citizens as a one-time payment, though.

Have you ever considered that rabbis might be concerned that intermarriage threatens their livelihoods? If the half-Jewish kids are raised outside of the faith or have weak Jewish identities, they aren't likely to grow up to be committed, dues-paying, donating synagogue congregants.

Immigration of Jewish converts from China and India is the only way to save Israel from this impending demographic doom.

Reading the Indian commenters here, it's clear they're pretty hostile towards Americans. The more of them there are here, the more here will be like India. That's not a feature.

South Asians seem immensely arrogant, touchy, racist, etc., to me. It seems to be an HBD thing, an inherent thing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for doing this. I was just about to but googled it first and there you were. It's so obvious it hurts.