Hillary Clinton Takes Data.gov Overseas 250
theodp writes "ZDNet reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office issued a fact sheet during her visit to India confirming that the U.S. and India will be working together to develop an open source version of the Data.gov project, which was launched in 2009 by off-to-Harvard Federal CIO Vivek Kundra to serve as a central repository of data collected by the US government. The Hindu Business Line notes that Clinton was also pressed to exempt Indian techies in the States on H-1B or L1 visas from U.S. social security taxes, an exemption that, if granted, could reportedly result in savings of at least a billion dollars for the country's software industry."
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Re:Who taught them how to negotiate? (Score:5, Funny)
She's a Democrat. Democratic negotiating skills can best be described with the analogy of the poker player who starts the game by showing everyone all his cards--then tries to bluff.
Too bad Bush isn't in office (Score:3)
then at least the Democrats in Congress could go berserk and the press would dutifully report how much the President is selling out the hard working Americans who desperately need his help. Instead this won't even register except on techy sites.
Kind of like how the press and Democrats are doing the big freak out when Republican controlled states are reigning in public employee entitlements and turning a blind eye to the Democrat controlled ones who in many cases are rolling over the employees worse.
I so wis
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Wait... wouldn't you want them to be exempt? So that after working for a while they don't have the amount they've paid into SS sitting there, and they have lees of an incentive to become citizens.
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H1Bs have to pay FICA, and can't collect until they have paid into it for ten years. They may be able to collect in their own countries when they return home, from that country's equivalent plan if there is a reciprocity treaty with the U.S. (Canada and the U.S. have one: you can collect SSI or OAS, but not both).
But, H1Bs are only renewable once for a total of six years (this can be extended year over year in the case of a green card application that is pending the last step). After that, you have to be ou
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On doing a little research, it looks like you can basically only bow out for religious reasons. According to the IRS form (PDF warning: here [irs.gov]) you must be a member of a religious organization that objects conscientiously to public or private insurance or welfare. There also a few exemptions for students working on dissertations or nonresident aliens working in a few select jobs (according to this [ehow.com]). But, no, not just anyone can back out, unless they hid the method for doing so really well.
And no, Pastafar
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Pastafarianism has existed since the beginning of time. We just didn't know about it until recently.
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The fundamental problem with Social Security is that it is essentially a forced investment in US government Treasury bills. Your contribution goes to SS, which then invests it on your behalf in treasury bills. By purchasing T-bills, your contribution ends up into the government's general fund, where they can spend it at will. The government then makes payouts from the general fund to SS recipients. Essentially what you are doing is supporting last generation's retirees with the promise that the next generat
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Re:Opting out of FICA (Score:5, Informative)
You would rather trust it to the government?
Yes. Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's. It got so bad the people demanded the government step in and enforce minimal standards and provide for insurance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Security_Act [wikipedia.org]
Historically, private investment funds were often set up by wealthy people to attract the life's savings of the working class. The market is then manipulated such that the "market makers" (Job Creators :) win at the expense of the common investor. Laws are passed to prevent the manipulation. Yet the problem persists.
How many times has US government social insurance gone bankrupt? I wonder when young people will realize they are being led to slaughter using the soothing drone of FUD on all government.
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"Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's."
Those were corporate and union pension funds. I believe the other people here are talking about personal accounts, which are a completely different matter.
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Yes. Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's ... gone bankrupt? I wonder when young people will realize they are being led to slaughter using the soothing drone of FUD on all government.
In 1967, LBJ and Congress realized they couldn't afford the newly passed Great Society programs nor the escalation in Veitnam, so they passed an amendment to the Social Security Act stating that ANY government program which creates a surplus, will loan that surplus to the general fund, in return for a promise that the general fund will repay the program in the years that the program runs a deficit.
Since that day, the entire Social Security "Trust Fund" has been drained to paper over the endless deficit s
So thats how the US will survive .. (Score:2)
in a counter move, the global IT union said (Score:2)
oh wait, there is no global union of IT workers....
(not yet anyway)
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And it's amazing, too, since you can't just hire a scab to replace a programmer during a strike. It takes a month or two for a new hire to produce anything useful that integrates with your current software, and even that requires guidance from the people who are already there. If those people are out on strike, there is no such guidance, and maybe not even anyone to provide a list of servers and passwords. Nothing could possibly get done without the techies around to make it happen.
For us web developers who
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You do realize that there's overhead and other costs involved, right. It's not just the cost of the wages that has to be included, there's the cost of benefits, pay roll taxes, capital expenditures and whatever other costs are involved with running the business.
Even if one is working for oneself the actual take home pay is probably only a half or so of the total fee.
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You do realize that there's overhead and other costs involved, right.
10x? Fuck off.
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Nothing could possibly get done without the techies around to make it happen.
You're starting to sound a lot like the functionalist movement from Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" [wikipedia.org]
Re:in a counter move, the global IT union said (Score:5, Insightful)
time to start listening to pete seeger (again).
UNIONIZE.
we need this, now. yes, unions can go too far. but corp america already HAS gone too far.
I'd take union corruption over employer based corruption any day.
turn of the 1900's - here we come again!
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The situation you're describing only exists in your imagination. Unions practice solidarity with other workers because our opponent is capital, not other workers.
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You have nothing to lose but your on-call pager! IT workers of the world, unite!
I'm actually being serious about that - a strong IT union or professional organization would go a long way towards improving developer working conditions.
Re:in a counter move, the global IT union said (Score:4, Insightful)
No, unions exist so that any type of workers can band together to push back against their employer when they inevitably get fucked over. Individuals are easy to replace, but there's power in numbers.
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No, unions exist so that any type of workers can band together to push back against their employer when they inevitably get fucked over. Individuals are easy to replace, but there's power in numbers.
not when they're doing something that only a few other people can do. like software developement. they ARE easy to replace if they're doing something any normal human would be able to do, for example driving a garbage truck. in fact, the wiki page on unions redirects from "labor union".
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You don't get it. An individual software developer may not be easy to replace, but he's still replaceable. You can't replace the whole office. A union can eliminate the question of being replaced entirely and secure appropriate compensation at the same time.
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The US has largely been against unions (mainly because they were consider communist, in some cases with justification) and now have some of the worst labor laws for all workers ...
e.g. Parental leave - almost all counties have statutory paid parental/maternity leave .... except the USA ...
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For a quick counterexample there's SPEEA [speea.org]. Aerospace engineering isn't always the most exciting thing in the world, but I wouldn't call it "unskilled".
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and this is not how it should be (imo).
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"Union" == "Unskilled Workers"
Hmm, Filmmaker's union.
I see what you did there.
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This is stunningly ignorant or maybe just naive. Unions exist, in reality, as a method to empower unskilled labor, which cannot properly negotiate on the terms of its employment.
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no i have not worked in it. i'm sure it might seem boring, but it is a job that requires a proper education, and some training too.
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do people immigrate to us and get call center jobs? nope. this is entirely irrelevant.
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wtf does "Hurf durf...Derp derp" mean?
Well, at least she's creating jobs SOMEWHERE (Score:2, Funny)
Lord Vishnu thanks you, Hilary.
Where do I sign up? (Score:3)
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23 year old mechanical engineer here, where do I sign out of Social Security?
Start here: http://www.immigrationindia.nic.in/ [immigrationindia.nic.in]
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usually you sign out of social security by getting a job, if you want to sign out of paying for it start your own company and don't take a salary.
what i'd like to know is were they eligible for the social security they were paying taxes for?
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Re:Where do I sign up? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a H1B, no, you are not eligible for social security.
(Taxation without representation?)
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Yet we're always told that illegal immigrants are paying into SS but won't ever get it. Now the H1B group will simply be exempt?
How long before the new "guest worker" program wants the same treatment?
We're going to have millions more *not* paying into the system, and people will act surprised when it fails.
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That's actually true. How that typically works is that they need to have a valid SSN in order to be hired and payroll takes the social security tax out automatically on whatever one makes up to the limit. So, they'll end up paying the taxes and whoever it is that the SSN corresponds to gets the benefits.
As for the GP's taxation line, that really only applied because there wasn't any way of gaining representation. It doesn't really apply to individuals that don't go through the naturalization process.
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Non-citizens in the country, and indeed most countries, regularly face taxation without representation. Heck, the U.S. now charges all guests to the U.S. a tax just to enter. If you want not to be taxed in a country in which you are a guest, don't visit the country. If you want representation in a country in which you pay tax, become a citizen.
She hasn't exempted them (Score:3, Interesting)
India ASKED her to exempt them from taxes, she DECLINED to do so, India has PRESSED her again... So even Clinton isn't that dumb.
A lot of vague talk on working with them to market data.gov to other nations.... words.... cheap.
Promises on Cybercrime from the Indians.... words,... cheap. They're a big malware laden pirate software market, up there with Russia & Turkey.
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+1 Reading Comprehension for you, anonymous sir
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The county of Galveston opted out of SS and did quite well. [google.com]
They don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
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Note that it was India who was pressing this. They were acting in the best interests of their citizenry, by making it more attractive for companies to hire Indians.
The story, at least, doesn't give Clinton's response, so anything you are reading into it is part of your own bias. It does say that this has been a "persistent irritant" between the countries, which implies that India has asked for this before, and the U.S. hasn't given in to it yet. That makes it sound like she and her predecessors are looki
HIllary Clinton has done enough already (Score:2)
Screwing up good processes at State Dept., that is.
This is strictly anecdotal evidence from personal experience, but under previous administration scheduling visa interview at US consulate abroad was a matter of going to a website and doing some clicks.
Under Clinton that changed into two phone calls to the consulate: first to pay some bucks for the privilege to talk to a call center rep and second is to schedule appt.
Job creating, my ass.
For Americans (Score:2)
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This angers me beyond belief! We have plenty of development talent here in the United States.
We don't, in the sense that the company I work for has open headcount and we can't find enough qualified people to fill it, either from the USA or anywhere else in the world. We've got a decent number of folks from Russia, India, Australia, Britain, Germany, etc. Neither the engineers nor the recruiters where I work think any specific nationality is "better" at writing software. We just hire the best wherever they come from.
If a large sector of America is unemployed, why are we importing labor?
Because none of the unemployed people can write good software? I dunno; I just k
Re:For Americans (Score:4, Insightful)
Anecdotal, I know... but I worked with a guy from Pakistan a few years back and he was tempted by offers to apply his physics degrees to scientific research at some large laboratories. He said that they posted job offers and listed starting pay as $25-30k/yr. Nobody in the US with a doctorate/masters would take those jobs... especially someone with multiple advanced degrees. After offering the job and having no takers they could then offer the same job outside the US and entice unaware workers and bring them in at a that wage. (After all, that sounds like a ton of money to someone unfamiliar with cost of living here.)
So, I would say it's not about the bar being high, but the salary being low. (At least... in some cases.)
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I am so sick of the erroneous belief that Indians make better programmers. It is simply not true.
You don't understand - when management says "better", what they really mean is "cheaper".
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Note that it was India who was pressing this.
The story, at least, doesn't give Clinton's response, or indicate if she likes H1-B VISAs at all, so anything you are reading into it is part of your own bias.
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"If a large sector of America is unemployed, why are we importing labor?"
Most unemployed Americans are not competing with H1-B candidates. Americans with a 4-year college degree had an unemployment rate of 4.7% in 2010, compared with an unemployment rate of 14.9% for those without a high school degree.
Of all unemployed Americans in 2010, 52% had a high school degree only or less education, and 80% had less than a Bachelor's Degree.
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No, they are mostly forced to being uncreative mindless drones because of culture and "the system" over there. The ones who can get out of that mindset, usually by going to foreign land and getting fired up about being self-empowered and innovative , now that's another matter.
H1-B karma burner (Score:4, Insightful)
I was on an H1-B for a while (in academic research, not software development, as it happens), and was puzzled at the time by the requirement to pay US Social Security taxes -- the H1-B is a visitor visa, not an immigrant visa, it's time-limited, and when it runs out, the assumption is that the individual will return to their home country. I would imagine that very few H1-B visa holders ever recover this money, so it's effectively a tax on the employer, paid into the SS trust fund.
Having H1-B holders not make SS contributions seems reasonable to me -- if you want to tax H1-B activity, you can always just raise the fees for the visa itself, to get the same effect -- but having only Indian H1-B holders be exempt from the SS contribution just seems bizarre.
The summary is unclear, but on the grounds of basic common sense, I hope that pressure and lobbying went nowhere.
Re:H1-B karma burner (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem then is that it further incentivizes employers to hire an H1-B over an American citizen because the employer won't have to pay SS taxes on that employee.
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No, there is no assumption that an H-1B holder `will return to their home country.' The H-1B is a dual-intent visa, meaning that you can apply for a permanent resident card while in the US and then legally stay as long as you want.
Incidentally, I'm currently on that very route. I still don't expect to ever see any benefits from the near-decade social security and taxes I've already paid while working on F-1 and J-1 non-immigrant visas.
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The H1B is not a "dual intent" visa. Rather, the doctrine of dual intent is recognized for people on that visa: they may be here with temporary intent for one job, but have permanent intent with regard to another one IF they obtain lawful permanent resident status. In other words, their having permanent intent is NOT a visa violation (as it would be, with, say, a TN1 visa.)
Further, just because they may apply for permanent residence does not mean it will be easy for them to get it: it is far more than just
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If you didn't pay, then you'd be cheaper to employ than an American worker. The H1-B program isn't intended to displace American workers but to complement them. Americans are still supposed to come first (sorry) as it's our country and our government is supposed to favor our employment over that of other people.
I'd be okay with them eliminating the social security contribution if they replaced it with an equal tax on H1-B workers that contributed toward, for example, education for American workers. Eithe
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The employer should pay the same contribution, fine, that is fair as it puts everyone on the same level. But you want to give it to the American workers and not give it towards the welfare of the actual employee, exactly what Social Security is for in the first place. These compan
Wake up, H1B is not the real problem.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Workers under H1B may be appealing to some degree because they are cheaper and more over-workable, but they can be counted in the thousands, and they still help the economy by spending what they earn.
Outsourced jobs, on the other hand, are in the millions and much more appealing economically to large companies. There's several millions of outsourced jobs, not only in India, but also taken by Chinese, east Europeans, Russians and Latin Americans.
Also the tale that foreigners are less talented and that Americans should be hired instead is no longer relevant, the same way that china raised it's production standards the rest of the world is doing the same and each year there's more and more companies with excellent track records ready for outsorcing jobs from US and Euro companies.
This is the real effect of globalization and opening trade. Rich countries thought they could own poorer countries by forcing them to compete equally and purchase their goods while providing cheap labor. This had the expected result of destroying most of the local industry in such countries and forcing them to rely on imports.
However, no one expected the software industry to become so relevant worldwide. Cheap labor suddenly became cheap outsourcing, and there is no way first world workers can match the cheap costs of the third world, so this trend will continue and get worse.
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"Workers under H1B may be appealing to some degree because they are cheaper and more over-workable, but they can be counted in the thousands, and they still help the economy by spending what they earn."
Workers overseas also help the US economy by spending what they earn. For example, Avatar grossed $204 million in China. Apple had $1.3 billion in China sales last year (most of which is realized by the American design & development teams).
But more importantly, overseas workers also help the US economy
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NWO (Score:2, Funny)
Lucifer Clinton doesn't give a rip about the US or any of the slaves living here. She's busy laying the groundwork for the New World Order, in which she will be one of the ruling elites. I mean, she spent more money securing a beard for her mistress Huma Abedin than I spend on everything over 10 years. And he couldn't even keep his hands off the Tweeter to keep from screwing that up.
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Ditto. Here in Seattle every software shop I know of is hiring like crazy.
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Maybe I need to either move to Seattle, or become a developer. I work with the network/hardware support area and unemployment in my area (Tampa Bay) seems fairly high for those types of jobs. Oh, and I've heard Seattle is nice, as well. I will see as I am vacationing there in the next few months.
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Hiring is the same in the Bay area (so I read), but the cost of living is higher.
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As regards to removing taxation, I am somewhat ambiguous. One could argue that since H1-B holders are not eligible to receive Social Security benefi
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Yeah, we know you can't do it. At least not with a straight face.
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My wife is currently on an H1B visa (though we're going through the green card process right now). She's always had to pay the same taxes I've had to pay. She also cannot vote so she doesn't have a 'voice'.
But you know what, that's part of the cost of immigrating to the US.
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Or, was this somehow supposed to be a positive experience?!
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Yes, but look at other countries such as Germany, France, and others in Europe. They have government pensions for the elderly and don't have nearly the problems. Not saying I know how to fix it, but it is fixable. Maybe not with an "American" mentality, though.
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You might want to do some research on the funding status of those government pensions because lots of Europe is in a worse position then the USA. Not every nation but most.
At least we can print money and inflate away our debt.
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I think it's screwed up that foreign workers have to pay into a retirement system they will never see a nickle from.
Social Security isn't a retirement system. It's a social safety net funded by a specific tax. A quarter of the recipients of Social Security benefits aren't of retirement age, guess where their money comes from? The biggest problem with Social Security is that many people see it as a system that holds on to your money and gives it back to you when you retire. Foreign workers living here benefit from the fact that we don't simply cast out those that cannot support themselves and make them fend for themse
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foreign works - especially (!) - should do every god damned thing they can do to help the US. freeloading on the US then returning home with their money is the last thing we need more of, here.
they take. they take again. our jobs go away. and now even our future is to them.
take from the US, and take and take.
(kennedy had some choice words; and no, it did not just apply to those who want to take-and-run from what the US has to offer).
every time you drive on our streets, you benefit from our infrastructur
Re:Social Security..... (Score:4, Insightful)
firmly believe the gov't will piss away all my Social Security 'savings' before I hit retirement age.
I hate to break it to you but they have already pissed away all of your social security "savings". The lock box you hear about is just filled with I.O.Us (government bonds). In years where Social security takes in more than it gives out (probably all years until recently) the government borrows from social security thus adding to the bonds that are held by the trust fund. That money is then added to the general fund and pissed away. Now this in general works well if you have increasing funds entering the social security program, but we really don't any more with the current economic down turn and beginning of the baby boomer retirement. When/if we climb out of this recession there will be a few more years where social security takes in more than it pays out. The real problems arise once social security needs to start cashing in those bonds, and gets worse once there are no bonds left to cash in. When social security starts cashing in bonds congress will have to either cut back on spending since they no longer have that source of revenue, or raise taxes to keep spending levels the same. Things will really start to get harry when social security no longer has bonds to cash in as at that point they can't meet their obligations and will only be able to pay out a percentage of their promised benefits, or go and seek additional revenue from the general fund.
Also keep in mind that you only pay in half "your money" to social security the other half is paid by your employer. Each pay period they take 6.2% from you pay while your employer also pays in that same amount on up to $106,800 of income currently, or in the case of a self employed person you get stuck paying the full 12.4%. To further worsen the current problems social security is facing there is a 2% deduction in the employ contribution so they are only paying 4.2% but their employer is still paying the 6.2% rate. The current benefits are based off of your highest 5 years of income up to some maximum so there is a maximum benefit for social security.
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In many states, there is an unemployment tax already which goes to fund Unemployment Compensation.
Actually, that's in all states that have provide unemployment. Which, I believe, is all of them. That's how it works - the states run it with some leeway, but a lot of rules are set by the federal DOL. Employers pay unemployment tax based on the number of workers, the salaries paid, AND their history of laying off workers (employers with high turnover pay a higher tax). They are also required to report all wages paid each quarter the the state employment security office. And they, in turn, send all tha
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What they really need to do is lift the cap on earnings that are taxable for social security and include more forms of income in that. It's especially fitting seeing as we've just seen one of the largest ever redistributions of wealth in American history, if not the largest redistribution of wealth to the rich. Considering how well off the rich are right now, I have no problem whatsoever requiring that they give some of the ill begotten gains back. Being rich is hardly justification for being given money fo
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Unavailability of jobs in foreign countries are seen as a national security issue where as unavailability of jobs in the US are seen as sloth on the part of the unemployed. Because obviously nobody would work if they could get regular checks that don't even cover the cost of living.
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Work the math beamin: Not enough people paying in, too many collecting. Government prints money. Inflation 'fixes' debt problem.
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People are MISSING even the summary-- India was pressing Clinton to give them the exception she wasn't offering it to them -- foreign contacts involve tons of requests and attempts to get such deals; I do not think Clinton doesn't have the power to do this all on her own; it likely is going to have to get past a few others.
If you've been reading wikileaks you should know by now the diplomats lie for a living-- she probably gave them a positive non-committal on most things they asked (or said she would and
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If you are afraid of losing your job, be better than everyone else.
I can't speak for anyone else here but it seems to me the issue isn't whether or not anyone is better than anyone else at the job... it's who is cheaper.
Many of those MBAs running the companies out there now don't give a flip about whether their techies are producing quality product, but they do care about minimizing costs absolutely as much as possible. If that means outsourcing overseas at the expense of product quality then so be it.
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If you have the choice between a white person and an indian, and you pick the white person because they are white... that is called discrimination and makes you racist.
If you are afraid of losing your job, be better than everyone else.
Also, learn to support your entire family on $5 a day.
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If the Indian's living and working in the US can do that, why can't you? RTFS. This isn't about outsourcing.
Oh, right. They need to rent a room with 5 other H1-B Indians, and share meals of course. And they'll still have more to send home than it costs me to support a family. Even on the depressed (oops - I mean "documented comparable" - LOL) salary they are earning.
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No, you are discriminating against a person based on their citizenship. It has nothing to do with race. You could be a white citizen of India and still require the H1B to work here... race is insignificant to this.
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The social security tax the company pays is separate from the tax the employee pays unless the employee is a self employed owner of the company.
There is no indication that a foreign employee not paying SS tax would mean that the company that hires them would not pay the SS tax.