"…to lower overall pay rate." What's with this nationalism and view human value? Just because a person was or wasn't born in a certain place, something they had no ability to affect, they have more or less right to a certain job with a certain salary in a certain place?

Looking at it from the other perspective of the individual who can get a job, they are probably not lowering their salaries, but rather significantly increasing it.

And looking at this from an historical context for the USA makes it even more absurd. Most people with these high paying jobs in the US are direct descendants of people who immigrated to the US with the sole purpose of getting a higher salary – because of poverty and lack of economic opportunities in their home countries.

The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

The interests of outsiders are simply not relevant to that - they have their own government to represent their interests, which can and should enact policies that benefit them, and negotiate in international agreements policies that will help their citizens. If it's a win-win situation (which is the expected situation for skilled immigration visas) then sure, we should look at how the incentives are aligned; but when it's a tradeoff between the interests of your citizens and foreigners, then the government is elected to ensure that the interests of their citizens are facilitated - if need be, at the expense of others, to whom the government has no inherent duty whatsoever except the voluntarily undertaken commitments to certain international treaties. And if the government is implementing some policies that hurt their citizens to benefit others (which it may well do for all kinds of reasons - e.g. governments do humanitarian aid, which costs your citizens and benefits others, but presumably with support from the voters/taxpayers), then that has to happen due to the choice and consent of these citizens, otherwise they have all right to replace the government with something that will act as the citizens desire.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

According to who? I understand that this is a kind of framing used here often, but the federal government has been concerned primarily with itself for a long time now at least to my eyes.

According to ground realities. In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

So if you want to be the one politician that values non-citizens’ rights over citizens’ rights, good luck getting re-elected.

Or you could set up an autocracy and try to manage this anyway. For further reading, I recommend the book The Dictator’s Handbook or CGP Greg’s 20 minute summary of it.

ground realities are that, for example, flint michigan barely has clean water after seven years.

if you are claiming the usa is not a well functioning representative democracy, i agree.

Obviously the Flint water crisis is a tragedy and an embarrassment, and I can understand how the issue might cause you to question the competence of the local leadership, but in what way is it an indictment of the functionality of America's representative democracy?

>in what way is it an indictment of the functionality of America's representative democracy?

To a certain extent, I can see it as a case study against the functionality of representative democracy.

One one hand, elected leaders were fiscally irresponsible enough to enact policies that bankrupted the administration leading to a change to the water supply to save money. If I were playing devil's advocate, this could be seen as representative democracy incentivizing short-term political thinking leading to this outcome. E.g., it's easier to get elected on promises that benefit voters while ignoring harsh realities of how those promises will be paid for.

On the other hand, the decisions that led directly to the water crises were made by emergency managers appointed by the governor. This means non-elected officials overruled elected officials. Playing devil's advocate here can lead one to believe the displacement of elected officials is an indictment of the functionality of the system to truly be able to select those who govern the constituency.

it's just one example of many of huge swaths of people in this country not being treated in the way they they would be treated if they were in a well functioning representative democracy.

see if:

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

and "half of this country is a very small bill from crisis for their entire lives, people do things like describing the insurance agent as the most traumatizing part of the bear attack they survived" are both true, in what way can it be considered well functioning?

>don’t represent their interests

Can you put a finer point on what you mean by "their interests"? Is this relegated to just economic interests?

If it extends beyond economics, I see no reason why those two statements can't coexist. For example, I can vote against my own economic interest if I vote for higher taxes that I don't directly benefit from on the grounds that I want to support a more equitable society. Or I can vote against government run healthcare that I may also benefit from if I don't think that is the role of government. Both can be examples of voting against my economic interests to reflect my moral interests.

food, water, shelter, and healthcare are universal human interests. it's fine for you to believe the government shouldn't have a hand in them, but then in my view you are simply not in favor of what has been defined in this thread as a "healthy representative democracy"

you could argue that it's not your fault if lots of people don't vote so they get what they get, but you would be oversimplifying things for a HUGE section of the populace who don't vote because they have no one to represent their interests, where their interests are not starving or getting thrown on the street or being in debt for years and years because they slipped on the ice. these people not only do not have a meaningful way to vote, they also often do not have the time or energy to engage in local politics or trying to massage the system. they are currently risking their lives at metaphorical gunpoint every day to deliver "essential" services. minus the pandemic, it's been this way for a long time.

This:

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

and this

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

do not describe this country, even if you assert that only those who vote are represented. There's zero accountability to the people, the gaps are too large for people who do represent our interests to get through the door (and when they come close the rules tend to change suddenly) Something being against the rules has never stopped someone from doing it if they really wanted to when they are the enforcers or writers of the rules.

if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you. i have no intention on acting in your interests. politics is a crooked game, and ours is a particularly easy one to fix.

and what of the rest of the citizens who didn't vote because they risk losing their job or because of a million other reasons? are they not still citizens? most of them didn't choose to be, and regardless of whether that gives them some sort of moral obligation to participate to their best in the politics of their situation it does not remove their need for food, water, shelter, and healthcare which has been an increasingly difficult need to meet with essentially zero assistance from the system that is supposed to represent them.

to me it seems a lot like the conclusion is either that they are simply lesser for whatever reason and too bad for them or that the institution is just insisting on itself the way that institutions tend to do when they've been around long enough, and maybe a lot of people are actually very out of touch with what it is like to live in america for about half of our populace.

There's a lot here, so I'll try to summarize your point and you can tell me if I'm off.

>food, water, shelter, and healthcare are universal human interests.

I'm assuming you mean this is in the governments purview as part of promoting the general welfare clause. While I would agree, I can also understand those who do not because they take a more Jeffersonian view that the point of the government is to protect individual rights. At times, I can see where promoting general welfare and protecting individual rights can be at odds. I didn't see that specific definition of "healthy representative democracy" so it's may be too broad a reach (or I may have just missed it within the thread).

>if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you.

This feels like a contradiction to the previous point that "voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.". Maybe a lying politician gets to do this once, but after that it's the populace's job to hold them accountable. The people have a responsibility in a democracy as well. I agree it's not easy and opportunists will try to rig the system. Being difficult doesn't absolve us of the responsibility. I get the impression we fundamentally disagree that there's "zero accountability to the people". I think there is, but people may just not have the fortitude to do it for a variety of reasons. In many ways, I think the adage of "People get the government they deserve" is true. If you want to tolerate rigged systems or lying politicians, or don't want to get actively engaged, what kind of system do you think you deserve?

you're off by a little bit.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

part of what i'm saying is that if these statements are true, then we are not in a functioning representative democracy.

>if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you.

>This feels like a contradiction to the previous point that

correct. it is an argument against it.

> Maybe a lying politician gets to do this once, but after that it's the populace's job to hold them accountable. The people have a responsibility in a democracy as well. I agree it's not easy and opportunists will try to rig the system. Being difficult doesn't absolve us of the responsibility.

regardless of whether or not i agree that in "the way its supposed to work" this is the case, it's been a lot more than once and for a lot longer than a little bit of time. longer than i've been alive.

with what time, resources, or authority are you suggesting the populace hold them accountable with? don't answer that just yet.

> I get the impression we fundamentally disagree that there's "zero accountability to the people". I think there is, but people may just not have the fortitude to do it for a variety of reasons.

We don't disagree in the sense you are talking about, technically. Zero accountability that the accountable will accept as valid though.

If i am born into a life with zero political agency and a constant threat of not having food or shelter in a populace that is largely entirely alienated not only from their peers but from also what they produce and consume how is that me getting what i deserve? In what way do you expect the hypothetical me to be organized or able to organize? How successful do you think someone like that could be at doing what you are suggesting when they don't have more than a $400 buffer and no supply chain?

> In many ways, I think the adage of "People get the government they deserve" is true.

I don't think the adage you're referring to is true at all; on the contrary I think that the responses you are speaking of simply take a long time to bubble up into enough of the populace to make them inevitable. Once that threshold is crossed you may as well swap the adage around. The structures and superstructures of societal organization are things that exist prior to you, it's natural for them to be baked into assumptions of "just how things are".

> If you want to tolerate rigged systems or lying politicians, or don't want to get actively engaged, what kind of system do you think you deserve?

I don't think that inaction in face of miserable conditions that have been part of your experience of reality since day one makes someone "deserve" those conditions. It just makes them someone living in the reality they've been presented with. Engagement however, of all sorts, has been rising

>If i am born into a life with zero political agency

Genuinely curious, what would you cite as evidence of "zero political agency"? If it's the de facto sense of it being prohibitively hard for one person/group than another as you allude to in your previous posts, this is a very different thing than zero agency. Again, I think it's dangerous to conflate hard with impossible.

The $400 buffer hurdle is a loaded topic that would be difficult to get into without being drawn into more walls of text, but I think this is often an artifact of poorly aligned priorities and choices. I actually tend think the counter is true; lower economic strata tend to have more free time than higher strata, etc. But I'm afraid this would turn into a long digression to get into.

I can agree that a government deserves it's constituency. However, I think can be true without negating the previous statement about a populace deserving it's government as well. It's hard to be both an advocate for empowerment while also absolving oneself of responsibility.

I do appreciate you taking the time to elaborate, but a common thread seems to be an almost infantilizing of a constituency. While I can empathize with the marginalized, I don't think it does any pragmatic good if it just stops at hand-wringing. If we resign ourselves to a lack of agency, ironically it's a good way to guarantee not to get it. It's a personal viewpoint, but I think those who will take ownership of these problems are in a much better position to affect change than those who constantly say it's out of their control.

I spent a decade homeless in appalachia and the general midwest for a decade, and another largely below the poverty line. I'm fine with citing my life and the lives of everyone I knew for the amount of political agency that was present in our lives.

I would not describe that period of my life as having more "free time" but I can understand how that may look the case.

I agree with you in spirit in some ways here and I do not believe in absolution of responsibility. Material conditions, however, often skew the will in ways rather extreme, possibility is not probability and it's a fool that eats shit after watching 20 people take a bite of a cake and realize it's shit.

>I would not describe that period of my life as having more "free time" but I can understand how that may look the case.

It’s more than just perception. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, but The Meritocracy Trap gives the actual stats. Obviously, the higher strata have an abundance of other resources (chiefly money, by definition) but not free time because of the competitive nature of maintaining within that economic level.

I do think that the middle class is attainable for most as long as they do a few essentially things, like graduating high school, avoiding massive debt, avoiding addictions, and avoiding becoming a parent before financially secure. I also believe we should, as a society, help those who are disadvantaged by things outside their control. However, there will always be consequences for life choices and some of those can’t be completed mitigated.

I didn’t grow up with money but I also eventually learned comparison is the thief of joy

uh because presumably if you ask people if they want safe water, they say yes, and yet ...

if Flint isn't an indictment of US democracy, what would be?

Sanctioned government violence against its citizens by the police comes to mind. Weak environmental policies that are leading to things like wildfires on the west coast. The president* making his Dex fueled escape from Walter Reed and immediately taking off his mask telling people to not worry about COVID. The same president* profiteering off the presidency and 40% of the country unquestioningly supporting it. The same 40% refusing to wear masks in public because somehow being a spoiled brat is patriotic.

This is what I imagine the Roman Empire felt like right before it collapsed on itself. The US has grown too big and too spoiled and is ripping at the seams.

Can you give me an example of the kind of “weak environmental policy” you are talking about? One which would lead to more wildfires on the west coast? Because the only policy I know of that leads to more wildfires, is the 20th century mistake of putting them out, which led to runaway undergrowth leading to hotter fires, such that trees were destroyed that would normally survive. The policy that best protects the environment long term is to let the fires burn. So again, what is the strong environmental policy you are envisioning that would prevent wildfires?

Several. Pulling out of the Paris climate accords is one such policy. Prohibition on further nuclear power plant building. Policy of subsidies for coal power plants. Current policies regarding vehicle efficiency requirements that amongst other things let you classify your 8 mpg SUV or pickup that you drive all by yourself as a light truck instead of a commuter vehicle that it actually is which lets it legally be on the road with its dismal emissions rating. Keystone pipeline. Rolling back environmental regulations. Removing the words “climate change” and “science” from the EPA website because this administration finds science inconvenient. Prohibition on studying climate change by NASA as well as putting gag orders on any other agency from NASA to EPA to CDC on talking about it. Public policy of denying climate change (see last night’s debate as a prime example). Want me to keep going?

Fires are burning not because we have too much forest (though of course finding better forest management instead of Wall Street would be a much better investment). They are burning because global warming (climate change was a conservative TV talking about because they used the fact that global warming could include local cooling to confuse the matter) means longer dry seasons, draughts, lots of dry underbrush. Wildfires have always been a thing. Wildfires that span such areas and can’t be put out like this have not existed on this scale in recorded human history. Those who pretend that this isn’t happening should put a plastic bag with a large zip tie over their heads and tell us how they can breathe just fine in there. It will be just as effective at not suffocating as continuing down this path for another 10-20 years.

40% is a high estimate. Because voter turnout in 2016 was about 60%, only 27% of eligible voters voted for Trump. And probably a significant portion of those are not unquestioning supporters.

His approval has been well tracked by polls that target both likely voters and registered voters with the same 40% +/- 4% result.

>if you are claiming the usa is not a well functioning representative democracy, i agree.

A claim on the intent of a government can be made without making a claim whether that intent is being fulfilled

right, that's why i put "if" there :P

Imagine that you are a politician in that area and you have a crisis with the water supply, you aren't going to win votes by promising to first fix the water supply problems somewhere else that's not in your electorate. Even if things are broken there's always pressure to campaign on addressing local needs first in order to get (re)elected, hence the phrase "all politics is local".

The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens even if a particular government fails at this duty. When a government does not properly fulfil their role, that is the direction towards which we push them, to better represent the interest, desires and choices of their citizens - not to act for the benefit of everyone else in the world.

That's a pretty basic tenant of democracy. The government is by the people and for the people.

Perhaps just a typo, but since I've seen this mistake before: it's "tenet" rather than "tenant".

if i write "bees" on a box, does the box contain bees?

Gobbledygook.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

Truism. The point of contention is around what constitutes "best interest."

> The interests of outsiders are simply not relevant to that

If this is so simple, why did it require an additional 500ish words to qualify it?

Your point seems to boil down to this:

In cases where there is a conflict between the perceived "best interest" of citizens and those of non-citizens, if the citizens haven't specifically directed the government to do otherwise, the government should act in the perceived "best interest" of its own citizens.

But it's reductive and short-sighted to say that humanitarian aid "hurts" one side and "helps" the other. For instance, the marginal impact of a U.S. dollar on a U.S. citizen's productivity is effectively nil. But that same dollar spent in a third-world country would have much higher marginal impact. The productivity of that other citizen allows them to specialize and trade, and then everyone benefits in the long term.

The hyper-nationalism perspective that your country should take whatever it can at the expense of other countries is exactly what led to both of the world wars.

Lol so you're saying EEO is out the window

The duty and role of government is to act in the interests of those with power and influence. If a vote has more power and influence than money or connections due to how the government is structured or elected then the government can represent the interests of the people.

However, even voters are not equal in the US with those in Wyoming holding almost 3x the voting power for president compared to California due to the electoral college. Senate votes are an entirely different ballgame where small population states are equal to large states in theory but the vote count behind the senator may be millions vs tens of thousands. Also, the less populated but more numerous red states have led to a tyranny of the minority in the US Senate since 2010. If you are curious about that look at the number of justices Trump has appointed vs Obama, and Obama had 2 full terms: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/15/how-trump-c...

The US is not really a functional democracy or represenatative republic at this point. Money and power run most policy: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-cor... (from 2015).

Lobbying dollars hugely outweigh voter preference in policy: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2014...

And if you are a company looking to make a profit lobbying may be the best investment to make over capital or other useful growth moves: https://medium.com/numbers-that-matter/return-on-investment-...

That's right, ROI on lobbying is about 200,000% though 10 years it ago it was closer to 20,000%: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2009/04/09/return-on-lobbying...

There's been an admin change in that time plus the Citizens United decision. Remember there are many questions around where PPP loans went, including millions to the newly appointed USPS leadership plus Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate Majority leader, and his wife, Elaine Chao, Secretary of transportation: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/lawmakers-and-transportati...

Trump himself won with a 2.8 million popular vote deficit, similar to Bush in 2000. There are 3 other examples in the mid 1800's. In 2016 the GOP won a minority of votes in the US house yet held a 10% seat majority alongside a lopsided Senate. These are not symbols of a functional republic or election process, or at lest one that reflects the will of the people. From the 2016 election results alone your first statement on the duty and role of government is failed by the US. We are at risk of becoming a failed democracy for similar reasons.

Lobbying and campaign finance operations are destroying the value of voter preference and need to be reigned in through massive overhaul of the campaign and election processes. I'm all for setting a window for campaigning like the UK, assigning a budget from public money that ALL donations go into to remove lobbying issues, as well as an overhaul of the actual voting mechanisms reverting to paper ballots handled entirely by mail and air gapped technology using a ranked choice or first alternative process to determine the popular vote like Maine implemented this year. Connect that to the bill going around for states to pass their electors to the popular vote winner directly and you have the start of a government serving at the will of the people, not lobbyists, a minority, the powerful.

The duty of the government is to justify the existence of the government.

>The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

This is the same argument that is used to justify slavery. You don't want to go there.

What a ridiculous statement. If anything, reforming the h1-b program is a good thing for the incoming workers. There were tons of H1-B workers who did not get visas because some 'IT sweatshop' flooded the program with cheap, relatively low skill applicants. Now? Better applicants have a higher chance to be approved!

The only reason why H1B is a problem is that there's a limit and requirement for being employed. That disrupts the free market approach with sunk cost fallacies and fear of being "sent home".

I saw a study somewhere that if USA opened its borders, roughly 1 billion people would move in there in a short order. Obviously, no country can handle that, hence the need to have limits.

GP is suggesting removing the 85k H-1Bs annual cap but keeping all other requirements in place (with or without new wage standards). EDIT: GP is also suggesting removal of the immediate deportation proceedings should someone lose their job in H-1B status. The status should follow the employee, not the employee/employer pair.

This wouldn't necessarily lead to a lot more immigration. It would lead to fewer people leaving who are already working for US companies on F-1 student visas in OPT status (they attended US institutions)

You've seen a study? Have you seen the experiment that proves the opposite?

Romanians(with GDP of 8k per person) didn't just get up and move to UK once they were completely free to do so in 2012.

US also had mostly free migration between Mexico and US, till some xenophobe decided to put up a legal wall.

Which xenophobe put up a wall, and why is it that the US is the only country not allowed to have borders all of a sudden?

Many Mexicans worked seasonally in the US and then returned to Mexico "back in the day". I'm not sure at what point that became a problem though. Although still to this day many people are here in the US undocumented. The extent of that being a problem I'm sure we could debate. It's certainly not fair for those who attempt to play by the rules though.

Is Canada xenophobic? They won't allow just anybody in. I'm not allowed to move to New Zealand without some legal work visa thing they made up. What about France? Can I move to Japan? Why do I have to sign papers to move to any of these countries?

I'm fine if you want to advocate for open boarders (and I think it actually would be great, but we need far fewer people on the planet to make it work) but I think you really should be consistent about it.

This is not an apples to apples comparison.

Romania is a first world country with a PPP per capita GDP of $33K, compared to $48K in the UK. Their murder rate is 1.28/million, effectively the same rate as in the UK is 1.2/m.

Romanians didn't move en mass because the difference isn't all that great. They would gain 1.45X more income and no change in personal safety.

The average South American country has a PPP GDP of 16K and a regional murder rate of 16/m.

South Americans who migrate to the USA gain 4X more income (8X the economic gains of an emigrating Romanian) and enjoy a murder rate 1/4 of the South American average.

The incentives to flee Romania for the UK are trivial compared to the incentives for South Americans to move to the US.

PPP GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Murder Rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

It's not. Broad studies and broad claims don't work like that.

There is a lot of correlation between immigrant populations across the board, though.

As for income difference... 1.45 times? How about 4-6 times? Unless you seem to think that they would be going to the mythical average UK income area. And let's not forget that there's plenty of EU countries with high income levels. You can get an apartment in Berlin for roughly 2x the rent of an apartment in Bucharest... and get 4x the income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

Here are some things that can be straight up disproven: * Violent criminals don't migrate en masse with completely open borders * Economic migration doesn't happen, without severe hardships(drought, famine, etc) * Asylum seekers aren't invading armies, that seek to expand war to other countries

> economic migration doesn't happen, without severe hardships(drought, famine, etc)

I'm suspecting that that billion in large part included people at severe hardships. Although to be fair a lot of them would have super hard time affording a one way plane ticket to the US, as they live on roughly dollar a day.

Nothing about my statement was related to H1B type programs. Go read it again.

Go read your own comment again. Saying that a nation acting in the best interests of its citizens is ethically wrong is laughable. Saying it's as ethically wrong as slavery is absurd. On net, this is a good thing for highly skilled H1B applicants (which is whom we were attempting to bring over in the first place, right?)

Slaves (from a different country) are in the best interest of the people of that country. Thus acting in the best interests of your people can in fact be ethically wrong.

Are they? They're useful to individual slaveowners with enough capital they can have the slaves work. But what about for the working class? People in the U.S. today remark that immigrants willing to work for lower wages than locals drives down wages. A population forced to work at zero wage (or rather, at the cost to the slaveowner of keeping them alive and captive) would surely do the same.

It doesn't seem clear to me at all that, if I were the spirit of democracy/the hypothetical purely benevolent (to specifically the people I consider of my country/nation/tribe, to the possible detriment of all others) emperor of wherever, that on balance introducing slavery and slaves into my country would be a net boon on average.

Even ignoring the material aspects, it seems like americans had to contort their worldviews quite a bit to justify slavery to themselves, given their otherwise stated moral beliefs (that were useful to maintaining society). Something would have to give a pretty decisive advantage to justify that required cognitive dissonance, and I don't think 'enriching some already-rich landowners a bit more' is useful enough.

I mean, look at america. Are the descendants of the ethnic groups in the us at the time of slavery on average better off for slavery having existed? Now?

Plus it's wrong to inflict such horror on your fellow man etc etc, and there's a pretty huge difference between not letting people in and abducting them into your country and whipping them.

> What's with this nationalism and view human value?

Honestly it is probably just run-of-the-mill xenophobia, but looking at US Federal Tax revenue [0] I would like to point out that prior to ~1930 everyone was basically on their own and after that the government started really becoming a big chunk of the economic pie. In 1920, I expect it was a lot more practical to target an open-border policy. Economically, the failure of a migrant means nothing to a local. In 2020, if a migrant does not succeed then there is a risk that the locals will be paying for it. I argue that that would reasonably change someone's opinions.

The idea that a person's location should have no impact is great, but sits in conflict with the US welfare system.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Governme...

Are there any way a nonimmigrant in the US can get any of the welfare?

If the answer is no, how does this apply?

'Welfare' on a federal level now means a combination of Social Security disability and redeemable income tax credits- basically they have no income, but Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Credit, means they get money back on their taxes anyway. And of course if they have children there are a number of federal and local programs that ostensibly help feed the child, but are easily worked around to turn into money- in the old days you'd spend all day buying individual kool aid packets (pay with a dollar voucher, get 75 cents real money in exchange), now you're more like to buy high end food items and sell them on, or else some sort of item return fraud.

The horrible Switzerland, that literally voted for open borders a few weeks ago.

But thank's for being that stereotype I was referring to.

Oddly the same could be said for Argentina, Mexico or Venezuela, but people aren’t knocking to get into their economies. Why does the US owe the world any more than other countries?

At some point people have to be responsible for their own self determination —as leftists used to clamor for a couple of decades ago. Now they want a shortcut instead of doing the hard work to build viable economies. It took us a few hundred years to get where we are. It didn’t happen overnight. People still have no problem vilifying pioneers, but they’re the first to want the fruits of that hard labor centuries ago. Get to fixing your economies it takes time, but fortunately with the technology today and with the foundations today, we know it’s possible to turn things around in a few decades (China, S Korea, Panama, etc). Even Japan was extremely feudal up until the end of WWII.

This is a very odd argument in the USA context. People showed self determination by emigrating from poverty and lack of economic opportunity in Europe – they didn't stay "…doing the hard work to build viable economies."

Now the US people are denying other people the same opportunities their not-to-distant grandparents had. I guess it's an insiders market.

I find your concept of US "owing" anyone anything strange. Depending on your political opinions you might think that humans "owe" each other equal opportunity.

The leftist motto was “Self determination of Nations”. The US was supposedly corrupt and capitalistic and the people’s of the world should avoid our model.

We’ve let more people in than any other country (including other countries that started out as colonies, like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico) We have a right to regulate who we think will contribute and be a good citizen.

We now want to exercise our self determination as a nation like everyone else does.

You managed to toss out more strawmen while not addressing the content of what you're replying to.

Can you answer why it's OK for earlier generations of (now) Americans to leave their origins in search of a better life, but modern immigrants should stay and fix these issues instead?

Your views are fascinating.

It seems you’re arguing for “consistency”. That doesn’t make sense. In that view if only colonialists had been allowed the US policy would be consistent because it never let immigrants in (noting that as a colonizer you’d be a subject of the crown which in name ruled whatever lands they had dominion over).

They said, a nation with self determination can decide what it wants according to its laws. It’s that simple.

Open borders isn't a leftist idea. It's literally the opposite of control over private interactions.

US gets huge financial benefits from being the world hegemon. Then there's the Northern Triangle that US messed up and Americans pretend that they have nothing to do with it.

I really don’t care who is for it. Migration has to be regulated, else we will return to the mean. Every other state exercises that right but when the US does it then it’s «bad» and «selfish», etc.

We could do it the Canadian or Australian way. Remember all those Americans who thought they could simply slip across the Canadian border and be good? Even they don’t just let anyone in.

I’ll believe the rhetoric when countries where it makes sense to federate federate (Caribbean, South America, Caucasus, etc).

Regulations on migration are bad, all bad. So maybe you don't put words in my mouth.

So if you want to regulate who I have in my home, then maybe I should regulate who your barber is.... and I would choose Sweeney Todd.

Argentina is not really a good example for your argument as it is probably the most "open borders" country in the world.

What's with that simplistic view of nationalism and reality?

(caveat: I am an immigrant that came to Canada)

Nationalism is more about culture than birth, albeit there is an expectation of both. Pride in your culture and love for your community which you call nation. As things are, you get more exposed to a culture by physical proximity to the source. Therefore being born within a culture makes you knowledgeable of that culture. More likely to be proud of it. (Note, as an immigrant, I do not partake in nationalism in either my current country or origin country. Albeit, I like their cultures.)

Your idealism albeit commendable is far from reality. The world is unfair get over it.

Everyone wants better for themselves. And like the latest hacktoberfest showed, not everyone has the same culture (1). Therefore not everyone should live in close proximity. It would lead to a disruption of social harmony. Take for example those from a honor/shame culture. They will literally beat you up for joking about their mother. Violence in the name of honor. In the West, that kind of violence is seen as outrageous. "Be stoic about it". People from both cultures do not mix well unless they are willing to adapt.

I define human value as infinite. Also I am not responsible for the right treatment of those outside my sphere of control/influence. I refuse to take responsibility for everyone. It is not up to me to give a better wage to an ungrateful immigrant. Life is unfair, get over it.

I agree. It is unfair that descendants of immigrants refuse to receive immigrants. As an immigrant that came to Canada, I am grateful for this opportunity. Also, I am grateful that those that would have not adapted to the Canadian mosaic of cultures were not allowed to come. I think another term is culture fit. If you do not fit the culture, you should not be allowed in.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643894

>The world is unfair get over it.

This kind of line of thought is the issue. Why should it be unfair? Or at least, why can't we make it fairer?

>People from both cultures do not mix well unless they are willing to adapt.

Those willing to adapt are usually those that are immigrating. Your argument does not make sense in this context, as we are talking about people that are, by definition, willing to move and be part of another country. Will there be a clash of cultures in some instances? Of course, but that will last at most for one generation.

> I refuse to take responsibility for everyone. It is not up to me to give a better wage to an ungrateful immigrant. Life is unfair, get over it.

No one is asking you to take responsibility for anyone. But why should you support policies that exclude those that are willing to come on their own volition and contribute to society? What makes you think that they are 'ungrateful'? Again, why should we not strive to make things fairer for everyone?

>Also, I am grateful that those that would have not adapted to the Canadian mosaic of cultures were not allowed to come. I think another term is culture fit. If you do not fit the culture, you should not be allowed in.

Culture is such a meaningless thing. Immigrants assimilate to the culture, willing or not, after a generation. Sure, some of the people that actually immigrate might not be want to change their ways, but their children will. Studies have shown that this is a moot point, used by those that are just scared of different things, when in reality those that immigrate do assimilate the culture of the place they are living.

This mentality makes absolute no sense, specially coming from a child of immigrants. And I see you come from Canada. As someone who is about to immigrate there, it saddens me to see such display of hatred for those who are different. I spent a year studying in Canada a few years ago, and from my experience people there are very welcoming to immigrants. I had the pleasure to meet Chinese, Muslims, Indians and people from lots of different places and cultures while in Toronto, and guess what? Everyone got along very well. I don't understand where this fear and hatred comes from, but most people are good people, willing to work hard to earn their own if given the chance.

And if this is naive idealism, well, then I am a naive idealist.

First please into take consideration that my comment was a response to the previous comment. My points were to defend nationalism as a valid stance to hold and to justify the different treatments of humans.

Now...

> ... I am naive idealist.

The problem with naive idealism is that it is ineffective.

First, what is justice, fairness? Okay, let's say you arrive to a satisfying (to us) definition. Is it true to everyone all the time? Or simply true to everyone? I think you agree that it is not.

Why? Why does that guy over there think differently? Nurture and nature. Let us say that his inherited traits set him as neutral on the issue, why does he think differently still? Because, of nurture. What is nurture? Culture in its diverse forms. Family culture. Community culture. Etc. Do you still think culture is meaningless?

I am not against immigration. I believe in voting with your feet (going to where you think is best). I am a first generation immigrant by the way. Not a child of immigrants.

I have no hate for people of different backgrounds. You misunderstood me. I am currently taking online classes on the Chinese language and on Chinese culture. One of my best friends is Muslim. Another close friend of mine is Indian.

As citizen of a DEMOcratic country (demo comes from the greek for "the people"), I play a part in the government. Albeit in a minor way, I am part of the government. I am partly responsible for what it does. In counterpart, the government exists for me, the citizen. I take the personality and privilege to be citizen of a democratic country more and more seriously.

I did not aim to say that all immigrants are ungrateful, only that with a porous border, I end up allowing ungrateful immigrants.

> Why should it be unfair? I did not make the world. I came to this conclusion regretfully. You do need not to sell to me the beauty of a fair world. Everyone is born to different circumstances, therefore everyone is unequal. Not only birth but culture. Last century, China once tried to eliminate the advantage of the upper class. They took their possession and gave them a status "to receive lesser treatment". It was an inherited status. After roughly 40 years, they removed that status. Then later there was a study on the descendants of the persecuted class. They were in average in a better position than the descendants of those who had receive a "to receive a better treatment" status. I leave it up to you to make your own conclusion.

There is a nation's culture, a family's culture, a religion's culture, etc. As many as there are groups you can identify with.

>Or at least, why can't we make it fairer? You can. I intend to do it, to the extent that it is not deleterious to me.

Future citizens don't vote today. Current citizens do. It's simple.

I emigrated to Hong Kong from France and I love the system here. It mandated a "high" salary of 2000USD that is low enough to allow noobs like me to join and try while high enough not to bring people who would just try to survive no better than at home.

They also mandate a master degree and low effort from the company, which can be negociated if really strong guy (bachelor with some effory, expert reputation with high effort).

Then they give a permanent residency after 7 years of taxes but no path to nationality so the only way to persist is to make children locally, another interesting point: you ll never be Chinese but your kids can, which makes also the immigration problem drama free.

I quite wish France tried that because we feel (might not be rational) we have so many issues with our immigration.

I don't know why you're being downvoted for wanting a more sane immigration system for France.

Whenever limits to US H1Bs a are mentioned that gets full support on HN because it waters down local salaries but when similar systems are proposed for Europe it gets downvoted.

Seems pretty double standard.

Same with India. Indians want the whole world to roll the red carpets for them. At the same time India just recently passed anti-immigration acts.

Its the classic 'Do as I say, not as I do'.

India has become seemingly fascist overnight under Mr Modi. Just like Trump, he favours immigration and citizenship policies designed to demonise minority groups

Yep, you got it. Ask them why their zeal for opening borders doesn't extend to their eastern neighbor and you will get a lot of heat very quickly.

How do you know that the same Indians advocating for more open immigration in the US are the same ones advocating for anti-immigration acts in India?

India isn't one person that holds all these opinions.

Are you referring to CAA? Then you mistaking my friend. CAA is targeted to prevent illeagle immigration. It also, eases citizenship for people of minority religion. Moreover that law is targeted only towards neighboring countries, specifically towards Pak., Ban., and Afgh.

And 'No' We do not expect red carpets anywhere on the world. Its totally a individual's choice to move abroad or stay. Due to huge population, the figures look high too.

Thousands of people have made it down the path to nationality in Honk Kong. Acquiring Chinese nationality -- whether mainland or not -- is possible. It's just that the standards are very, very, very exclusive.

Can you offer any links? As far as I know, becoming a citizen is next to impossible. Also, one would have to renounce any other citizenship.

In mainland China, the only examples I've heard of were leading academics. The standard is "outstanding contributions" to China. That's what I mean by "very high bar." Next to impossible is not a bad way to describe it, but next to impossible isn't the same as impossible. Thousands have done it. That's not a lot. I don't think it's even tens of thousands.

On paper, there is also path by which you can marry into Chinese citizenship, but it's exceptionally rare in practice.

"Renounce other citizenships" is complex. Many nations don't provide a citizens with a means to stop being citizen. Which is to say, if you take a Chinese (or any other) citizenship, and renounce your old citizenship, you may still end up with both citizenships.

I don't know specifics about Honk Kong, but I do know the standards are laxer than mainland China.

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is the extraordinary time it takes to approve or reject a greencard petition. In many cases it takes years - or even over a decade or more. That's insane. People bring their spouses here, they have kids who are born and go to school here, and all along the way their immigration status is uncertain. And meanwhile they are tied to whatever job they're in. It's insane.

Make that process faster. Give people a thumbs-up or thumbs-down like 10x faster. Months not years.

It’s insane because it’s a kludge. The US doesn’t really have a general purpose skilled immigration visa. The H1B visa is a temporary worker visa. There is this whole legal fiction where, when you get one, you have to announce non-immigrant intent with a wink, then once you’re here you say “I just now changed my mind and I want to stay here, can I get a green card.” It was never designed to be a payday to permanent residency, because the grand bargain of the law in the 1960s was that it wouldn’t increase immigration.

They should just repeal the law and design a real point-based permanent immigration system from scratch.

There should be both. I am German, work for an American company. It shouldn't be difficult for me to move to an US office for some time and return back home. Of course, there is some likelyhood, that if I stayed at a place for more than a coumple of months, that I want to stay at that place long term, and this should be possible without too high bareers.

Here in Germany, you basically need a job offer which matches certain criteria, to be get a temporary residency. This can be prolonged as long as you stay employed in Germany. Similar rules exist for students. I have an Indian colleague who studied in Germany and now is working here. If you stay in the country for 5 years, it is pretty much just a formality to apply for unlimited residency and it is also reasonably straight-forward to even get German nationality, though this is less common.

H1-B is dual intent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent so there is no winking required. H1-B can last for 6 years (can be extended beyond that too but let's not get into that) and I think 6 years should be enough for one to get the GC.

But otherwise I agree with rest of your points.

> H1-B is dual intent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent so there is no winking required.

There is. It doesn't matter in practice, because it's a legal fiction anyway, but here's the legal logic:

For all visa applicants, including H1B, there is a presumption that the person is an immigrant, and they cannot obtain non-immigrant visas until they convince the admission officer of their non-immigrant intent, see section 214(b) of INA. Crucially, you need to argue that you have no intention to abandon your foreign residence. Dual intent have nothing to do with it, this is true for all kinds of visas.

The immigration law says that, as a rule, applying for permanent residency in the US (a green card) constitutes evidence of your intent to abandon foreign residence. Where dual intent policy enters the picture is that the above does not apply to holders of dual intent visas. For them, applying for green card "does not constitute evidence" of their intent to abandon foreign residence: this is the exact language used in section 205b of Immigration Act of 1990, which is the legal basis for "dual intent" policy. Note that they do not say that the rule of abandoning foreign does not apply to dual-intent visa holders, only that applying for green card no longer constitutes evidence of their intent to abandon foreign residence.

Of course, none of it matters in practice, since it's all legal fiction, and in practice things works exactly as you believe they are. The point here is that the practice is based on the legal fiction, on the wink which requires immigration officials to pretend you do not intend to abandon your foreign residence, when everyone knows that this is exactly your goal.

>For all visa applicants, including H1B, there is a presumption that the person is an immigrant, and they cannot obtain non-immigrant visas until they convince the admission officer of their non-immigrant intent, see section 214(b) of INA. Crucially, you need to argue that you have no intention to abandon your foreign residence. Dual intent have nothing to do with it, this is true for all kinds of visas.

I don't think this is right. Section 214(b) indeed says that there is a presumption of immigrant intent, but for dual intent visas, such as the H1-B, it's not necessary to demonstrate that you don't have immigrant intent.

It also seems wrong that applying for a green card could ever not constitute evidence of immigrant intent. Do you have a citation for that?

> but for dual intent visas, such as the H1-B, it's not necessary to demonstrate that you don't have immigrant intent.

In practice, no, but that's not what "dual intent" legally means.

> It also seems wrong that applying for a green card could ever not constitute evidence of immigrant intent. Do you have a citation for that?

I did not say anything about "could not ever". I guess you could maybe interpret it this way, but if you actually followed the citation I gave, it would have been clear to you. What I meant was that the section 205b of Immigration Act of 1990, which is the legal basis of "dual intent" policy, explicitly amends section 214b of INA, to remove permanent residency application as acceptable evidence for the purpose of establishing immigration intent in context of section 214b.

I'm surprised how different this is from all the secondary information out there, but ok, you're right. Thanks for the info. (I said "could ever not", not "could not ever", but that's a moot point now.)

> I'm surprised how different this is from all the secondary information out there, but ok, you're right.

The secondary information is more useful in practice, because it represents the actual practice, not legal theory.

> I said "could ever not", not "could not ever", but that's a moot point now.

Ah, sorry, I misread, it's my bad.

> I think 6 years should be enough

I’m guessing you don’t know very many Indians?

I am one. I was talking more about the intentions behind it.

> The H1B visa is a temporary worker visa. There is this whole legal fiction where, when you get one, you have to announce non-immigrant intent with a wink, then once you’re here you say “I just now changed my mind and I want to stay here, can I get a green card.”

This is not true. Your description is accurate for the F1 student visa and TN work visa for Canadians - applicants for those visas are not allowed to have immigration intent. There is no such requirement for the H1B visa.

The poster you replied to is spot-on about the ridiculous wait times for green cards, and this delay has nothing to do with the H1B program itself. The government really needs to speed this up, so that immigrants and their families aren't living in fear of the next arbitrary Trump executive order.

H1-B is dual intent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent

(Not sure why doingmyting's comment saying the same thing is flagged. Virtually all of this user's comments seem to be flagged for some reason.)

They’re shadowbanned. Basically, every post is instantly killed and must be vouched for

For Engineers and Doctors from India, its takes more than 20 years to get Green card now. Its because of the arcane country quota system which assigns the same numerical quota for each country regardless of population, so India and Monaco get the same number of Green cards.

This is the remnant of the pre-1965 racist immigration country quota system which allowed only European whites into US.

It has nothing to do with Racism. It's a quota.

If there were more people from New Zealand than India trying to apply, it would be harder for New Zealanders.

I've lived aboard and had residency in two other nations. The overall amount of people applying is outrageous. That's the real problem. 22,000,000 apply for 50,000 green cards.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/23/application...

Btw this thing is based on country of birth and not country of citizenship. So basically even a person who is a European citizen and born in India cant get a green card before 20 years. Does that change your view?

IIRC it's based on the number of immigrants from each country, not their race? As an example, a black person from Jamaica will have a much easier time than someone from India or China simply because there are fewer applicants from their small country.

there is no racist element to this; all countries have the same quotas.

India, China, Mexico, Philippines etc have backlogs because more people try to get in from these.

FIFO is a fairer strategy.

Applicants from Oceania have 5% to 10% chance of winning the green card lottery in a given year. India is like 0.01 percent or something silly like that.

What makes the immigration process in the US truly horrific is that it is racist. When the law was passed, the grand compromise was that it would not change the racial makeup of the country. So there are country specific (which is really just race specific with a wink and a nod) quotas for different countries. This means if you are from Sweden or Ireland, it's actually pretty easy to get a green card. There is even a green card lottery where you can apply in Ireland and get a green card and get one just because you entered because there aren't enough immigrants from there to balance things out. But if you are from India, it's going to take a decade or more.

Need citation for this.

when the basis is country-specific, and all countries are treated equally, it is purely supply/demand.

No one applies from Afghanistan, so it is easier to get a GC -- so is US biased towards Afghanistan?

> when the basis is country-specific,

Not adjusting for population when the brunt of this policy is not borne by a country but a person, suggests malicious intent. All countries are treated equal, but all immigrants are not.

In theory, your argument sounds fair..

But in practice, is the US supposed to track down census numbers for the countries around the globe? So many countries, dont even have much of a process

and the main point is : the govt exists for the well-bein of its current citizens, not potential ones.

The intent of the law wasn't racist, it was to prevent e.g. Indian (or some other large demographic) candidates from taking all of the available quota.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The time to process applications is indeed on the order of months.

https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt

I believe the I-140 is for employment-based green cards.

The long wait times are due to annual quotas by country, not slow handling of paperwork.

it is not only due to quotas. there is BS request for evidence as well as random changes. for example, they added some disease to the process (I believe gonorrhea or syphilis) and then the exam I took entering the process wasn't sufficient at the time they actually looked at the exam. then it took them a long time to send that notice, then I got the new exam and the clock started again adding around 6 months from the "we need you to test for a disease that can be easily treated if you had it" to the approval. this is with highly paid lawyer support.

EB immigrant visas take ages and then there's the archaic process of some poor schmuck sitting in an USCIS office asking the questions and checking boxes on a form that you submitted a second time...

From the p.o.v. of the person actually doing this, it takes years from the moment you apply to the moment you get the decision. This is what needs to change.

why would your comment be downvoted? do downvoters think you are lying, or do they think its a good thing that green cards take so long?

what you say is correct.

as a green card holder myself i can attest to both my initial approval period (3.5 years) and also the renewal period (2 years) being onerously long, and at times, having a particularly deleterious effect on my life.

look, i can understand the initial approval taking a long time. they have a lot of stuff to check.

but i applied for the renewal a full 18 months before my GC's expiration date (because i knew they took a looong time) and i received the card a full 2 years after my renewal + bio was accepted in the system, i.e. six months after my GC expired.

>why would your comment be downvoted? do downvoters think you are lying, or do they think its a good thing that green cards take so long?

The tall nail gets the hammer.

The inconvenient facts get the gray text.

> why would your comment be downvoted? do downvoters think you are lying, or do they think its a good thing that green cards take so long?

Or they don’t want other people to see what a comment is saying.

I assume your talking about the visa dates? The actual process is pretty quick, a friend went from start to finish with a green card in 1.5 years.

The backlog is due to: 1) the limited number of immigrant visa defined in the law and 2) country based diversity quotas.

That's not "pretty quick". That's 18 months.

Pretty quick would be a month.

I’d love to see if any country does it that quickly. It’s a pretty involved process in the US with appointments, medical exams, etc.

You mean... Like Singapore(7days), Lithuania(15days), Ireland(4 weeks), Netherlands and most other European countries - 90 day mandate.

My first work authorization in US was the simplest L1b internal company transfer. That took from mid October 2016 to issue of the visa on 21 Feb 2017. That's considerably longer for the simple document.

My blanket work authorization took 2.5 years... and 4 years for the LPR.

Are you talking visa or permanent residency? Those are very different.

7 days for PR in Singapore? That's not the experience I've hear from friends. In fact, you're at the mercy of the gov't as it's entirely discretional for PR. You often have to apply multiple times if you don't have the "right" profile.

Just a work permit.

An equivalent of what you get in Singapore in 7 days is H1. H1B takes at absolute best - 6 months at 33% success rate.(If you miraculously get to file on March 31st and get to start October 1st.)

Permanent residency in US takes years. Even Diversity Lottery takes at least 18 months.

Oh, my original reply was to the parent comment about permanent residency.

>> I'm not sure that narrowing degree qualifications is a win

Yep this is a problem, some (many) H1B people do not have a relevant degree in CS, not sure how this will work out for them.

Really? What degrees have you seen from software engineer H1B candidates?

> What degrees have you seen from software engineer H1B candidates?

I am not the person you are replying to, but a bachelor degree in one of the engineering disciplines is very common.

Mechanical engineering, electrical engineering are common ones.

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?

It's not just software engineers...

Product managers are making 80-100% of what a software engineer makes. So 150-200k even at startups, and upwards from there at FANG.

Graphic designers are making 70-100%.

Even roles like "Human Resources Manager" are making 150k, because they're automatically "management", even though it's just a Bachelor's degree in Business and not a highly competitive role.

"Business analysts" (Excel and specialty tool power users) are making 100k+. No hard STEM degree or brutal interviews required.

However, it really is just in a handful of major US tech hubs that the pay is this high in tech. Outside the major tech hubs the high paying professions are the traditional ones... doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc.

The 'hard STEM degrees' and 'brutal interviews' are irrelevant if the industry is functioning: are the people in these roles are able to perform them and are the companies profitable whilst able to pay high salaries.

If they are, there's nothing wrong with this situation.

Unless you own the company, then the extra pay is coming out of your profits.

Most businesses like lawyers, finance etc that are largely human based not capital based pay out almost everything to the workers. Often they were structured as partnerships. Even Goldman Sachs was a partnership for a long time until capital requirements increased.

This isn't a zero-sum situation, paying the workers more can increase overall profits for a company.

It's not the US as a whole, it's specifically Silicon Valley and San Francisco where you have this ridiculous concentration of huge software companies (all of FAANG except Amazon have their headquarter there) and venture capital firms (and thus startups), generating an extreme demand for developers.

But of course, that demand drives up salaries across the entire USA to some degree.

It isn't specifically Silicon Valley anymore.

Boston, Seattle, and New York would instantly qualify.

Some might say Denver and LA as well as many others would have plenty of well paid developers.

And the previous what 6 decades of other tech companies traitorous 8 and the Fairchildren.

Agreed, I'm in the UK, living in one of the more expensive regions outside London and I'd be considered to be doing pretty well if I hit £50K.

As a SE? That seem's off - market rate for most of the UK for 5+ years tenure engineer is around 50-60K.

Graduate salaries are starting to push high 30's!

Agreed. I'm far south and therefore nowhere near London and this is what I'm seeing. If you are in specific fields, some companies are paying £70-80k+, but you need to have proven skills in the fields they are looking for.

The other thing to take in to account with the US figures - taxation. I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that?

>I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that?

I've lived in the US. Your taxes are withheld from your pay. Unlike in the UK, everyone has to fill in a tax return - even if all of their income comes from a regular job. You might be due a small refund or owe a small amount at the end of each tax year, but fundamentally you're taxed as you go throughout the year.

And the salaries quoted are gross or net?

Almost always gross. When you hear "I make $150,000" in 99.9% of cases that will be the number that are hired at. For that exact number I would expect the actual annual cash in hand to be close to $80,000.

Note that is VERY individual circumstances specific. The largest chunk of that missing $70,000 went to taxes at the local, state, and federal level. Easily $45,000 of it is gone in taxes. There is also a common game of moving pre tax dollars around that benefit you, but not exactly the same way a dollar in hand would.

The two most common are 401ks (typically 4-8% of gross depending on employee matching) which is money that goes into a retirement account for you and you can't touch it until you are old (55 or 65 or something, not up to date on the numbers there) without incurring both a significant penalty of 10% but also having to pay tax on it the year you withdrawal it. There are a few hardship exclusions like medical, first time home buying etc, where you can dip into this untaxed pool of money but for the most part can't touch it until retirement.

The other common pre tax exclusion is an HSA where you get to put pre taxed dollars into an account that can only be used to pay for medical expenses. Essentially every high dollar professional in America takes full advantage of this offering as we all expect to have out of pocket medical expenses and it makes no sense to pay them with taxed dollars instead of pre taxed dollars.

> Essentially every high dollar professional in America takes full advantage of this offering as we all expect to have out of pocket medical expenses and it makes no sense to pay them with taxed dollars instead of pre taxed dollars.

Not really. HSAs are common for sure, but people with high incomes often can afford lower deductible policies. You can't open an HSA unless you have a high-deductible health insurance policy.

I've done it both ways, and I personally prefer paying more for a better insurance policy and not having to bother with HSA paperwork.

Gross. In general you couldn't really quote net salaries in the US as your taxes partly depend on which state you live in. So for example, if you work in DC, you could plausibly be living in either DC, Maryland or Virginia, and your taxes would differ accordingly. You'll also most likely have a choice of different health and pension plans at different costs.

And then there’s also city income tax withholdings for those of us who live in those areas....

In the UK it's normal for people to quote salaries "before tax".

It's the same in the US, so salary figures are directly comparable (after currency conversion).

Taxes are lower in the US, but healthcare costs are much higher and it roughly balances out.

It's not "US", it's particular regions. San Francisco Bay Area pays a lot, while Cleaveland(OH) pays a third of that.

Globally it's the hotspots that pay a lot - London, Dublin, Moscow, Amsterdam, etc.

But then the reason why the salaries have skyrocketed - is just lack of supply.

I'm planning on leaving the field at 36 already. Moving to doing gardening work and running an olive grove... and there's no one that can replace me in NYC at a snap of their fingers. I bet there are people globally, but getting to work in US is a PITA.

Basically. Check levels.fyi and see for yourself. It's only silicon valley "FAANG" companies that pay $400k total compensation for senior engineers, but principal / staff engineers at the big firms make up to a million.

AWS is spinning up a dev team in Auckland though teaming up with Vector on some IOT stuff in the energy space apparently though. I would hope the comp for those positions would be at least $140k NZD, but still that's nowhere near what the fellas over at Google HQ are making for writing protobufs all day.

this is partially offset by the cost of living. for example you would pay roughly double for things such as rent and childcare in San Jose compared to Auckland (which is already much more expensive than the rest of NZ)

I did the math though and I would likely be clearing 100k in the bank even with the high cost of living there.

Auckland is pretty expensive, and senior engineers here make a lot more than regular 9-5 jobs but I'm not remotely close to clearing that much money in a given year.

Relatively speaking you'd be having the same free cash flow proportionally. It's just that 10% of NZ$100k and US$400 is 4x the difference in absolute terms.

You could go to Uber's Pittsburgh office and have a lot of money.... but you'd be in Pittsburgh...

If you don't care about quality of life - there are great options world wide to make a lot of money. I would suggest getting into corruption, as an easy way of making millions fast.

>Relatively speaking you'd be having the same free cash flow proportionally. It's just that 10% of NZ$100k and US$400 is 4x the difference in absolute terms

I just don't think that's true. For two reasons:

1) I earn the equivalent of just under the median household income on my own, and 100% of my income is eaten by our expenses. It's really my wife's income that's left over after all that has been paid for, so none of mine is spare.

2) There must be hundreds of thousands of people who live in the bay area that don't work at FAANG and don't make anywhere near that, but still manage to live on the city somehow. It's not like if you make $360k you're barely scaping by, right!? Else basically everyone else would be homeless there.

I ran the numbers and I'd be able to save a lot more.

If you think that "crunching the numbers" is an appropriate way of comparing the cost of living in two completely different environments - you must be insane.

If you have the fiscal responsibility and live a completely ascetic lifestyle - you can easily save most of your free cash flow. But that is an extraordinary person.

If you are a reasonable person and are going to actually live in SF - you have to adjust your expenses accordingly. Your rent/mortgage, your shopping trips, your recreational activities, etc... and you realise that your social outing costs you $200, instead of $30... and you don't have the ability to host it at home, because all of your friends live 2-4 hours away or you have a $5000 p/m home in a convenient location.

The reason why I say this - I lived in Helsinki, Dublin, London, NYC, San Francisco, Palo Alto and back to NYC. Me and my husband are both SWE, well paid. I literally went through the change of attitudes towards "living a life".

>If you think that "crunching the numbers" is an appropriate way of comparing the cost of living in two completely different environments - you must be insane

I'm under no impression the lifestyle would be the same. Just that it ought to be possible from what I can tell. Where I live in my home country I'm optimizing for a reasonable level of comfort / quality of life. If I'm dragging myself halfway across the world for the top salaries in the industry, I'm not optimizing for comfort or quality of life, I'm optimizing for as much savings as possible over a short duration.

Unfortunately the value of going to Bay Area is long term, not "short duration". It's not just - I'm going to SF for a project and a payout. If you're moving there - it's going to be for a few years.

Also - if you're "dragging myself halfway across the world", it limits your ability to optimise efficiently. You don't have an easy fallback. (I'm from Lithuania and live in NYC. Optimising my living arrangements was not a possibility for a long time, because there's no family or LPR status)

2 ~ 3 years would be my duration. That's what I consider short term. I expect it'd be a little bit brutal, and that's ok.

Right, while I don't live in that area, I do live in an area with a similar cost of living (Key West), rent on a decent home running near or above 3K and an apartment / townhome in the Key West Oldtown area can run up to 4K. Average dine out meal runs around $30 a plate and fine dining in the area of $50 a plate and up. Don't get me wrong at SV salaries they are not living hand to mouth but when you see those rates from a different cost of living area it can seem like ridiculous numbers but the reality is $150-$170K in that high of a COL area gives you enough to get a decent apartment in a reasonable commute distance, some pocket money for entertainment, healthcare, the ability to put away for a rainy day and it you live modest enough to pack away some retirement. The reality is that should be the base standard for a job. People should earn enough to provide for themselves, and secure their future. To me the fact that, that is no longer the norm in the US is what is shocking. An honest days labor, should command and honest wage, and to me those are the minimum things that should be secured in an honest wage. I see people down here in the FL keys working 2 jobs as the norm to make rent and to pay for the here and now, they cannot even fathom healthcare, rainy-day fund and retirement is not even on their radar. These are not people working restaurant or construction jobs, I see many "professional" jobs moonlight as bartenders, etc.

Cost of living is radically different in some places. That and software engineers are significantly underpaid in NZ (and Australia) relative to their economic output.

It's not a popular answer, but US is by far the most recognized place where SWE's get paid well.

What country would be number two? I bet there would be a spirited argument.

Probably Zurich, SW which matches Silicon Valley salaries

It should be location based. 170k is an expert in many areas of the country.

Maybe something like upper 2% of salaries in the county.

A fixed number will never be appropriate for all the areas in the US, and a fixed number will always need to be adapted.

According to this[1], with 140k you're in the top 5% Americans, so you're not far off... but regulating immigrant's salaries on a regional basis seems unfeasible, as they're free to move anywhere in the country AFAIK, just like any other US resident.

[1] https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/

Why is it unfeasible? Companies give cost of living raises - and pay cuts - depending on where someone lives in the US. If companies can figure this stuff out, why can't the government? Don't companies get their cost of living data from government agencies anyway?

As someone who lives in a different state I object to someone who is otherwise equal in ability to me earning more for the same work (I have personal reasons to not want to move to CA). I understand why companies do it (only those who have a reason they need to stay in CA - why google doesn't move doesn't make sense), but I will object to my government encouraging the situation even more. My representative needs to be sensitive to that.

This isn't something special to the US, though, and i'm pretty certain if it was changed so that folks in Indiana made the same money as California, folks in California would make worse wages.

The truth is, though, that folks getting paid well in Indiana can generally live better on the lower wage simply because things are that much cheaper. Perhaps you wish to subsidize living in the more expensive areas and increase the safety net?

Maybe you should place some pressure on companies to move headquarters into more affordable places. Lots of places have international airports, after all, so that shouldn't hinder folks much.

Do you think your representatives gives two farts about what folks in a different part of the country are paid so long as folks in his or her district are living well enough? Or should folks in the area living well be enough of a concern?

Do you have solutions for these things that are fair to the folks needing to live in the expensive areas (poor folks have little to no choice in the matter)?

I don't understand why that would make it infeasible. Whichever place they choose, they have to get a job that's actually highly paid for that area.

The high-paying locations are the ones where the experts congregate.

It's crazy how average pay differs from even expensive, technology and knowledge heavy parts of Europe. Where I live, Stockholm Sweden, this would be a very well paid person. Even more so for families, considering it's one income and not two for the household.

In 99% of the US by area, $170k would be a very good salary for a software engineer too.

Silicon Valley is a statistical outlier compared to the US as a whole for salaries and for cost-of-living.

Most of the software engineers in the US don’t work in a place with $170k salaries and $1m+ homes. For most of the US, salaries are 1/2 of that and homes are 1/4 of that.

That's a large reason of why I've stayed in the Phoenix area, though I think about leaving every single summer. The engineering pay is about 2/3 of SF area, give or take, but cost of houses are around 1/4 or so. It's rough thinking of a lateral move in salary, or not enough of a boost to overcome cost of living differences.

Of course housing costs have gone up significantly relative to pay in the past decade, so who knows.

I remember slightly earlier on in my career as an intermediate level engineer earning $70k living in an area (not in US) where the median house price is $1m+

An extra $100k would have been really nice.

Point is it's not a sweatshop rate by any measure.

By international standards it is a very high salary.

Billions are in poverty or near-poverty internationally, so that's not the standard I want to set US wages to.

True, but probably not billions in near-poverty as software engineers. The world standard for software engineers is probably an ok life.

Point is, by international standards, USD $170k is a very high salary for software engineers too, even for a specialist.

I know a guy who outsourced some stuff to a dev in Nepal. The guy was making 3x the average for his area.

SWE is highly paid throughout the world, but I have noticed there are some geographic areas where it actually doesn't seem to command a higher salary than average.

Salaries are driven by a lot of supply side dynamics, it's less about the overall economic output of the employee and more about the cost of replacing them.

but your average small startup still needs to hire people somehow, right? Is there still free workforce on the Market?

So if they cant afford the going rate then the start-up should not have been funded or started.

I believe a startup of 50K coders also can create something of value for humanity and be commercially successful. It will just happen in another part of the world. It's up to the US where they want to draw a line.

Not sure where the rest of the world comes in this case.

So your assuming that being a good little Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist" is a good idea, and we should touch our caps to the software mill owner.

I'm not talking super-cheap places and software mills here. 50K is about the entry salary to get a EU blue card.

It is in the context of US salaries and rember a lot of folks on hn rightly complain how badly the EU/UK pays software professionals

I guess they should offer more than 0.0001%?

This is why I don’t work for a startup. However, I suspect the average candidate doesn’t understand the equity well enough to properly value it. Therefore it would be a waste to give away a bigger chunk of the cap table to those employees if it doesn’t save the company much cash on salaries or attract a lot more talent. Only for the subset of roles where you’re trying to hire people who understand how a company runs do you have to give a serious equity stake, because those are the people who know how to value it.

It's more like, employees have lost their negotiating power, so they don't bother to negotiate it anymore, so there's no reason for them to understand how it works.

If the labor pool shrinks a bit, their negotiating power will rise and this will solve itself.

I don’t think this fully explains the dynamics of the situation. Even if you can perform well enough in the interview process to get paid extremely well by big tech, you probably can’t get a comparable amount of equity from a startup. It’s not that the labor market doesn’t value your skills - startups just don’t pay market price.

I would like to challenge the notion of "market price."

I feel that it is safe to say that in different companies, a developer produces different value for the company. For someone working at a Big Tech company, a single developer - even a low level one - can produce substantial value for the company. On the other hand, working at a small company, the entire company may not have as much revenue as the low level developer produced at the Big Tech company.

Should a developer at a small company that is... say... optimizing routes for auto parts delivery for a handful of clients be compensated at the same "market price" as someone who is working on optimizing AWS?

My point is that not every company - even in the Bay Area - can afford to pay "market rate" for everyone.

Its not that the labor market doesn't value the skills, it's that the labor produced isn't worth the same. I believe that it is foolish for a software developer who to expect the wages of someone who is working in Big Tech at all other companies (and it would be foolish for the company to pay an employee more than the value that they're creating for the company).

Because for similar reasons to those discussed in a recently posted article, https://defmacro.substack.com/p/parallel-tracks, management tries to suppress engineer wages.

If you're incredibly good, you might be able to negotiate 20-40% higher offer than the initial offer, but beyond that they'll just reject you and go with another candidate who might literally be worth millions of dollars less and be a ridiculously worse deal.

Engineering management is simply not operating according to standard economics textbook definitions of rationality. It feels more like cartel economics.

I understand why these credit systems are in place.

But I do find myself feeling sorry for the fact that they basically discriminate against those whom are not rich and/or are lesser educated.

In many cases they're the people that would benefit the most from being allowed to walk away from a system thats failed them.

I don't really have a solution, just a thought.