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A comment on Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In. Parent comment

Re:Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In by seanmcdirmid on Friday December 26, 2014 @07:34PM (#8801147)
And all those services you keep comparing against, you know, can't be moved outside the USA (I'm not going to china to get a back rub or my transmission rebuilt). And of course, software doesn't work like that at all (I can open a software development office in China with the money I make there; as a bonus, I avoid repatriating the money back into the states for extra taxes).
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Re:Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In by shanusmagnus on Friday December 26, 2014 @08:11PM (#8801245)
That's a fair point, but it remains to be seen what the frictions are. I doubt that the domestic software industry has had my welfare particularly in mind all these years up till now, and yet they're all still here, paying what everyone wants us to think is our exorbitant American salaries.

What is the point at which these giants collectively tell us to fuck ourselves and run off to the Chinese nirvana you describe? Is it just north of where we are already, so if we don't get some immigration relief immediately we're all doomed?

Maybe. Or maybe the whole process isn't as clean as you're implying that it is. I do know that for as long as I've been paying attention a standard Republican refrain has been that if we don't lower our taxes to zero then all industries, in their game-theoretic wisdom, will evaporate from our lands. And yet businesses keep failing to migrate en masse to whichever Dakota has no taxes, and Minnesotan industry draws another day's breath.

To reiterate, I'm not saying you're wrong; but the causal chain is considerably more entropic than you or pg are letting on.

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Re:Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In by seanmcdirmid on Friday December 26, 2014 @08:40PM (#8801302)
It is actually quite economical to make software in the states, one of the reasons being our relatively sane immigration policy. But it wouldn't take much xenophobia to make china look good. America also can't sit on its hands and remain competitive; its a constant battle and we have to continuously adapt and tweek our policies to remain #1.

Disclosure: I'm an American who has worked for Microsoft in Beijing for 7+ years.

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