Saturday, June 26, 2010
Science Sweat Shops - Lobbyist "Shortage" Games Yet Again
Miller-McCune magazine has an article titled, The Real Science Gap, that discusses how Americans are being driven out of advanced science and math careers by cheap foreign labor and shameful university practices.
Yet, the business and institutional lobbyists keep claiming there is an "education gap" that causes American students to avoid STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). This is a bunch of malarkey. First they gutted agriculture, then manufacturing, and now STEM and our research backbone.
It all starts out when lobbyists claim there is a "shortage" of Americans to do a particular kind of job in order to justify the hiring of non-citizens or off-shoring the work. This is all so that they can pay out lower wages for the same work. The lobbyists' shortage story is usually a lie, and objective studies usually prove them wrong.
I've personally witnessed abuses of the H-1B visa program whereby American citizens are passed over for foreign "guest" workers (see side-bar). Thus, this strikes close to home.
How are we going to have all those wonderful war machines that conservatives love so much if only our enemies know how to make them? The endless search for cheaper labor is going to bite us in the.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
WSJ Econ Quiz Gimmicks - Murdoch Stretching the Truth
A Wall Street Journal opinion piece claims according to research that progressives "flunk" economic questions more often than conservatives. The implication is that conservatives are economically smarter.
First off, economics is still more art than science. The original models based on Adam Smith's ideas have proven too simplistic, and the hard parts; especially with regard to risk, bubbles, instability, and pollution; have yet to be solved.
Failure of most economists to predict the mortgage meltdown is manifestation of this knowledge gap. If their models were near perfect, they would have known about it. (A few got lucky, and did predict it, but cannot turn it into a reliable math model.)
Take the article's primary example question: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." Using a cartoon version of the Adam Smith model, the answer is generally "yes", which is how the WSJ article scores it. However, in actual practice there are often complex and unforeseen forces that simplistic models just plain miss. Conservatives tend to prefer simple sloganistic metaphors to model life, religion, and economics. Progressives on the other hand tend to view life as more complicated and intertwined, and are naturally skeptical of simplistic slogans and solutions.
Back to the example, if you build more houses, then maybe people will just have more babies and fill them up anyhow. A biology expert may be more likely to apply population systems knowledge into such questions than somebody without such a background. If you give a tray of bacteria more food, initially each cell will have more to eat. But after a while they will multiply and the scarcity will return. Food would not continue to be "more affordable" (easier to obtain).
Some big cities found out that when they built more freeways, rather than reduce traffic congestion, they eventually just filled right back up and were just as jammed as before. People started choosing jobs and homes that took "advantage" of the new freeways and thus re-flooded them back to prior levels.
Second, what if the housing restrictions were on upper-crust housing? If there were limits on the building of expensive houses, then perhaps houses more affordable to the lower and middle class would be available, at least in that area. The question didn't say what kind of restriction was applied.
In summary, many of WSJ's questions don't have simple yes or no answers in practice. They are more points of discussion than questions. Society is not simple and anybody who sells simple answers, such as Murdoch's various "works", is usually full of it. (Some of the other quiz questions are addressed in my "Trade Myths" article.)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Boehner Bashes Beatle Because Bush Bypassed Books
"House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is demanding that Paul McCartney apologize for expressing his gratitude that America again has a president "who knows what a library is." -
Huffington Post
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