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Wednesday, January 07, 2004 |
 If I understand this right, I can, under Bush's new temporary guest worker program, hire people internationally and bring them in as temporary workers for three years. I am not sure that people understand the implications of this. What if IBM says that instead of shipping jobs to India, they will hire people from India (for three years under this program at $15 k a year -- people can live on this in the US, believe it or not) and bring them here for more intensive and collaborative jobs (at less total cost since they don't pay services to manage them remotely)? Other implications: this doesn't help Mexican workers at all (this is an open door to the rest of the world and makes low wage work in the US globally competitive rather than one based on proximity). It doesn't help US workers (in the short term) since this is a fast race to the bottom in wages (but Bush doesn't care about this). In the long run that trend reverses. There also doesn't seem to be any upper limits on how many people that can be included in this program (we could see tens of millions in next couple of years).
I am not negative on this if it eventually leads to citizenship. We want everyone that is capable of contributing. Let's open up and do what nobody else can.
5:14:29 PM 
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Is the motivation for terrorism negatively correlated with education? No, the inverse is true. The greater the education, the more likely a person is to be a terrorist. Surveys of Palestinians indicate that there is greater than 20% more support for terrorism by those with education vs. illiterates. Over 95% of educated Saudis support Al Qaeda (an intelligence study). More than half of all Palestinian suicide bombers had college educations (many times their percentage of the population).
4:30:55 PM
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BB. Bad cockpit UI can crash planes. Very true. BTW: Boeing aircraft have a much more difficult UI than Airbus. Put that into your personal safety calculation the next time you board an aircraft.
4:18:56 PM
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AFA. The behind the scenes story on how the F-16, an amazing and popular fighter aircraft, came into being. Turning radius comparison between the F-16 and the F-4:
Small aircraft might also be the way to break the ever-rising unit cost of fighters, thought Hillaker, Boyd, and a few others. They plotted flyaway costs of successive aircraft, beginning with the P-51, and discovered that cost-per-pound increased at the same rate as the overall cost. (This ended up being true for the F-16 as well—its cost-per-pound was significantly higher than previous models, but, since it was much smaller, overall cost was kept down.)
2:29:04 PM
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WSJ. Intel launches $200 m Digital Home Fund aimed at small start-ups that make hardware and software for consumers. This fund is to bridge the divide between self-financing/friend/angel financing and traditional "home-run oriented" venture capital.
10:28:22 AM
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One thing we need to guard against is the potential that the profits generated by contractors in Iraq will generate a strong lobby to continue the occupation (or some hybrid civilian/military version). Right now, there are over ~13,000 private contractors in Iraq (many, many more in support functions outside of Iraq) that generate $13-$15 b in revenue.
8:53:01 AM
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Business Week. More Skype hype. Zennstrom: The biggest hurdle for people who want to use Skype right now is that they don't have microphones, headsets, and USB telephones. We're talking to manufacturers right now in hopes of making it easier for people to get them.
8:27:32 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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