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Comment by xxSparkleSxx | Hacker News Reader

Damn.

We might actually have to start investing equally in US children of all socioeconomic classes to ensure we have enough entrepreneurs and bright minds to compete in the global economy.

EDIT: WOW, didn't think such an obvious comment would be so controversial (points are swinging up and down cyclically).

Do ya'll think we are extremely efficient at turning potential into value from all of our current citizens? Do you NOT want to do anything but fail if Trump severely fucks up immigration and our economy?

Or does it hurt your feelings to think that everything you've achieved in life wasn't 100% through your own hard work?

I'm confused.

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I don't see a problem with this. Growing up poor and being an african american, if I wasn't a self taught software engineer, I would probably be in jail or dead with the rest of my siblings. Growing up poor and having to attend local schools are a complete utter joke in this country. Only thing they prepare us for is gangs and jail. Looks like a lot would have to be done for this to change. And given what's going in trump's america, i doubt things will ever change. :(

I'm sure you had it worse, but public schools in non poor areas are pretty shitty too, unless you are in honors/ap courses.

And this problem with our schools existed long before trump, and not to sound conspiritorial, but the both GOP and neoliberals like Hillary both seem to have interests in keeping public schools underperforming.

And it isn't a funding problem, either. We spend more per capita on education than most, if not all, other countries.

That somewhat depends on what you consider education spending. We waste ridiculous amounts of money doing things only tangentially related to education.

Median teacher salary in the US public schools = $57,200. And 50.4 million students attend public elementary and secondary schools combine. Teacher student ratio is nominally 16.1 so ~3.5k* per student. However, the total spending per student is actually ~$12.7k core and 15.5k w/ indirect support.

This gap covers support staff, buildings, equipment, trips, testing, etc but most other school systems do that stuff for far less money. https://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2014-Indicator%20B1%20(eng).pdf has PPP numbers for this stuff. But, it assumes each country is using the same metrics.

*Note that's just salary benefits get complicated to calculate.

What a strange comment. Of course the costs of an education don't just include the teachers salary.

Ok, fair enough. But only 11%? Retric's numbers suggest only 11% of education funding is for teacher salaries. Does that not sound as crazy and outrageous to you as it does to me?

Especially when the system seems to be so ... dysfunctional. I don't know a single teacher who hasn't had to personally shell out money for school supplies for their students because their school ran out of paper or something else essential.

Update: I misunderstood Retric. Teacher salaries make up 22% of total education spending. I guess that's ... better?

Is there some waste in school systems? Sure. But probably not as much as you think.

The cost of buildings, the maintenance, insurance, water, electricity all add up very quickly. Associated staff costs aren't cheap either - many schools have a nurse on staff to deal with injuries and illness, for example. Counselors/psychologists help troubled students. Learning specialists help deal with certain problems - as an example, when I was in kindergarten I was sent to a speech therapist a couple of times a week. Teaching assistants help care for the more severely disabled - some of them basically have a dedicated assistant based on their disability.

Buses aren't cheap either, and in rural areas, you might need several smaller buses to get everyone to school in a reasonable amount of time.

Schools in more urban areas often have security guards, and most schools have put more money into physical security as well with the perceived rise in school shootings (not trying to start a debate as to whether or not this is happening).

Administrators and secretaries plan and organize everything that isn't directly related to teaching, handle some disciplinary issues, and interface with other government agencies, the school board, and the board of education at the state and sometimes even federal level.

Education is expensive, and you can't start cutting out pieces of this without very quickly impacting the students.

> Is there some waste in school systems? Sure. But probably not as much as you think.

This honestly applies to many areas of government, not just education. However, for right wing propaganda, it serves as a convenient boogy man to ram through tax cuts for the wealthy.

Refactoring the same comment:

Cops and school nurses may come out of the 'school' budget line item but they are very much health care and policing spending. If another country has that same nurse, but takes it out of their public healthcare budget then their 'education' spending numbers will be significantly lower without lowering their total government spending.

Similarly if free universal healthcare is part of the national budget then the reported costs for every worker in the school system will be several hundred a month lower. Even though government spending is similar.

Not sure if anyone does this. But, another example is school buses could just as easily come out of the public transit expenses as the school budget. The distinction is rather arbitrary as you are moving people even if you are taking them to school.

PS: Net result we might be spending more or less money because your comparing relatively arbitrary budget numbers across different systems. Much like the US taking the prison budget to cover for the lack of a well functioning healthcare system for the mentally ill.

> Buses aren't cheap either, and in rural areas, you might need several smaller buses to get everyone to school in a reasonable amount of time.

So... have them take the regular buses? Seems incredibly wasteful to try to fill one bus with school children when those areas are (or should be!) covered by the regular bus routes.

> Schools in more urban areas often have security guards, and most schools have put more money into physical security as well with the perceived rise in school shootings (not trying to start a debate as to whether or not this is happening).

WTF?

Most rural areas do not have bus service available, and even in larger areas (think cities with up to 100,000 people), bus services are quite limited. Outside of large cities the US simply does not have the same culture regarding public transportation that you find in much of the world. Also, although sometimes it is wasteful, in areas that support multiple schools (think elementary, middle, and high school), starting times are already staggered so that the same buses might pick up high school students first, then middle school students, and finally elementary school students, and have similar routes for taking them home. So while there's certainly downtime, it's not quite as bad as it might sound. Finally, I believe - though I might be wrong - that school buses have different safety standards than other buses, which could cause problems for districts that were to try and push the students to city/county bus services.

Regarding security, I can use the high school I went to as an example. When I went there, it was a very open campus, and fences were only used around the athletics fields, and were more to stop balls from heading into the street. During expansions and renovations, however, they built additional buildings around the edges of campus to act as barriers, and added more fencing, leaving only about 3 entrances to the grounds that were more easily monitored. This was despite the fact that it was a very safe area with low crime. I personally don't like it, but I suppose it's an easy way for schools to show that they're trying to make it harder for things to happen.

"regular buses" don't exist here outside of large cities.

And remember that, as a rule of thumb, add about another third to salaries to come up with total comp (health care, pension, etc.)

Another third of the salaries or another third of the total?

Another third of salaries, i.e. if someone's paying you $100K/year, you're probably costing them more like $133K (before office space, equipment, management overhead, etc.) because of benefits.

3.5 / 15.5 = 22.6%.

Haha - oh goodness. I thought you meant indirect support was in addition to core. My bad. Not so outrageous.

Yea, it might not have been clear.

I just mean there is a sliding scale where you can include a school nurse as education spending or healthcare spending and countries don't always slice stuff the same way. Is reduced cost lunches welfare or education, how about subsidized school supplies?

The U.S. should be doing their very best to have the strongest possible education system for all its citizens (and non-citizens living in the country long term). As should any reasonable country. But the fact remains that, unless you are counting with excellent execution in that regard from the U.S. and abysmal negligence from the rest of the world, you simply can't extract the same talent from a population of 400 million than from one of 7 billion. The U.S. benefits enormously from immigration, in ways many don't even perceive. If the flow of minds into the country is ever truly stopped, no amount of improvement in the internal education pipeline will be enough to maintain the U.S. dominant position in science and technology.

Now, you might be ok with a broader geographical distribution of this type of talent, or argue that it will happen eventually no matter what. I hear you, on both counts. But, as a non-U.S. citizen, I am actually pretty surprised that the country would chose to forgo the advantage it enjoys by being a preferred immigration destination for so many skilled people...

It also seems to be done due to nothing but rank xenophobia. I mean, what is the excuse here? "They are stealing our jobs!"? This is literally a visa where the requirement is to create jobs for American citizens, and most of these tech firms will do so by exporting goods mostly to foreign markets (the market for most tech startups is not over 50% local to the U.S.) and/or creating local technology and expertise. Hell, once profitable, you can and should tax these companies to help provide for that very same education you want for American citizens! As well as UBI for those whose jobs are being displaced by automation. Startup visas are as win-win as it possibly gets.

Final point: The party and particular administration that seems to be most against immigration also seems to be the one most against science or robust public education. The foreseeable end result is grim, even if these policies last only 4 years: a "lost half-decade" in which the best domestic talent is under-nourished and the best foreign talent goes elsewhere.

The complaints that I read are often that they aren't actually jobs that couldn't be fulfilled here, with local talent. There have been many claims of training your replacement. If you're training them, it seems most probable that you're able to do the job.

There is only a small subset that seems to just be bigoted. And, yes, they do exist. I am pretty sure they are low in number. Most of the complaints are about things like body shops but there have even been complaints involving Disney.

Maybe I'm wrong, but if you can train your replacement, we probably didn't need a replacement. It's not like they move them up the ladder. They lay them off and pay the people with visas very little money, comparatively.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think, if true, they have a legitimate complaint. Most of them seem to agree that it should be bringing in experts and not lower paid people that need to be trained by the people they are replacing.

So, what do you think? Would you agree that there are legitimate concerns? Many of these complaints do not, to me, appear xenophobic or racist.

You know what can solve most of the issues?

Better worker protections.

Stopping immigration doesn't stop you from having to train your replacement, they'll just be American instead. Making companies have to treat their workers with a bit of civility will solve a lot of problems.

Alright, I can agree with that. How do you propose doing so, in this specific political climate?

You change the environment. Be clear - this rhetoric, which is so naively being echoed here on HN, of all places, is based on assumptions of a world which does not exist.

In this specific case, and depth in the comment tree, there have been 2 incorrect assertions made, the clarification of which leads to the truth.

The first is - maybe now america will invest in its own talent

the second is - many times people are being told to train their own replacement

The issue is that job distribution is bi-modal in tech.

Theres a cluster at the very high end (jobs as a google scientist), and theres a cluster at the lower end (guys maintaining web pages).

The talent people compete for around the world is for the top end of the curve - and america has been sucking these people away from their home country for ages.

Furthermore - I have seen American talent in American colleges, you do a very good job of converting people into smart people.

This process has only recently been corrupted because of the poor job scenario for the lower and middle ends of the job curve. But its still damn good.

Closing those doors, after the rank xenophobia being displayed by the Administration means you lose out on the part of the curve you want to be competitive on.

Rhetoric doesn't do much good. I appreciate the reply but you may just have well said, "Magic!" ;-)

To be clear, I'm not sure my question even really has an answer. I understand the need to attract top talent. If we don't, they are just going to go to work somewhere else.

At the same time, do we really want to replace local talent with not as talented, but less expensive, people? There are some big implications there and I have seen reasoned arguments to support doing so. It hits very strongly on the concept of what duties the government has to its citizens and to the rest of humanity who are not citizens.

I really don't know. I don't have a solution. I can do your math homework, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to realistically determine the answers to these questions.

I suspect that nobody would listen, even if I did have the answers. Ah well...

>do we really want to replace local talent with not as talented, but less expensive, people?

This is a false dichotomy. These people could be just as skilled, if not more. So then your only argument is localism.

Also, if we _let immigrants compete in the labor market properly_ by not handcuffing people like H-1Bs to their company.... they won't be cheaper. They could just get poached by another company or take a job at market rates.

If they were just as skilled, they'd not be being trained by the people they are replacing.

That's very wrong POV - you can train someone else to work with tooling/software/processes specific to your company, while still being less skilled or otherwise beneficial than him/her overall.

Ah then I suppose we are in a bind because the party mentioned a couple parents up also seems to hate worker protections...

Others are giving better replies to this than I can. I will just note two things:

1) This is a particular case where making immigration difficult to the people involved directly results in less jobs for Americans, as observed above. Yet that's still what is being done. It is clear from it that, for some people, the desire to reduce immigration is not just related to job security. This doesn't mean there aren't legitimate concerns, just that it doesn't seem to me that the explicit legitimate concerns are the only issue here.

2) The particular cohort of H1-B developers I am more familiar with compete with American grads for equal jobs and equal salary/RSUs, and are nobody's 'cheaper replacement'. Now, I am not saying that what you describe doesn't happen. But you know what would help there? Making it easier for people in H1-B's to change employers or even stay unemployed (even on their own money, without benefits) for a few months in the U.S. searching for a job if their employer is exploitative!

There is a sort of issue 2.1. here that I will acknowledge: yes, having more skilled people come in increases supply and lowers prices for labor, slightly. But most of the jobs in question are at companies that target a global market, this means not making use of a global labor pool is both ideologically suspect and a bad long term plan. Talented people in other places will still compete with you, and now you don't even get their taxes or the effect their talent creates in the available job opportunities in your area. If, say, you keep all the Amazon jobs for Americans but end up buying all your stuff from Alibaba the world over, was that a good outcome for you?

So your reply to this...

> > This is literally a visa where the requirement is to create jobs for American citizens

is this?

> The complaints that I read are often that they aren't actually jobs that couldn't be fulfilled here, with local talent

No, I was responding to the questions asked, more or less. It is merely a verbose reply to point out that there are some legitimate concerns about guest workers.

I don't expect that to change in any meaningful way. I would say there are no reasons to expect any different. I'd not be surprised to see Company X 'invest' a certain amount in someone just to get a cheaper person here and then get their investment money back, probably with interest, while paying the imported labor very poorly.

Hell, it'd probably be even less expensive because said company will just use said startup as a contractor. I have no reason to suspect they will doing any additional oversight or enforcement.

You just described capitalism as it exists today. Even if you did away with immigration, your problem has barely seen any solution at all.

If your fear is being replaced by someone who is ready to work for less. There are enough kids who will do anything for a job, including taking a good pay cut. To replace you.

The real issue you must be worried about being relevant to the work you are doing. Being productive, resourceful and keeping your skills up to date. And yes never putting yourself in a situation where you think some particular work is beneath your station.

Oh, no. I am quite happily retired.

However, I would suggest that we have a moral obligation to avoid sinking as low as we possibly can. Yes, if people are hungry, they will work for pennies on the dollar.

Ethically, I would suggest we avoid desperate people en masse, for a whole mess of reasons. Hell, I can make a financial argument that suggests we not do that. You get better work from content people who have the means to consume.

I guess it's more a thought exercise. It's probably up to us, as individuals, to do the right things. We don't really have much history of doing so, collectively. Buggered if I have the answers.

For me, I've always liked highlighting the problem at hand. It can be multi-faceted with different actors wanting mutually exclusive things - where the resolution is violence.

But in talking of these, I see it more akin to the way Open Source software is up front and public about it - with the idea that enough eyeballs, these problems can be worked with. Being able to even frame the question, with politically charged areas like this, is a step in the right direction.

And no single person is expected to figure it out. But a thousand of us could.

Are we really extracting from a talent pool of 7 billion?

The problems we have in America are the same if not much worse in most of the world (except for Europe, I imagine). What % of children in China and India do not have access to decent education or opportunities? I think it's pretty high.

My thought process was inspired by the recent article on the estimated 5 million geniuses in India, most of which will go on to lead lives in poverty.

Immigrants do not just bring their intellect. The imaginative capacity, courage, and tenacity required to move across countries and often continents are very helpful for developing new ventures and technologies.

The 5 million number is vastly exaggerated if you go for a real meaning of the word 'genius'. For example, Einstein's IQ is reportedly 160 and assuming normal distribution that is about 1 in 32,000. Even if everyone in India receives the same opportunities as Einstein did from their childhood, the number would be 1.34 billion/32,000 = 42,000.

Not to mention that IQ alone is far from adequate. Imagination, persistence, and courage are required for intellectual distinction. That's why there are so few accomplished geniuses in the world.

> Are we really extracting from a talent pool of 7 billion?

No. Or rather we are doing it badly. But we don't do any better if we geographically segregate people who otherwise might want to work together. It is an orthogonal (albeit incredibly important) problem. As I said, all of our countries should be investing more in education, in addition to having humane and sensible immigration policies and a reasonable social safety net. But in any case, there are more skilled people in the whole world right now than in the U.S. alone, by construction...

Our domestic talent pool has been decades on the decline for lack of support, uncorrelated with which side of the party aisle the current administration has been.

Unlikely to happen. based on both, our history of good intentions and poor execution, and the current secretary of education who's working on funneling more folks into religious schools.

That's a solid upvote from me. But then again I had the good luck to be born in Norway, a country where education, health care and all is truly an equal opportunity (ie disregarding family wealth) prospect.

Who's "We"? From the context it seems clear you must be talking about US citizens and not non-American HN readers, but aside from that it's not clear. Do you mean Donald Trump, the US Federal Government, individual states, parents of children, or someone else?

No reason you can't both invest in kids, and welcome people.

you can, and you should.

but it seems like the us has it made right now, a substantial amount of talent from overseas and abysmal investment in the native populace.

if you want to keep underinvesting in education, and keep a strong presence in new technologies/science/commerce...why would you turn off the magic spigot?

even if you started trying to right the ship of education, there's no way you could compensate for the talent thats coming in across the border, particularly in the short term.

> abysmal investment in the native populace.

Yes, that's absolutely true. I'm not much of an expert in that policy area, although it does seem the Bureau of Indian Affairs isn't working out well in some ways.

Somehow it is ending up being neither

didn't think such an obvious comment would be so controversial

There's a lot of implicit assumptions in your original comment, and immigration policy is a politically extremely loaded subject, so people are almost inevitably going to project additional inferences onto your remarks inssofar as they seem to resemble well-known political arguments.

Yep. We would have had many fewer startups that became unicorns without immigrants. And without America being a place that is open and hospitable to entrepreneurs we will lose our edge.

> We might actually have to start investing equally in US children

Who is we?

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