America doesn't want your High Tech jobs
anybeat.com
anybeat.com
The funny thing is we also got a 2 year tourist visa for the US so we can could travel around. It was such a painful process. You have to get there as early as possible or you will wait for hours. My appointment was at 9am but I got my visa at 11am. I arrived there at 7am. Once you go through security you cannot leave otherwise you lose your spot. They don't have toilets there so you're screwed if you have to go. I had to bring a gazillion documents proving I could support myself and it was all so unwelcoming.
I have always felt uneasy travelling through the US. It is almost as if they assume everybody is trying to smuggle themselves into the country to stay permanently.
The US government needs to chill.
"owing to Obamacare"? Really? You mean employers weren't paying employee health care before Obama?
You have to LOL at the reasoning in this article, and the poorly reasoned/thought out tirade against "liberals".
Wait, you mean, Singapore created all these incentives ... because of Obama, right?
The funniest thing about the "Obamacare" thing in this post is that the author is actually arguing for universal health care (guess what Singapore has? :). You're essentially offloading your corporate health care costs onto the government. Hehe.
Also, you apparently don't know much about Singapore. Their (quite excellent) health care system works by forced savings - it's not, in any way, "socialized medicine" as the term is used in the US.
In fact, government spending on health care in Singapore is around 3-4% of GDP. Government spending on health care in the US is approximately twice that, as a share of GDP. So yeah, moving from the US system to the Singapore system would be "offloading your corporate health care costs onto the government" if by that you mean "transferring health care costs from the government to the private sector".
But please, don't let me get in the way of a good partisan food fight.
(And as for the "meme" that high taxes in the US aren't really killing jobs... Let's see, unemployment in Singapore these days is around 2%. What's your explanation?)
You are correct that I don't know anything about Singapore other than what I read in the press like the Economist and the CIA Factbook.
However I do know quite a bit about analyzing high tech enterprises, and the creation of said enterprises. And that analysis is a bit more nuanced than 'health care is more expensive.'
The Singapore Statistics Office disagrees with some of your numbers [1] they claim 4% unemployment. But it doesn't say what they spend on health care.
But lets say your ideal employee in Singapore cost your $70,000 USD / year. In California you can get health care on an individual basis for $500/month for most people, $1000 a month for older people (60+), and a lot less for young healthy people. But lets say you spend $1000 a month. So that means a $12,000 per employee per year health cost penalty. Now 25 employees at 70K each is a salary pool of $1,750,000. If you hire Californians at $70,000 and give them each $12,000 for health care ($82,000 effective salary) then you can only hire $1,750,000/$82,000 or 21 of them (and $28,000 left over in your pool)
So here is a different, but an important question. Can you achieve with 21 engineers in California what you can achieve with 25 engineers in Singapore? (this happens to be an interesting number because for those of us who have lived in the Bay Area for a few decades there is a saying that goes "With 20 people and a good idea I can change the world!")
I'm not trying to take anything away from Singapore, I'm sure its a great place and everything I read says it has great infrastructure and a very business friendly climate. What I'm saying is that using health care costs in this way is not an effective reasoning tool with regards to a high tech endeavor. Twenty technical employees who have already done a start-up or two each are going to be hugely more productive getting a new endeavor off the ground.
[1] http://www.mom.gov.sg/statistics-publications/national-labou...
Next, let's assume you're correct about health care costs. There are still two logical errors in your argument:
1) There are a lot of differences between the US and Singapore. Health care is only one of them; the original article listed several more. Even if you're right that health care costs alone only lead to a 16% advantage (which is probably off by a factor of 3-4, given overall health care spending in each country), don't forget all the other areas.
2) Not everywhere is the Bay Area. Perhaps the Bay Area can compete with Singapore, but the Bay Area has a lot of unique advantages. Are we writing off everyone not in the Bay Area? And don't say "oh, they can just move here"; the infrastructure won't support it.
The original author wants to talk about Singapore and high tech jobs; you picked only one of several differences which made Singapore attractive, and then compared it to the most attractive region in the US. And even on that basis, it looks a bit like a toss up.
Let's close by turning back to Singapore. As you admit, Singapore is much more business friendly. And it has very enviable economic statistics. I already mentioned the 2% unemployment, so let's look at GDP per capita. Using PPP, Singapore comes in 3rd worldwide in 2011 according to the IMF[2], with a per capita GDP of $60k - 24% higher than the US.
Remember that per capita GDP is a measure of the value added in an economy. In concrete terms, those numbers mean that the average person in Singapore is so productive that they can afford a lifestyle 24% nicer than the average person in America. Your example tried to argue that Americans are so much more productive than Singaporeans that you can cover the health care costs and still come out ahead. The statistics say that on average, it actually the Singaporeans who are more productive.
(Mind you: Singapore is small, and in many ways unique. I'm not suggesting that it's possible or desirable to copy their model on the scale of the US. Also, they have high inequality, and poor protection of civil liberties. I suspect many Americans value their relatively low inequality and strong civil liberties. And yet...repealing Obamacare and properly reforming American health care to be along more Singaporean lines would not obviously lead to higher inequality or weaker civil liberties, and it is clear that it could lead to a wealthier society and higher job growth. Something to keep in mind...)
[1]: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STI... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...
Getting a EIN is also trivial, I got one on my phone, while signing up for a bank account for my LLC. It was just that quick and easy.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/obama-proposes-corporate-tax...
Granted, he doesn't want to reduce them as much as the Republicans do, but he does think they're too high.
My federal + SECA + state combined tax rate hits 37% at $50,000 per year in income. I have few deductions.
I'd like to see you justify me paying nearly 40% in taxes out of my income starting at $50k per year. And that doesn't count the zillion other taxes I pay throughout the course of existing. That's the thanks I get for trying to start a business and create value in the American economy. I get absolutely drilled by taxation.
1) It is too difficult to gain citizenship in the USA. We should make this process easier and attract people with high-tech degrees.
2) Our corporate tax rate is not too high. Think of all of the protections and benefits that this tax rate can afford businesses and citizens in the US. There are numerous examples, but we have a lot of public infrastructure that Singapore does not because of our high tax rate.