Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Assault of Thoughts - 5/14/2013

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

- David Henderson asks an interesting question here. Click through and give him your thoughts. I've got several comments in there.

- Brookings had a short response to our EPI report last week. They get into the data more than many of the other responses, but there are a lot of problems with it. Hal and I have subsequent responses mostly drafted. Another take on the problems with the Brookings paper is provided by Ron Hira here. I think he overstates the issue of the proprietary data (other people could FOIA this and what else are they supposed to do - not use microdata they have available?). His other critiques are stronger.

- New efforts to address gender pay inequality in the federal government (HT - Kate).

- Paul Krugman on similarities between Japan and the UK in the 1930s.

- The green card lottery is threatened in the new immigration reform discussion. Fantastic. Cut the program that gives everyone in the world that wants to be here the same shot - the closest thing to "all men created equal" we've got in immigration policy - and replace it with programs that essentially say "this person is more desirable than that person so we'll take him". There are problems with the green card lottery, but the mindset behind this sort of move is not encouraging to me.

4 comments:

  1. FOIA?

    F!!k off in absentia?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)

      For certain records. These are clearly data the USCIS is not concerned about making available.

      Delete
  2. I skimmed over the post at Brookings. It's Brookings -- naturally, I was extremely impressed.

    I do find it puzzling, and a bit sad, that the US government and the mighty American free enterprise system can do nothing at all to increase our native-born stock of scientists and engineers and programmers. It seemed so easy to increase those numbers back in the 1960s! How very peculiar that with all the brainpower devoted today to studying these issues, that no one in existence can imagine any reasons at all for our current shortages.

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  3. "I do find it puzzling, and a bit sad, that the US government and the mighty American free enterprise system can do nothing at all to increase our native-born stock of scientists and engineers and programmers."

    Well, there are those who claim that we have a glut of scientists and engineers. AFAICT, we seem to have plenty of CS graduates, too. (But I live near Silicon Valley. ;)) I also hear that the trend is that we are graduating twice as many STEM workers as there are new job openings, and that promises to be the case for years to come.

    There are contradictory claims out there. Cynical as I am, I am inclined to believe that the claims that we do not have enough scientists, engineers, and programmers are bogus. We just don't have many who are willing to work for $20/hr.

    Daniel, this is right up your alley, yes?

    ReplyDelete

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