Wealth Distribution

[Corth]

Sarvis,

Again.. i will reiterate.. I could not care less about the amount. It could be $1 or $1 billion, the fact remains that its not the government's business to give my tax dollars to its charity of choice.

As for Iraq, the purpose of money being spent there is to further the strategic interests of the US, which is a legitimate use of taxpayer funds. Whether it actually is furthering our interests is for another debate (please lets not get into that here).

Corth

[teflor the ranger]

You know, Corth, that isolationist attitute really worked well for the 19th-20th century Chinese.

Furthermore, participation in the only successful non-corrupt program in the UN does further US interests.

[Jegzed]

As for Iraq, the purpose of money being spent there is to further the strategic interests of the US, which is a legitimate use of taxpayer funds. Whether it actually is furthering our interests is for another debate (please lets not get into that here).

I dunno if you realise or remember it Corth.. But once upon a time, USA was loved around the world and respected by people, cause it was a nation that helped and built up those ravaged by wars and misfortune.

Here's a chance to do that in an area, without having to go to war with it.

Spending money on helping Tsunami victims might not do a HELL of a lot more good for US strategic interests than controlling the iraqi oil-pipelines, but it is a good PR strategy.

The area hit worst is filled with poor moslems, one of the main recruiting grounds for fundie terrorists in the world.
Spending a few hundred million dollars on helping people there and sending loads of aid workers will definitely make alot of people there more thankful and positive to the US.

I say its smart use of a little taxmoney to build up the image of USA again.

You know.. like a good leader behaves.. USA is the leader of the world, and need to use both the stick (invade and destroy rogue nations), and the carrot (help those in need in severe crisises.)

[Corth]

Jegzed..

At least you are justifying the expenditure as furthering US interests. Seen through that perspective, we can move on to whether these are interests we want to further. I do not have much hope that we can win the hearts and minds of crazy fundamentalist muslims. As far as donating some money to avoid starvation and disease, I'm all for it. But I don't think it should be official US policy to do so. You cannot buy anyone's respect and friendship. Egypt gets a couple of billion dollars a year from us, and its virulently anti-american. If the US is going to buy something, it has to be more tangible than friendship or respect. Perhaps a committment to crack down on fundamentalist mosques, or to bring troops to iraq and assist us there.

Rathipon

[Raiwen]

Why not outsource this to India?

Some programming jobs could be outsourced. Small projects, with not much riding on them.

I worked for a company who had outsourced a project to a group of Russian coders. It was increasingly difficult to send through change requests, schedule meetings (timezone issues), and get an end product we were happy with.

The end result: we had a program that did 70% of what we asked, was commented all in russian, and was not very maintainable code (slapped together). The programmers after delivering the product had lost all interest in supporting it.

We eventually scratched everything they did and replaced it with in house developed stuff.

Overall this was a $300,000 mistake when you factor in what we paid them, the salaries of the in-house programmers we had to hire, and the customer contracts we were not able to satisy.

On the other hand, we could have easily outsourced our level 1 tech support, and not lost any sleep at night.

[Sarvis]

Why not outsource this to India?

Some programming jobs could be outsourced. Small projects, with not much riding on them.

The kind you give to entry level software engineers...?


<b>Teflor</b>

I hesitate to answer you at all, since it's paramount to arguing... but the reason is that you'd still probably get badly commented, non-working code but the comments would be in Indian and you wouldn't know who to yell at about it.

[Sarvis]

Jegzed..

At least you are justifying the expenditure as furthering US interests.

What, it's somehow better when Jegzed says it?

[teflor the ranger]

Heh. I have no argument with you guys here. I have no love for out-sourcing.

But American work takes on a appearance of being less and less quality as time goes on. Smart businesses have taken their work elsewhere.

It's the difference between paying someone 60k a year to f--- up, and 20k a year to f--- up the same.

[Sarvis]

Heh. I have no argument with you guys here. I have no love for out-sourcing.

But American work takes on a appearance of being less and less quality as time goes on. Smart businesses have taken their work elsewhere.

It's the difference between paying someone 60k a year to f--- up, and 20k a year to f--- up the same.

And why should anyone put effort into their work when the company will just lay them off anyway?

You're getting a generation now that has watched their parents go in early and work late every night, put in 150% at work and then just get laid off the moment they can build a cheaper factory in some third world country. The concept of job security is long gone, and no matter how good an employee is these days they are a single "market adjustment" from unemployment.

So why bother to turn in good work?

I'm one of the best bursters at FedEx right now, and the only one who can do both kinds of bursting, batch scanning, and the various types of indexing.

Right now I'm scared shitless that I'll be losing my job because things have slowed way down since Christmas.

Meanwhile there's several people there who hardly do anything at all, and I don't feel like I'm in a better position than they are.

[teflor the ranger]

Well, the truth of the matter is that the American economy is inseperable with the world economy.

And America is having a hard time figuring out what exactly this means and what to do about it.

F--- Walmart, by the way.

[Ambar]

Right now I'm scared shitless that I'll be losing my job because things have slowed way down since Christmas.

it's just back to normal now, no worries there .. happens in retail too

[Sarvis]

Right now I'm scared shitless that I'll be losing my job because things have slowed way down since Christmas.

it's just back to normal now, no worries there .. happens in retail too

Yeah, and in retail they'd be laying off a huge number of seasonal employees right about now too.

Today was fairly busy though, and there IS a posting for my position on the board so I guess they aren't laying everyone off just yet.

Well, either that or they wanna replace everyone... heh.