On November 22, 2014, Tracey Lien writes in the Los Angeles Times:
The presidential orders on immigration Thursday night offered little relief to the nation’s technology industry, with company executives, venture capitalists and lobbyists expressing frustration that Congress hasn’t moved to improve the processes that would allow more highly skilled foreigners to live and work in the U.S.Tech industry leaders have long complained about a skills gap in the U.S. workforce they say makes it difficult to fill technical positions. Their key concerns include the current cap on the number of H-1B work visas issued each year, the complicated and red tape-wrapped process of obtaining a green card, and the lack of a direct path from a student visa to a green card.
“The caps that are put on visas are a huge burden for us,” said Shan Sinha, co-founder and chief executive of Silicon Valley start-up Highfive. “We need to grow three times over this next year, and given that we have a shortage of qualified people here in the country and we can’t hire the people who are very well qualified from outside the country, it means we’re artificially capped in our ability to grow.”
Sinha believes the current system puts start-ups at a disadvantage because they don’t have the resources that tech giants like Microsoft and Google have to secure the visas when they become available. Only 65,000 H-1B visas are issued each year, the majority of which are snapped up by large corporations weeks after being made available, Sinha said.
“Every October, the cycle begins again,” said Gil Elbaz, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles start-up Factual. “Large companies that have large legal staffs dominate the process and quickly use up the quota. If you’re not on the ball, you have to wait another year.”
This wait isn’t just hurting smaller companies. Tech lobbyists and venture capitalists believe it’s hurting the American economy.
Paul Maeder is a partner at venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners, which invests in Silicon Valley companies like Leap Motion, Jaunt and Scopely. He told The Times that the difficulties associated with getting foreign workers into America has caused his companies to outsource big pieces of their software to workers in Eastern Europe and Asia.
“We’re essentially spending our money building assets that we don’t control outside the country, and it often ends up competing with us,” Maeder said. “This is a very sophisticated way of shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Congressional action is required to change H-1B visa caps.
The president’s address did bring the tech industry some good news, with the announcement of plans to expand and extend the use of the existing Optional Practical Training program for foreign students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics at U.S. universities. The current program allows recent foreign graduates to work in the U.S. for up to a year to get training in a field that complements their studies.
The expansion of the program could alleviate some of the immediate demand for domestic workers in the fields of science and tech, giving start-ups and larger corporations a greater pool to hire from. But even this is seen by some as only a Band-Aid fix to a bigger problem.
There is currently no way for a foreign student studying in the U.S. to go from a student visa to a green card; the path to a green card requires the student to get an H-1B visa. So even if tech companies can hire more recent foreign graduates, they eventually come back up against the H-1B visa shortage.
“There’s no dual intent for students,” said Scott Corley, co-founder of technology and policy consulting firm Corley Pipes and former director of government affairs for Microsoft. “They make a promise when they come to school in the States that they won’t apply [for a green card]. We need the State Department to change the dual intent standard so that we can have students never have to go onto a temporary visa, and go into the green card line. We need that early adjustment, and we need the Optional Practical Training to extend long enough for the green card to become a reality for them.”
Without these changes, Corley said, the U.S. is experiencing brain drain that could hurt the economy when students who are trained in the U.S. return to their home countries to start competing companies. “That’s the danger,” he said, “that more will choose to build outside the U.S.”
Tech industry groups like the Communications Workers of America and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) said the president’s reforms were a good start, but the groups also reiterated the need for congressional reform.
“While we appreciate the president’s efforts to address the problems in our employment-based system and look forward to further details,” said Dean Garfield, president and chief executive of the ITI, “it is disappointing that neither he nor Congress have been able to seize the opportunity to accelerate economic growth by fixing our broken immigration system.”
While education is critical to our future societal development, we should be developing and providing advanced education opportunities for Americans, not foreigners. Education in America needs to be universally free through all levels––kindergarden, grade school, high school, and university (BS, MS and Phd.) so that there will never be a shortage of qualified workers and abate the investments now being made outside the United States, which ONLY develops and shifts abroad high-technology job opportunities in science, engineering and mathematics. Education is, without question, a taxpayer investment that will benefit the future of our country.
At present, for the most part, foreign students studying in America, are representative of privileged access to American institutions of higher learning because their families have sufficient income to pay the tuitions, which support our institutions. As tuition costs continue to inflate, fewer and fewer Americans can afford, even with student loans, to earn a university education. This is putting more pressure on our institutions to reach out to wealthy families abroad who desire that their children benefit from a university education in America.
As for the tech industry sector, as with EVERY business, reducing costs maximizes profits and sustainable success. And being able to draw foreign talent educated in our universities provides opportunities for the tech industry to use cheap foreign workers rather than American talent.
But in reality, given the current invisible structure of the economy, except for a relative few, the majority of the population, no matter how well educated, will not be able to find a job that pays sufficient wages or salaries to support a family or prevent a lifestyle, which is gradually being crippled by near poverty or poverty earnings. Thus, education is not the panacea, though, as noted, it is critical for our future societal development. And younger, as well as older people, will increasingly find it harder and harder to secure a well-paying job––for most, their ONLY source of income––and will find themselves dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and disguised or concealed.
Why? Because tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are exponentially occurring, which results in less job opportunities as production shifts from people making things to “machines” (the non-human factor) of technology making things. The combination of cheap global labor costs and lower, long-term-invested “machine” costs has forced the worth of labor downward, and this will continue to be the reality. Our only way to far greater prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice is to embrace technological innovation and invention and the resulting human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc. as the primary economic engine of growth.
While education is critical, the result as related to the human input factor of production is that our scientists, engineers, and executive managers are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital (the workers are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions), are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.
But significantly, unless we reform our system to empower EVERY American to acquire, via pure, interest-free insured capital credit loans, viable full-ownership holdings (and thus entitlement to full-dividend earnings) in the companies growing the economy, with the future earnings of the investments paying for the initial loan debt to acquire ownership, the concentration of ownership of ALL future productive capital will continue to be amassed by a wealthy minority ownership class. Companies will continue to globalize in search of “customers with money” or simply fail, as exponentially there will be fewer and fewer customers to support their businesses worldwide. Why, because the majority will be disconnected from the dividend income derived from the non-human means of production that is replacing the need for labor workers who earn wages and salaries, which are then used to purchase products and services.
Soon, industrial monopoly capitalism will reach its twin goals: concentration of productive capital ownership among the elite ownership class and work performed with as few labor workers and the lowest possible wages and salaries. The question to be answered is “What then?”
The transition to the non-human factor of production has been occurring for decades but is now experiencing exponential development––the result of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. As costs for computer-controlled machines become less than the cost of human workers, and the skills and productivity of the machines exceed those of human workers, then robot worker numbers will rapidly increase and enable our society to build architectural wonders, revitalize and redevelop our cities and build new cities of wonder and amazement, along with support energy, transport, and communications systems. Super-automation and robotics is transforming the world of manufacturing as robots become lighter, more mobile, and more flexible with better sensing, perception, decision-making, and planning and control capabilities due to advanced digital computerization. Super-automation and robotics operated by human-intelligent computerization will dramatically improve productivity and provide skills and abilities previously unique to human workers. This will effectively increase the size of the labor work force globally beyond that provided by human workers, no matter what the level of education attained. With advanced human-level artificial intelligence, computer-controlled machines will be able to learn new knowledge and skills by simply downloading software programs and apps. This means that the years of training that apply to personal human development will no longer apply to the further sophistication and operation of the machines. The result will be that productivity will soar while the need and demand for human labor will further decline.
Unfortunately, in the long term, unless the vast majority of people have a substantial and viable source of income other than wages and salaries, the impact of technological innovation and invention as embodied in human-level artificial intelligence, machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc. will be devastating.
There are ONLY two options: either “Own or Be Owned.” The “Owned” model is what our society practices today and is expressed as monopoly capitalism (concentrated ownership) or socialism (taxpayer-supported redistributed social benefits). The “Own” model, or what my colleagues and I term the Just Third Way (see http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/thirdway-intro.htm), has yet to be implemented on the scale necessary to empower every man, woman, and child to acquire private, individual ownership stakes in the future income-producing productive capital assets of the “intelligent automated machine age”––facilitated by the future earnings of their investments in the companies developing and employing this unprecedented economic power.
Unfortunately, the disruptive nature of exponential growth in technology and its impact on productivity––tectonically shifting production of products and services from human workers to non-human means––is not understood and ignored by the economic establishment, academia, and our political leaders.
While the rate of technological progress is directly proportional to the number and quality of the people engaged in the fields of science and engineering, economic policy is the mechanism that fuels investment and development of technological innovation and invention. This is where education is critical to our future societal development.
Education should be encouraged and expanded. Everyone should have the opportunity to personally develop their own exceptional innate abilities and unlock their creativity.
But except for the personal development benefit to advancing one’s education, the reality is that far less “educated” people will be necessary in the long term to produce the products and services necessary and valued by society. This is due to the exponential development of human-level artificial intelligence, which is embodied in advanced automation and robotics.
We need to realize that full employment is not a function of businesses. Companies strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever-increasing role.
We need to reform and restructure our economy and set as the GOAL broadened private, individual ownership of future wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets among ALL Americans, with capital estates ever building as the economy grows. Without a policy shift to broaden productive capital ownership simultaneously with economic growth, further development of technology and globalization will undermine the American middle class and make it impossible for more than a minority of citizens to achieve middle-class status. By changing course, over time and within a few decades, our “machined-powered” growth economy would produce greater wealth, and widespread private, individual ownership would assure prosperity, opportunity, and general affluence for every citizen. Broadened productive capital ownership would strengthen our democracy and individuals and families would be less or non-dependent on government welfare, whether disguised or not.
This prosperous society is achievable because, fortunately, in the near term, we can begin to grow our way out of the swelling unemployment and underemployment by increasing our investment significantly as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) resulting in double-digit growth, while simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of future income-producing productive capital investments, thus initiating the process of empowering every man, woman, and child to build over time a viable capital estate and reap the income generated. The key operative is BROADEN OWNERSHIP. Such investment would, in the short term, generate millions of new “real” productive jobs. The result would not only be that the GDP would dramatically grow but tax revenues from the high rate of economic growth would enable us to balance the federal budget, fully fund Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, provide Universal Health Care, Universal University Education, lower tax rates, and maintain a strong military, all simultaneously.
We have the opportunity to free economic growth from the “enslavement” of human labor and from the financial mechanisms that are based on the slavery of past savings. Technological progress, though, is no longer dependent on the number and quality of human workers. This fact will become obvious eventually to anyone who can think and analyze as they realize the reality that human labor will cease to be the primary source of wealth production in the future. As a result we can expect over the long term that unemployment and underemployment will remain high indefinitely. But the difference will be that people will drop out of the labor force voluntarily because they will be able to live off their dividend earnings via their ownership portfolios. This will create swelling demand for human workers who want to continue working. And with both dividend and wage and salary incomes for everyone there will be more customers to purchase the products and services produced, which in turn will create further dividends and earnings, which will create more customers, etc.
While the future holds less promise for universal job employment due to the ever-progressing contribution of technological-driven production using human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics and digital computerized operations, the jobs that will be in demand will require some mastery of technology, math, and science. As long as working people are limited by earning income solely through their labor worker wages, they will be left behind by the continued gravitation of economic bounty toward the top 1 percent of the people that the system is rigged to benefit. If we don’t re-chart our economic policies to broaden private, individual ownership of new productive capital formation, then more troubling is that the continued stagnation of the American economy will further dim the economic hopes of America’s youth, no matter what their education level. The result will have profound long-term consequences for the nation’s economic health and further limit equal earning opportunity and spread income inequality. As the need for labor decreases and the power and leverage of productive capital increases, the gap between labor workers and productive capital asset owners will increase, and the conditions will become very frightening and very chaotic.
Sadly, our leaders are not prepared and are not preparing the American people for the coming economic collapse and the next Great Depression, due to their lack of wisdom and foresight to understand that full employment is not an objective of businesses and private sector job creation opportunities are constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role––as the use of human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics, digital computerized operations, etc. replaces labor workers to produce products and services.
The question that requires an answer is now timely before us. It was first posed by binary economist Louis Kelso in the 1950s but has never been thoroughly discussed on the national stage. Nor has there been the proper education of our citizenry that addresses what economic justice is and what ownership is. Therefore, by ignoring such issues of economic justice and ownership, our leaders are ignoring the concentration of power through ownership of productive capital, with the result of denying the 99 percenters equal opportunity to become productive capital owners. The question, as posed by Kelso is: “how are all individuals to be adequately productive when a tiny minority (capital owners) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers), a minor share of total goods and service,” and thus, “how do we get from a world in which the most productive factor—–physical capital—–is owned by a handful of people, to a world where the same factor is owned by a majority—–and ultimately 100 percent—–of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners?”
The path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice can be found in the writings about the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm. For more overviews related to this topic see my article “The Absent Conversation: Who Should Own America?” published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/who-should-own-america_b_2040592.html and by OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-Absent-Conversation–by-Gary-Reber-130429-498.html
Also see “The Path To Eradicating Poverty In America” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/the-path-to-eradicating-p_b_3017072.html and “The Path To Sustainable Economic Growth” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/sustainable-economic-growth_b_3141721.html, and the article entitled “The Solution To America’s Economic Decline” at http://www.nationofchange.org/solution-america-s-economic-decline-1367588690
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1120-immigration-tech-20141121-story.html
