ndspinelli said...
Dot heads are taking all the chemistry jobs.
There's no need to single out one ethnic group -- Chinese nationals actually dominate foreign enrollment in chemistry graduate programs.
Here's an interesting factual depiction of wages in the chemical field for the last 10 years:
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Now, there are strong patrician arguments for why ever-lower wages are good for business -- and ultimately that's what motivates the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.* But why then is there a strong push for STEM education in this country? What sane student or parent would encourage their child down this pathway except for -- and this is a big except for -- a love or curiosity for science?
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* I single him out because he is the face of the problem. He is the cheerleader for more of the same.
34 comments:
Unfettered immigration is where I break with the libertarian dogma. Despite their protestations, it HAS to negatively impact wages. You can't say minimum wage laws increase unemployment through basic supply and demand without also concluding that uncontrolled immigration depresses wages.
Mark Zuckerberg is only interested in one thing and that is increasing Mark Zuckerberg's control of people's personal data throughout the world.
It's also one of the reasons many programmers of middle age could not find work after the massacre in the aftermath of the '08 crash.
As Insta likes to say, what can't go on forever, won't.
My buddy was a programmer and had to go out of NY state to find work !!
I rather be a welder than a philosopher...
"Trump is right"? He said last night and today that American wages are too high.
We will have to compete with these people whether they are here or not. Many of these jobs will get easier and easier to offshore, and that will be how it goes if they can't come in. I'm not supporting or opposing the import of these workers, but I am suggesting that the problem for people in these fields is not where the talent is located when they pursue their own self-interest using their intelligence and training. The problem is that there are more and more of them every year. The real earnings are dropping due to worldwide supply and demand of this talent which used to rare. It's not gonna get easier to get more for your skills regardless of U.S. policy.
Unfettered immigration
Y'know, therein^ is a significant problem, that lack of differentiation.
What sort of immigration is most unfettered, exactly? And what, which, sort of immigration celebrated has been/is most destructive?
Give some thought to all of that, won't you?
Immigration = low wages. This was accepted gospel back in Ye Olden Days. Which is why labor unions and most average people opposed open borders and "Free trade".
I can remember back in the 1980s when all this started, supposedly, we were going to outsource all the low-paid manufacturing jobs to Japan and Mexico while we did all the High-tech jobs. Autoworkers would be computer programmers.
Now, the high-skilled jobs are being outsourced or having their wages driven down by immigration. Interesting.
In Big Corporation USA where I work all the new HR people are immigrants. Are they out-competing the Native-born Americans? Or do the qualified Americans go into other fields? Or is the Corporation paying them lower the average wages?
I don't know.
Trump was making the point that USA wages in aggregate are too high. If its a global economy where transportation costs are very low, wages will sink to the lowest level due to competition. Econ 101.
Perot was making this point in 1996. He talked about Indian programmers writing code and transmitting their work via satellite. He was dismissed as a "Kook".
If the rich are able to pick off the working class one job at a time, it wouldn't be the first time.
What sort of immigration is most unfettered, exactly?
I'd say proposing a 500% increase in H-1B visas is "unfettered" in that it might saturate American employers capacity to hire. But you asked (I presume) about the past as well. I confess that I don't have a percentage increase in numbers of visas over the past 10 years. If it correlates inversely with wages and salaries, then it would be a better sell on my part.
Give some thought to all of that, won't you?
I presume that "you" is me insofar as it's not you all.
And what, which, sort of immigration celebrated has been/is most destructive?
There is pressure at the lower end of wages as well as the top. This has a squeezing effect as I tried to explain here. So it's hard to gauge and measure which form has been most destructive.
Also, I cannot speak for IT, but chemistry employment has suffered because the industry also decided to move overseas both for lower wages and to avoid regulation. We import the finished material products --pharmaceuticals, plastics, ceramics, glass, steel, etc., conveniently leaving behind the messy business.
And, I didn't use "unfettered" without knowledge of the word's true meaning: "unchained." How much poverty have we alleviated by sacrificing ourselves so?
rcocean said...
Trump was making the point that USA wages in aggregate are too high.
Well, someone should point out that America's standard of living is too high then if that's the simple-minded way he put it. Let's propose that we all take a hit for America's sake, shall we? There is nothing intrinsically wrong with inequality unless it is unfairly earned.
It does seem to me that we've passed a certain point in America. For political expediency in both parties, we have to encourage more of what will destroy us.
I don't have a universal yardstick for industry, so that's why I come back to chemistry. The question is: how has your life improved in view of what the industry provides? To get even more specific, a minority of people who benefit from certain pharmaceuticals (like HIV or Hep-C) will say AFFIRMATIVE! But they are not recognizing the enormous share of effort required to control those diseases. A growing majority may say that statins are saving their lives. Another majority may cynically point out that the "War On Cancer" has been going on longer than the "War on Poverty" and the "War on Drugs." I think that most people, in general, are quite dismissive of chemistry.
If it were straight ahead clear that we the public are clearly getting better and better products from the chemical industry, then by all means argue for the status quo. If you think that perhaps the top CEO's and shareholders for these industries have mainly benefitted, then ask how did this happen?
rcocean said...
Immigration = low wages. This was accepted gospel back in Ye Olden Days. Which is why labor unions and most average people opposed open borders and "Free trade"
Union wages and labor organization responded to appalling conditions; the remedy for those injustices grew and eventually exceeded what they "should" be. So and labor laws were loosened and relaxed. The issue today (in this country) is not so much sweatshop, life threatening conditions, but rather falling wages. It's possible that organized labor can make a comeback. It is a form of governance but it is not "Government."
I am old enough to remember when public sector workers made on average less than private sector jobs. That has switched and is due for a correction.
It's sad when you make the most comments to your own post.
"If it were straight ahead clear that we the public are clearly getting better and better products from the chemical industry, then by all means argue for the status quo."
I think we are getting plenty from chemistry, and always have. I don't see a slowing of that. It seems as robust as ever from my layman's view. We are producing drugs, flavorings, food additives, exotic materials, adhesives, lubricants, coolants and other industrial compounds, as well as safer alternatives to all the dangerous stuff developed in earlier decades. These discoveries continue on, because, for the most part, these immigrant scientists and technicians are as good as any, and probably more motivated with better attitudes about gratitude, entitlement, and delayed rewards. I'm sure that immigrants lower wages, but not necessarily at the cost of quality. I don't have first hand experience with these workers, but I do buy, use, and read about compounds being developed nowadays and it doesn't seem to be a case of diminishing returns. The lower cost of wages may even increase discovery and development by leaving more money available for other uses besides personnel. I feel for people who decided this was their career,and believed a forward story that may have changed for the worse, but I don't think it's some nefarious plan by rich people. Rather, it's one of the unfortunate give and take consequences that happen in free markets. The mechanism to blame here is liberty, which does not come with guarantees of anyone's continuous success, or even improvement. This is not at all a new story, nor will it be the last time it's seen.
@rcommal: I see that Bruce Heyden has a much better explanation of the two pronged job squeeze I was alluding to at 10:29 PM:
(trigger warning): Althouse link
A growing majority may say that statins are saving their lives.
More lives are being and will continue to be saved by phasing out the trans-fats that started with Crisco in about 1910. Trans-fats appear to be responsible for the tripling of cardiac deaths that occurred between that time period and when Kummerow testified to FDA in the late 1960s, shortly before a somewhat voluntary, limited restriction was agreed to. If further disease reductions continue to occur with the complete phase-out that's just taken place, then the evidence that he was right will be pretty solid.
Also, it looks like the last remaining hurdles in battling cancer will be made by vaccines. Chemists are involved in that too when it comes to designing their viral adjuvant (well, molecular biologists, really).
I'm skeptical that inflation was high enough to translate a ten-year 9k increase in salary to an effective 8k decrease, and am skeptical that corporate greed wouldn't explain more of the story it even if that did occur. Are things really 17% more than they were a decade ago? Maybe for housing, but the big issue in your chart is the post-recession stagnation following the 2008 crash. Inflation's been low and steady the whole time, but obviously that was the inflection point after which pay stagnated while its value decreased.
Bag has to admit that no economic actor sees any value in anything but ownership as time goes on. Productivity has been decoupled from value and will continue, no matter whom you let in or don't. I guess you'll have to let Germany and its refugees be the test case, as they seem to have weathered salary challenges pretty well. They also didn't respond to the crash with the kind of draconian layoff threats and occurrences that we did.
More lives are being and will continue to be saved by phasing out the trans-fats that started with Crisco in about 1910.
"Steven Nissen, the chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic said 'in many ways, trans fat is a real tragic story for the American diet, In the 1950s and '60s, we mistakenly told Americans that butter and eggs were bad for them and pushed people to margarine, which is basically trans fat.' link
I grew up in Wisconsin, the dairy state, and I clearly remember my parents picking up a case of "colored" oleomargarine in Illinois when we visited relatives there. Colored margarine was illegal to sell in Wisconsin up until the 1960s (thanks to the dairy lobby); It had to be butt-white (its natural state) to distinguish it from butter.
Chemistry is important in everyday life.
Fer instance, you gotta visualize how that ice is forming. And the thing is, it's invisible!
That's the whole point. Make the ice invisible. So visualize how the molecules freeze. Like ice progressing on a windowpane when you catch it at the moment of freezing, or somebody does and videos it, the crystals form at the edge and progress as advancing army. Except our ice is clear.
The same thing with chocolate. There is a precise temperature (range) not a precise temperature dot, a range, that's what all the chocolate books fail to tell you explicitly. And the liquid mass could use a hint how to organize, how to line up to crystalize the most perfect way. Otherwise it crystalizes imperfectly and fails to temper, fails to hold temper at lower temperature, so low as a room.
It's the oddest thing, I bought white chocolate, basically butter, that was in hardened form at room temperature. Tempered it using a machine and poured into forms. The wrapped white chocolate forms do not hold temper at room temperature. They melt. I made it worse, not better. The machine did. I set the machine to white chocolate but didn't give it enough of a clue. I didn't drop a large enough piece into the stabilized temperature. That means I could not give away the white chocolate as gifts as intended, and this is how chemistry is important to our everyday lives, that meant I had to eat the entire pound of white chocolate myself!
I'm almost done eating it, only a few more boxes left. It was a total white chocolate tempering fail. Perhaps it's not chemistry. Maybe it's the Lord telling me to eat more white chocolate, might as well have fun trying to fatten up. I could eat some right now.
For a regular bloke I go through butter like nobody's bees wax. A couple pounds a month.
I accidentally bought a stick of margarine from the bodega across the street in an emergency, thinking it was butter, and I'm telling you, the sense of violation I felt upon realizing the error was tremendous. It cannot be used.
Lard can be used, but that stuff cannot.
Bacon fat can be used, but margarine cannot.
Coconut oil, peanut oil, olive oil, even cocoa butter can be used, but not margarine. Not ever.
I don't know why. It's odd. It's just naturally wrong. It's not my mind saying either, it's my body rejecting it. It's slippery vibes are all wrong. I threw it out. Wasted the whole thing. I should have known not to trust that little store, they have the weirdest stuff, oddball versions of everything.
Today's chemistry turned one piece of thick slab applewood bacon into bacon bit paste, its rendered oil and flour, and that, with more olive oil and gen-you-wine Parmigiano Reggiano turned into pencil-thin light-as-air bacon-cheese flavored breadsticks.
Now these breadsticks turn out like bread and we do not want that. We want them to turn into cheese-bacon dust in our mouth bursting forth through our saliva and swallowed down. So they must be re-baked to dehydrate. bi-cotte, if you like biscotti, biscuit. Twice baked. And if they're still not light and airy enough, but they are!, then thrice baked, tricotte, triscuit.
One strip of bacon makes 30 biscotti bacon-cheese-chipotle flavored breadsticks, and they are irresistible. And just like the pound of white chocolate temper-fail they're mine all mine, my personal home chemistry.
If you needed a chemist to work for your company, would you want to risk the inevitable problems that would come from hiring a tender snowflake from the modern American University? Watch some of the videos from Mizzou and tell me you want to try and be the boss of one of those kids, and consider the alternatives. Your own nation (at least the leftists in it) is your enemy, not the Conservatives.
"It's sad when you make the most comments to your own post."
Not at all, thought provoking discussion all around.
I hate to be that guy, Chick, but the numbers presented are largely meaningless. They're from a self-selected sample of less than 5% of Chemists who are members of the American Chemical Society. GIGO.
I don't disagree with your premise but private sector salaries are extremely difficult to nail down and this survey falls short.
One question I do have is whether or not H1B visa holders, who are temporary employees by definition, tend to join the ACS. I would guess that the answer is no and their salaries are mostly missing from the flawed survey. I could be wrong.
A link is here but may be restricted.
Chick it is perfectly fine when make the most comments in your own post. It is called having a conversation.
That is why I have some many comments in the Ginger vs. Mary Ann posts. Just sayn'
Chickelit: No, the absence of "all" does not define my use of the word "you," and much less does it make that use specific to you, personally.
Also, let me--however quickly and roughly (even sadly lacking in nuance)--state plainly a proposition for discussion.
This:
The way in which the United States deals with both illegal and legal immigration statuses (permanent, temporary, illegal, "quasi," special, and the vast gray areas among all of the above) has had definite, definable effects with regard to the U.S. economy.
If you needed a chemist to work for your company, would you want to risk the inevitable problems that would come from hiring a tender snowflake from the modern American University?
Putting aside, for the moment, the obvious first response to such a broad-brush, stark statement, let me ask the equally obvious and first counter-question: How does this square with wanting American jobs for Americans? Not to mention a path back to that over which I was originally pondering: What's up with the fractured thinking in the U.S. when it comes to alternative choices of workers at both the bottom and mid- to upper-middle classes of employment? (This sort of thing crosses age cohorts, as well, just as a reminder.) What, truly, are the drivers of the choosing?
The way in which the United States deals with both illegal and legal immigration statuses (permanent, temporary, illegal, "quasi," special, and the vast gray areas among all of the above) has had definite, definable effects with regard to the U.S. economy.
True, but historically so over centuries. I'm not so much interested in 19th century immigration insofar as they're all dead. I mean you no disrespect. You are as curious as they come and you quite often provoke good questions. But were mass influxes (influcies? :) of immigrants then (19th century) "illegal"? I take at face value that they weren't because, while ethnically unrestricted, everybody had to stop at Ellis Island (and whatever the equivalent West Coast stop was). My immigrant forebears did. Today's problem is the sneaking in aspect and so I'd at least like to restrict your question to some subset of the broad swath over time.
I will keep this discussion going in new posts if necessary. When did all those terms get invented: permanent, temporary, illegal, etc.
I appreciate the nice thing you said about me, but I think it's probably misplaced. My fault: I was not clear. My statement was meant to try and state a proposition (in some sort of neutral way, for the purpose of getting people to talk about who gets into our country and why--and, clearly, I failed at that) for discussion about both illegal and legal immigration, and also legal visa, status in current times. It is true that within "current times" I am (and was) including a bunch of years before this very year (2015), but certainly not back to the 19th century, much less "over centuries."
I am interested in this topic, this subject, in terms of both economic and national security issues, in particular (though not necessarily limited to just those two).
Today's problem is the sneaking in aspect
Yes, indeed, sir, it is.
There is more than one way to do that, and there is more than one type of person enabling all of that.
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