
Billionaire (Sergey Brin) Aids Charity That Aided Him - Technophilis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25donate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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camccann
_"One of the most important things that Sergey Brin’s gift signifies . . . is
the possibilities inherent in being a refugee. The debate over immigration has
frequently become so bitter that an important element has been lost: refugees
are as varied in their skills sets and contributions as the rest of us.”_

Okay, this will probably sound cheesy beyond belief, but: this is the American
Dream, in purest form. In all the angry arguments about immigration we lose
sight of the fact that the USA has always been a nation of immigrants; many of
us are only a handful of generations removed from people who came to this
land, often with little to their name, to build a new life.

All the practical issues aside, I've always felt that anyone who wants to come
to this country to live and work is already an American in spirit--far more so
than the angry xenophobes who were merely _born_ here.

    
    
      . . . 
      Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
      With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
      Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
      The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
      Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
      I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

\-- The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus, inscribed on a plaque in the Statue of
Liberty

~~~
vaksel
Immigration is fine, as long as it's an even playing field. The problem is
that immigration right now is treated as a source of cheap labor by the
companies. The policy needs to be that if you come to this country, you are
officially an American, and should be paid a proper wage. Instead of being
forced to work 60 hours a week for $30K.

This way companies won't get to drive down salaries by just importing a bunch
of Indians to work for slave wages.

Call it Patriot Wage Freedom Act. Which would make it a form of discrimination
to pay less than fair wage for employees based on their immigrant status. You
make it illegal for companies to pay $10/hour for a C++ developer with 10
years experience in California and you can import as many programmers as you
wish.

~~~
seldo
Forgive my language, but even playing field my ass. This kind of stuff really
makes me angry.

Do you think when millions of starving Irish refugees turned up in the 1840s
it didn't depress wages for existing American workers at the time? Or the
Poles, or the Germans, or the dozens of other nationalities?

Immigration is an economic force which moves labour from areas of high supply
to areas of high demand. The result, considered globally, is greater
prosperity for everybody.

The American economy is and always has been fuelled by cheap labour in the
form of unskilled immigration -- forget $30k, the people who _really_ get the
economy moving are doing shit work for $8/hour.

Lower wages means goods are cheaper, which means you can buy stuff that's
cheaper, and when we export it we make more money. Lower wages are _GREAT_ for
the economy -- even, in the long run, for those in the industries affected,
because their savings are bigger (cheaper stuff) and worth more (lower
inflation), and their standard of living is higher (more stuff).

And it's as true in high tech as it is in blue-collar industries.

Saying you don't think there should be programmers working for $30k is exactly
like those idiot auto workers who formed unions which demanded that they all
be paid $60k/year to do the same assembly work people in Asia are doing for
$30k. As a result, they're now either out of work or YOU are paying their
ridiculous $60k wage out of your tax money after the bailouts. Not exactly the
American Way.

Even if you shipped over every single able and willing programmer in India and
China to California tomorrow wages wouldn't drop to $10/hour. There are just
not that many programmers in the world.

But because some Americans are terrified that rampant immigration will mean
they earn $95k instead of $100k/year, every time they get they opportunity
they vote to make it harder for hard-working, skilled immigrants to enter and
stay in this country. In so doing, they save that $5k but never earn the $50k
they would have earned as the stock market rose on the strength of all that
immigration-fuelled growth. But because you can't _see_ money you never earn,
few people complain.

Do you know how many H-1B visas (the most common skilled tech worker visa) are
granted every year? 65,000. That's 0.02% of the population. You could let in
10 times as many people every year and nobody would even notice.

America's anti-immigration policies are stupid and self-defeating on a purely
economic analysis, before you even get into the issue of a nation of white
immigrants suddenly deciding that immigration is bad because the new guys are
all brown.

~~~
vaksel
We don't have a high demand, we have 10% unemployment, we don't need more
people to take away jobs. This country is a country for Americans first, once
we take care of our own, then we can start inviting more people to fill the
demand.

Yes they do shit work for $8 an hour...but does that mean that you need to
turn high paying professions into "shit work" just because the companies want
to save a buck? Programming should not be an $8/hour job, no matter what kind
of language you are using. Hell have you even read some of the code written by
these guys? Calling it garbage would be insulting to garbage.

Oh please, lower wages for skilled labor doesn't mean squat for a company's
bottom line. When you are making billions, paying a few less million in wages
won't change anything.

Wages have ALREADY dropped to $10 an hour. Go hit up craigslist, PLENTY of
companies looking for software developers with 5 years experience, and
offering $10 an hour. And the screwed up thing, is that they'll get it. Some
programmer, who's been out of work for a year or two, because the market is
crappy, will do the job because he has to put food on the table. That is if he
is lucky, because he'll have to compete with 100 other people for the
position.

This is America, we need to take care of our own first, before we decide to
help the rest. When the times are good noone cares about immigrants, but when
you see people being laid off left and right to be replaced by incompetent
immigrants...then it's time to put the foot down.

If you think increasing the # of people won't change anything you are smoking
crack.

Why are they stupid? Are we blocking all immigrants? No, we are letting in the
65K like you mentioned. That just means that we are getting the cream of the
crop. Why do you want to lower the quality? You only lower the restrictions
when you are in need of more people. That is not the case now.

Hey I'm an immigrant myself, first generation too, and as someone who went
through the process, I want STRICTER control on immigration. We came during
the time when America needed new talent. That's not the case now. We are over
capacity. Sorry, the country is full...come back when we recover.

~~~
prpon
So you are one of those who says "Please close the door right after I get in".
"We came during the time when America needed new talent."...well, the kind of
talent that got in is not cutting it right now. May be we need a new crop of
immigrants to stir up the economy? or the kind of wage drops that you hate
will cause the profitability of these companies to go up and stir the economy.

~~~
vaksel
We have 10% unemployment. Are you telling not one of those people cuts it for
the job?

When times are good, fine let everyone in. But when people end up unemployed
for 2-3 years at a time, letting more people to expand the # of unemployed is
just plain stupid.

How will these immigrants stir up the economy? They don't come here with a job
like H1B Visa guys, they come here penniless, with crappy English and no
connections.

Yeah they'll stir up the economy alright, by adding more unemployed, desperate
people willing to work for nothing, just to pay the bills.

I'm not for closing the door right after I get in, I'm for closing the door,
because the times are tough and the country is fucked. Once the economy starts
expanding again, sure open the door. But until then, when jobs are limited,
the last thing we need is bring in more competition.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Again this notion that immigrants "take jobs". And therefore immigrants
increase the unemployment rate. This is simply counter-factual. People doing
work lead to more people doing work, regardless of the work they do. People
doing the same work for less pay arguably reduces the unemployment rate (due
to multiple factors).

~~~
vaksel
So how exactly do immigrants create jobs?

They increase unemployment rate because they come here to get jobs.

Why can't the same people be some of the 10% of unemployed in this country?
Sure it reduces the unemployment rate, but only if it's the same 10% going for
it, if you add an extra half a million unemployed workers, them taking jobs
does nothing for unemployment

~~~
pg
"So how exactly do immigrants create jobs?"

The same way newly born Americans do: they consume goods and services.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That's the "broken windows" theory, which is half right. They actually create
jobs by doing work.

Imagine the simplest case of 2 people (Alice and Bob) and a single $100 bill.
If Alice is kind hearted and gives Bob $100 every time she is able but Bob
pays $100 for Alice's work (say, making a chair, painting a house, etc.) this
isn't a functional economy. All of Alice's labor goes to benefit Bob, Alice
would be better off abstaining from the "economy" and using her labor to
benefit herself.

Now imagine that Alice gives Bob $100 for work that Bob's done, then Bob gives
Alice $100 for work that Alice has done, etc, etc. Alice then ends up with the
fruits of Bob's labor, and Bob ends up with the fruits of Alice's labor, if
they have unique skills then this true economy could be mutually beneficial.

The trading of money is just a proxy for the bartering of goods and services,
money is just paper. Doing work contributes positively to the economy, it's
the fundamental building block of the economy (not spending money).

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patrickgzill
Isn't Sergey by most any measure an outlier however? Using him as anything
more than anecdote about immigration isn't really clear thinking, is it?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Isn't the US itself an outlier? It is both a rare, large immigrant nation and
it is the largest first world economy in history.

Do people think these are connected by happenstance?

"Give me your tired, your poor"

"The wretched refuse..."

America takes the refuse of the world, and rather than treating it as refuse
we give everyone a chance. We put everyone to work and let everyone realize
their potential, amortized over millions all those potentials, even the small
ones, add up. And we let the outliers that the rest of the world cast away as
refuse shine. Carnegie, Einstein, Fermi, so many more.

If he had not emigrated to the US in the 30s, John von Neumann may well have
ended his life in the mid-40s in a Nazi oven instead of making key
contributions to physics and computer science.

Let me state this in the clearest possible terms.

Prejudice is a losing strategy.

You can't predict with any certainty the degree to which someone will succeed
or fail in their lives. The best you can do is give damned near everyone an
equal chance to PROVE themselves. This is the American model. It is through
this method that the many, many outliers tossed away as refuse by the rest of
the (judgmental, prejudicial, biased) world come to America and realize their
full potential. America is the land where a destitute immigrant or a college
dropout can become the richest man in the world (Carnegie & Bill Gates
respectively).

It's the same sort of "let the doers prove themselves" system that has evolved
into the startup world of recent times.

It's a damned amazing thing and it's something I'm utterly proud of.

Please, all you short-sighted, small-minded, prejudiced people out there who
don't realize how this works and want to close off America's borders and gut
the goose that lays the golden eggs: DON'T FUCK IT UP!

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jodrellblank
I can't help but feel "$16 billion, and the best thing you can think of to do
with it is _give it away_?"

For a bit of perspective, the Wikipedia list of countries by GDP shows his
personal wealth is more than the GDP of the lowest _one hundred_ countries.
More than Nepal, Afghanistan, Jamaica, not far away from Iceland. More than
Tuvalu's GDP for _a thousand years_.

 _The Manhattan Project_ cost about $22 Billion in today's dollars (says
Wikipedia).

He is in an incredibly rare place where an individual has the economic power
of a small country, a big company, a city council. That much cash channeled
into one area could work wonders. World changing wonders.

How much would a "Manhattan Project" push for any one of the scientific holy
grails cost? (Room Temperature Superconductivity, for instance).

It seems almost a waste to just give it to charity and ignore such a large and
rare opportunity to do what almost no other person can afford and no company
or government can justify.

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mynameishere
My god, imagine if Bill Gates gave money to an organization that would aid his
specific ethnic group.

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myth_drannon
They forgot to mention that his mother is the director of this organization :)

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GrandMasterBirt
Same group helped me immigrate in 92, for same reasons. I am very grateful to
Brin for this.

