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Guns: Meese warns Obama could be impeached
This is clearly absurd. Meese's idea is almost as silly as the trillion dollar coin.— January 16, 2013 6:15 a.m.
San Diego’s Qualcomm is the fifth-largest user of H-1B talent
I think the higher education system is part of the problem. In fact, I think universities are much worse at exploiting foreign labor than the big companies. Let's put some rough numbers on this. The companies might pay an H1B engineer 100k whereas a similarly qualified American engineer might get 120k. At a university, as a grad student, that engineer is only getting paid about 20k (as a graduate student researcher and/or teaching assistant). In theory, of course, a PhD student is there for an education and to do basic research. However, a lot of that research directly benefits corporate sponsors - or allows professors to launch startups and make millions. I think being a PhD student in engineering amounts to part education, part (very) low wage engineer. Many engineering PhD programs now typically require 6 or more years of graduate study. The economics of a PhD degree in engineering are such that there is a greater incentive for a foreign national to get a PhD degree than an American citizen. For an American citizen the direct financial incentive is not all that great - it takes a lot of years of higher pay to make up for several years of very low wages. There are more advantages for a foreign national to attain an advanced degree than for an American. The difference between engineering pay vs. average worker pay is much much higher in India and China than the U.S. And if a foreign national wants to stay in the U.S. an advanced degree makes it easier to get a green card.— January 14, 2013 10:11 p.m.
San Diego’s Qualcomm is the fifth-largest user of H-1B talent
A lot of this is a self-fullfilling cycle. When the supply of engineering labor increases the cost of engineering labor (i.e. salaries) goes down. Lower salaries make it less desirable for college students to choose enginnering as a major. This lowers the supply of engineers - seemingly justifying the original assumption.— January 11, 2013 8:27 p.m.
Seau suffered from disease caused by hits
Steroids and other PED's are part of the problem too. Look at how the sizes and speeds of players have changed over the years. There's a difference between being tackled by a 300 lb guy who can run a 4.5 40yd dash vs. being tackled by a 250 lb guy who runs a 5 40 yd dash. Impacts are harder now.— January 11, 2013 6:12 a.m.
Phone full disclosure
You can make a Skype call nowadays just about anywhere for 20cents/min or less. And these guys zing unsespecting victims for $55/min. Outrageous. In general, I'm not opposed to moderate price gouging - if someone wants to charge $20/gal for gas after a hurricane I'm OK with that. But I think the more expensive a service is relative to prevaling price then the greater the responsibility the provider has to make sure the customer understands how high the price is. These phone companies are charging people more than 100X the going rate for a service. At that point, warning notes really aren't enough. I think the phone companies should not be able to charge that rate unless they have signed AND verbal acknowledgement from the customers that the customers understand how high the rate is.— December 24, 2012 6:09 p.m.
UC logo "suspended," UCSD chancellor makes big outside bucks
Last time I checked, the U.S. President's salary is $400,000. I'm thinking that maybe $400k should be a hard upper limit for any public employee's annual compensation.— December 14, 2012 12:15 p.m.
You will get hoodwinked on San Diego stadium costs
3rd— December 12, 2012 10:02 p.m.
You will get hoodwinked on San Diego stadium costs
In terms of "moral" obligations like giving back to the community - I would agree with you. What Fabiani, the NFL, and the Chargers do IMO borders on fraud and bribery. It's just done in such a sophisticated manner that they can get away with it. It's all compliant with the letter of the law (or at least close enough to get away with it) even if it's not necessarily compliant with the intent of laws against bribery and fraud (IMO)— December 11, 2012 8:40 p.m.
You will get hoodwinked on San Diego stadium costs
So another question for the lawyers - can/should municipalities file antitrust lawsuits against the NFL? Seems pretty clear to me the NFL (and other major sports leagues) are monopolies which limit the number of teams so that cities are always pressured into paying up for new stadia. Of course, as Don has pointed out before the civic leaders might not WANT to stop the teams' actions - as the civic leaders may have strong personal incentives to support team owners, in conflict with their civic responsibilities. But let's say for the sake of argument that all of the city/municipal leaders really wanted to do what was in the best interest of their consituents. From a legal perspective, would an antitrust lawsuit be possible to force major sports leagues to stop holding cities hostage for stadia? Seems to me it should be, but then again it seemed really obvious to me that Ticketmaster was a monopoly using anticompetive tactics against Pearl Jam - but Ticketmaster came out ahead in that suit. So maybe I don't understand these antitrust things very well.— December 10, 2012 10:11 p.m.
You will get hoodwinked on San Diego stadium costs
So it looks like the Atlanta Falcons will be getting their corporate welfare check. 300M from new taxes towards a 1B stadium. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/new-falc…— December 10, 2012 10:02 p.m.