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At 1 PM ET today MSNBC will air a (truncated) television version of Underwater Dreams, an incredible documentary about undocumented students from Carl Hayden High School who, a decade ago, beat MIT students in an underwater robotics competition. e: web livestream - http://www.livenewschat.eu/politics/ The documentary is getting a lot of press, in part because it's an amazing story, and in part because it's a sad one, as the victorious Carl Hayden students have been unable to attend college or get jobs due to their status: Jonathan Alter, "These Undocumented Teens Outsmarted MIT—and Still Can't Get Real Jobs in America" posted:The subtext of the tough talk about the tens of thousands of child refugees flowing up from Central America is that like Mexicans they will be a drag on the American economy—wards of the state who suck taxpayers dry. If you can't see the televised version today, you can also see it in AMC Theaters, which has committed to free community screenings in 100 cities. *** This is a really important documentary because it is so drat sympathetic. I believe it has the potential to influence the immigration reform debate. Its television sponsors certaintly think so: quote:Telemundo, mun2, MSNBC and AMC Theaters will feature Underwater Dreams, a new documentary film by award-winning filmmaker Mary Mazzio and narrated by actor Michael Peña. The film chronicles the compelling and inspirational story of four teenage boys, the sons of Mexican immigrants, who entered a sophisticated underwater robotics competition, going up against the likes of engineering powerhouse MIT. The film will be a central pillar of NBCUniversal Hispanic Enterprises and Content’s new nationwide pro-social campaign, Aprender es Triunfar, aimed at closing the Latino student achievement gap, especially in STEM education. In support of reaching many Latino families with this inspirational message, AMC Theatres has committed to hosting up to 100 community screenings, free of charge, at AMCs across the U.S. to enable school and non-profit groups to enjoy the film on the big screen this summer and fall. In addition, in late July, MSNBC, Telemundo and mun2 will broadcast a special television version. I know we just had the semiannual D&D slapfight over immigration reform in the Vargas thread. If possible, I'd like to steer this thread to be about Underwater Dreams as a political agent. By whom was it constructed? How is it being mobilized in the debate? What are the reactions to / about / around it? And, if others want to watch the televised version today, maybe we can TV/IV a bit about the broadcast version. Petey fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jul 20, 2014 |
# ? Jul 20, 2014 17:02 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:05 |
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Streaming now on the web at: http://www.livenewschat.eu/politics/
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 18:05 |
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I don't have anything substantive to say, but this situation saddens me and I hope our immigration policy changes soon. Even putting aside the obvious ethical arguments, the economic benefits alone justify immigration reform. These benefits are even clearer in the case of highly skilled immigrants like the ones in the OP. People with MIT-caliber quantitive abilities are extremely rare, and their capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship often make them the real "job creators." I haven't heard an argument against less restrictive immigration policy that isn't based in some combination of misinformation and crypto-racism. buttcoin smuggler fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 20, 2014 |
# ? Jul 20, 2014 20:08 |
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Pardon me if I don't exactly take something Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sheldon fuckin' Adelson agree on at face value. If it's for expanding green cards and letting educated people live in America I can get behind that. Perhaps even an offer for people who go to school here. But I have this sneaking urge they don't give a poo poo about that and just want to expand H1Bs for the carousel of temporary indentured servants. I do however agree that something needs to be done about the illegal immigrants already here that isn't "a massive wall of burning tires" or plain deportation.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 20:15 |
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Stanos posted:Pardon me if I don't exactly take something Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sheldon fuckin' Adelson agree on at face value. If it's for expanding green cards and letting educated people live in America I can get behind that. Perhaps even an offer for people who go to school here. But I have this sneaking urge they don't give a poo poo about that and just want to expand H1Bs for the carousel of temporary indentured servants. I used to have an H1B, and got my green card recently. While I had my visa and then GC sponsored by a company that treated me really well, a lot of my friends at other companies weren't so lucky. They basically got exploited mercilessly, and they couldn't do anything about it because it's so difficult to change employers while on H1B. While the immigration system is very complex, the indentured servitude problem is relatively easy to fix. The government simply needs to make it trivial to change companies while on H1B. Basically, make it so that the visa is a blanket work authorization in a high-skill position for a set period of time that is not tied to a particular company. Once market forces are allowed to operate on the supply of H1B workers, these companies will suddenly start treating them a lot better, and paying them a lot more too. As for undocumented workers, it's a very complicated problem. I totally sympathize with people who are sneaking into America to escape from violence in their home countries. While I immigrated through legal means, it was because I had the ability on top of a ton of luck. The stars sort of aligned for me, and they did so multiple times. Not everyone has the opportunity to do so. In fact, most people don't. I'm not in favor of deporting those people or their kids, because that's the equivalent of condemning them to a life of unspeakable horrors, or even death.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 20:41 |
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Stanos posted:Pardon me if I don't exactly take something Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Sheldon fuckin' Adelson agree on at face value. If it's for expanding green cards and letting educated people live in America I can get behind that. Perhaps even an offer for people who go to school here. But I have this sneaking urge they don't give a poo poo about that and just want to expand H1Bs for the carousel of temporary indentured servants. Your skepticism of tech companies' interest in immigration reform is warranted. In this case, however, we have a group of students who were brought here as children, came to school, and are fully American except for a piece of paper saying so. Per your second point, it is very important, for many reasons, that we find a way to allow them to be at home.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 22:16 |
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Hugely expanding h1b's would be a great way to get the vast majority of americans against immigration reform- lots of people support it so long as the jobs being affected are poor people jobs. Petey posted:Your skepticism of tech companies' interest in immigration reform is warranted. People who have lived here since childhood and have no other home should certainly be complete citizens, that seems obvious. buttcoin smuggler posted:I don't have anything substantive to say, but this situation saddens me and I hope our immigration policy changes soon. Even putting aside the obvious ethical arguments, the economic benefits alone justify immigration reform. These benefits are even clearer in the case of highly skilled immigrants like the ones in the OP. People with MIT-caliber quantitive abilities are extremely rare, and their capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship often make them the real "job creators." Economic benefits for whom is the question- and if the only thing that changes is we let more immigrants in to be exploited without changing the labor laws I bet you can guess who the "whom" is. Besides that strict immigration laws are hardly an american thing and are present in most countries with strong welfare systems.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 22:32 |
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tsa posted:Besides that strict immigration laws are hardly an american thing and are present in most countries with strong welfare systems. An American friend of mine emigrated to Australia. He got his residency in two years, and full citizenship two years after that. This is in contrast to America, where the welfare system is utter poo poo and it takes anywhere from 10-20 years to become a citizen. Spain gives residency to anyone who buys a house there. I could go on.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:16 |
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enraged_camel posted:An American friend of mine emigrated to Australia. He got his residency in two years, and full citizenship two years after that. This is in contrast to America, where the welfare system is utter poo poo and it takes anywhere from 10-20 years to become a citizen. A lot of immigration systems are biased to the wealthy (Spain as you mentioned, Canada is also similar), which is fundamentally different from the usual issues that plague the US regarding immigration. A reform to the H1B system though or something like the article mentioned would probably be in line with that though.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:19 |
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enraged_camel posted:An American friend of mine emigrated to Australia. He got his residency in two years, and full citizenship two years after that. This is in contrast to America, where the welfare system is utter poo poo and it takes anywhere from 10-20 years to become a citizen. I don't think Spain is the example you want to use for a nation of immigrants.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:21 |
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Bip Roberts posted:I don't think Spain is the example you want to use for a nation of immigrants. Who said anything about them being a nation of immigrants? That's not what is being discussed at all. Please read more carefully.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:25 |
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computer parts posted:A lot of immigration systems are biased to the wealthy (Spain as you mentioned, Canada is also similar), which is fundamentally different from the usual issues that plague the US regarding immigration. You are kidding right? America has a visa category specifically for rich foreigners. It's called the "emigrant investor" visa. http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-fifth-preference-eb-5/eb-5-immigrant-investor
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:29 |
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I'm skeptical about claims that other countries handle immigration better than the States. It's a poo poo show in the US for sure but everything I've seen as an expat in the West and east leaves me to believe it's even worse elsewhere. And all the statements about how easy it is to get residency elsewhere always ends up based on an educated white professional applying.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:32 |
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enraged_camel posted:You are kidding right? America has a visa category specifically for rich foreigners. It's called the "emigrant investor" visa. Yeah, but it's not as permissive as "buy a house, get permanant residency". The point in any case was that most of the US's immigration problems would remain unsolved if you only focused on rich immigration.
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# ? Jul 20, 2014 23:34 |
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buttcoin smuggler posted:I don't have anything substantive to say, but this situation saddens me and I hope our immigration policy changes soon. Even putting aside the obvious ethical arguments, the economic benefits alone justify immigration reform. These benefits are even clearer in the case of highly skilled immigrants like the ones in the OP. People with MIT-caliber quantitive abilities are extremely rare, and their capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship often make them the real "job creators." The subject of the documentary is only tangentially related to the issue of skilled immigration though, which indicates that the PR campaign behind it is really good. The real issue behind the documentary is how should we handle unskilled immigration, and while many people agree that we should allow people who came here as children to stay, there's an implicit suggestion that illegal immigration should continue unabated, and this is a bad idea for many reasons.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 05:44 |
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tsa posted:Hugely expanding h1b's would be a great way to get the vast majority of americans against immigration reform- lots of people support it so long as the jobs being affected are poor people jobs. Let companies bring over all the experts in whatever field they can dream up. But stop bringing over 22 year olds and paying them $20K/yr to work in entry level IT jobs.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 05:47 |
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Xae posted:H1Bs shouldn't have a number cap. But they should have a minimum wage, say $150,000/yr tied to inflation. H1B is not just about "experts." It's about skilled labor in general.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 06:29 |
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enraged_camel posted:Who said anything about them being a nation of immigrants? That's not what is being discussed at all. Please read more carefully. I'm not sure why you're so huffy but you were talking about the differences between getting a visa in the US and Spain. The fact that Spain has essentially zero to a rounding error immigration before the mid nineties invalidates them for a qualitative comparison.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 07:45 |
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Mun2 is showing this movie again at 4p/3c today. Will be watching, looking forward to it already. Hopefully we can talk about the movie once more people have seen it.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 12:52 |
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enraged_camel posted:H1B is not just about "experts." It's about skilled labor in general. Are you trying to suggest there's a dearth of people who could be trained to be Help Desk? Whenever I hear the garbage about 'There's not enough (x) to keep up with business demands!' I automatically plug in '...but we're unwilling to train them' or '...at the prices we are willing to pay' and it suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense. When 9 of the top 10 companies that suck up H1Bs are outsourcing companies based in India, the system is busted. Train the people here and make H1Bs for stuff that's actually difficult to find. Then pay them like you would an American and ENFORCE IT. poo poo, the whole thread was started because of the really smart people here who are unable to get jobs because they are undocumented. I'm sure there's quite a few of them out there that could be trained to fix the demand issue! Except that doesn't fit into the system of short term profits for long term losses.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 17:13 |
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computer parts posted:Yeah, but it's not as permissive as "buy a house, get permanant residency". The point in any case was that most of the US's immigration problems would remain unsolved if you only focused on rich immigration. I live a life where I have de facto permanent residency and not official and it's negligible. There are restrictions, but there are always restrictions everywhere. You can own and work in a business in Thailand, but you have to have 2MM in registered capital and four Thai employees (if you're not married). Whatever the restrictions, you still own and work in a business if you meet them. If I close my business or change companies, guess what? I have to find a new way to stay. However, if I were on the investment visa program, which exists, it's simple. You stick the money in, get it registered and you're done. If you're a Chinese factory boss worth 500MM dollars, then it's not even scarcely an issue.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 20:10 |
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I feel like you guys missed the point of this movie.quote:Most reasonable people get this. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Sheldon Adelson (!) wrote an op-ed in The New York Times last Friday bemoaning the insanity of training immigrants at our best universities, then forcing them to go home. But in pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, the billionaires seemed most concerned about wealthier émigrés, whom they argued should be allowed to stay if they come with money.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 20:20 |
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Xae posted:H1Bs shouldn't have a number cap. But they should have a minimum wage, say $150,000/yr tied to inflation. $150,000 is way way too high and would actually price out a lot of talented people out of entry level jobs, which are usually around $60-80k/year in tech. quote:Let companies bring over all the experts in whatever field they can dream up. But stop bringing over 22 year olds and paying them $20K/yr to work in entry level IT jobs.
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 20:26 |
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30 minutes till it's rebroadcast, I think that all of the channels that ran it yesterday (MSNBC, Mun2, Telemundo) will be running it today. I know for a fact it'll be on Mun2. Edit: Starts out pretty fun, very endearing. Cercadelmar fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 21, 2014 |
# ? Jul 21, 2014 20:34 |
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Alright, I just finished watching the tv version of this movie. I love what this film is trying to do. The whole immigration debate is so dehumanizing to undocumented citizens so it's good to see media putting a face on immigrants. This movie brings me back to highschool. People don't expect much from young Hispanics, and it's only worse if you're undocumented. I knew a few people who didn't have papers back then and things weren't much better. Dropping out was pretty common back then. Hopefully films like this are signals of change. Petey, you mentioned the film version was different, were there any major differences?
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# ? Jul 21, 2014 22:34 |
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Cercadelmar posted:Petey, you mentioned the film version was different, were there any major differences? Well, it's half again as long, so I think the story is just much more coherent. I know the students and I think Mazzio did well by them in both versions though (and they think so too). There will be a big showing at the Museum of Science on Aug 7th (Mazzio is from Boston) w/ lots of politicos and I hear there will be a "major announcement" this week. Of what, I'm not sure.
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 01:48 |
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Stanos posted:Are you trying to suggest there's a dearth of people who could be trained to be Help Desk? I'm not sure why the USA is special and should be spared from the global trend of downward pressure on wages. You guys enjoyed your golden years after World War 2 and you prospered while other Western nations were rebuilding. Grats! That time period is behind us however. This is the age of global competition and you have to earn those jobs that everyone is competing for. The American Dream is over. Welcome to real life! Foreign companies have developed industries now, and they are marketing their much-more-cheaply-produced goods in America, which means American companies are under pressure to also reduce their costs. You can't have your Samsung Galaxy S5 and eat it too, you know.
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 04:05 |
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enraged_camel posted:I'm not sure why the USA is special and should be spared from the global trend of downward pressure on wages. Good point, we've been so selfish--whoops your mask fell off Mr. Bezos, check your straps
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 04:20 |
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Petey posted:Well, it's half again as long, so I think the story is just much more coherent. I know the students and I think Mazzio did well by them in both versions though (and they think so too). Yeah, the tv version moved pretty fast and I would have enjoyed spending more time from scene to scene. I still liked watching it, though I hope it'll come out soon on something like netflix. No one here would have happened to have seen Documented? I enjoyed Jose's essays on being undocumented and would like to hear about his film. Cercadelmar fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 26, 2014 |
# ? Jul 22, 2014 04:28 |
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SedanChair posted:Good point, we've been so selfish--whoops your mask fell off Mr. Bezos, check your straps If you didn't want to get replaced by an immigrant, you should have paid attention in school and/or come from a family that was able to build wealth between 1945-1970. If you did those things, you wouldn't have anything to fear, which explains the demographics of the open-borders crowd.
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 05:43 |
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on the left posted:If you didn't want to get replaced by an immigrant, you should have paid attention in school and/or come from a family that was able to build wealth between 1945-1970. If you did those things, you wouldn't have anything to fear, which explains the demographics of the open-borders crowd. Hey I'm in that crowd because restricting the movement of persons is repugnant to me, I just think it's funny that enraged_camel's whole argument basically boils down to
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 06:01 |
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on the left posted:If you didn't want to get replaced by an immigrant, you should have paid attention in school and/or come from a family that was able to build wealth between 1945-1970. If you did those things, you wouldn't have anything to fear, which explains the demographics of the open-borders crowd. So do you still think we should just send them all back?
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 06:47 |
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Badger of Basra posted:So do you still think we should just send them all back? Nah, i've embraced the fact that my political goals will only be furthered by unrestricted immigration. My job will never be at risk due to outsourcing, and I will only benefit from falling prices on a variety of services, especially cheap Mexican food. Also, demographically speaking, we won't even have to try to pretend about the concerns of certain groups anymore.
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 07:00 |
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enraged_camel posted:I'm not sure why the USA is special and should be spared from the global trend of downward pressure on wages. "Hey, that guy looks like he's doing okay! AFTER HIM!"
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 15:26 |
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enraged_camel posted:I'm not sure why the USA is special and should be spared from the global trend of downward pressure on wages. Why do workers need to cross national borders to lower wages?
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# ? Jul 22, 2014 19:41 |
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Dmitri-9 posted:Why do workers need to cross national borders to lower wages? What?
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# ? Jul 23, 2014 01:00 |
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enraged_camel posted:What? What? If american workers really had no marginal value to companies then wages would fall without immigration because the companies would just globalize more. HB1s are just a naked wealth transfer to owners and the only thing the US has to get used to is billionaires with unlimited greed and fat media budgets.
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# ? Jul 23, 2014 01:30 |
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enraged_camel posted:I'm not sure why the USA is special and should be spared from the global trend of downward pressure on wages. America may be struggling a bit, but everyone else is hurting a lot more and that's what matters. Europe has been teetering for half a decade, china has huge mounting problems and so on. Inequality has increased worldwide and it's not because of what you are going on about. See Dmitri's post above.
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# ? Jul 23, 2014 08:28 |
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enraged_camel posted:This is in contrast to America, where the welfare system is utter poo poo and it takes anywhere from 10-20 years to become a citizen. I've been in America since I was ~3 (so I've been here for 2 decades now), have only attended American schools, have 2 degrees from an American college, and I'm still having trouble getting my immigration through due to reasons.
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# ? Jul 23, 2014 17:48 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:05 |
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Cercadelmar posted:I feel like you guys missed the point of this movie. We don't really need any more Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburgs, nor do we need another Jeff Bezos, or Larry Ellison anymore then we need another family of Waltons or Kennedy's. The "Great Man" fairy tale is honestly a pretty destructive outlook that contributes a lot to American Exceptionalism, and the Just World that makes people think poor people are just lazy.
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# ? Jul 24, 2014 00:45 |