IP: Xenophobia no answer for lost jobs

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dave Burstein <dave () dslprime com>
Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 22:05:23 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Xenophobia no answer for lost jobs

Dave

     When times are bad, it's much too easy to strike out at the people who
are different: foreign, another race, another religion. I cringe to see
such comments on this list from an educated person. Blaming immigrants is
just a cheap shot.

       Discrimination against those born elsewhere will not solve any
problems, and in the long run will hurt a country's growth. Today's Net
industry was built by many folks named Vinod, Desh, Piers, Joerg, Amra,
Avi, Hossein, Grove, Kim, Cohen, Farber, Baran, Ireland and Shah. Others
are named Clark, Johnson, Chapman, or Barrett. Choosing one group and
denying the other hurts us all. Growth will tumble, innovation move
elsewhere. Not even the U.S. is rich enough to afford such a handicap.

     Many other issues far more profoundly affect jobs in technology,
especially the enormous cuts in research and development in both industry
and government you've often reported. Trillions, not billions, were wasted
in market speculation rather than investment. Over a $B was paid a few
telecom leaders the last two years. Reducing Ed Whitacre of SBC from $82M
in 2000 to a "mere" $2M is literally enough to create nearly a thousand
comfortable engineering jobs. Add his peers at other telcos, not to mention
VC's and speculators, and you could hire tens of thousands.

     $5B per year of telephone excise tax could have been directed to
engineering rather than a tax cut so small few even noticed it - especially
as the telcos raised rates to replace it. (New York just raised basic
telephony 11%.) If even half of that was directed to research, the money
would be more than returned in short order - and ten thousand engineers
would be hired. Bell Labs and AT&T Labs, restored, would more than pay
their way for the economy.

     The number of jobs in the economy is affected by many political
decisions. Some are macro, like the overall rate of demand; others
specific, including the higher health costs of older engineers. Most can be
changed, given political will. The rate of immigration is one of the less
important. I will write on this issue again, because I am Jewish. I know my
history and how many found no refuge.

Dave Burstein

Editor, DSL Prime & Telecom Insider
Co-author DSL: A Wiley Tech Brief (Oct 2001)
Special correspondent, The Personal Computer Show, WBAI-99.5FM, 8 p.m.
Wednesdays Three time winner of Best Radio Show from the Computer Press
Association;
"The power of the printing press belongs solely to
those who own the presses" A.J. Leibling - The Internet is our press



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