Donald Trump wins!

With a dismal 50% turnout across the nation, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.  He received about 40% of the votes in states with a large number of electoral votes, but given the “winner take all rules for the electoral college he easily won the Presidency.  Otherwise, he only received 30% in the other states.  Hilary Clinton received 50% in these states, and the last-minute Republican alternative candidate received 20%.

This means that Donald Trump received the votes of less than 20% of the eligible voters.  Once again, “None of the Above” really won because of the 50% no-shows.

Almost as soon as the projections were made on national TV, the border crossings at Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Niagara Falls, and others started filling up with U.S. citizens seeking resident status in Canada.  The websites of all the airlines with trans-Atlantic flights crashed with  thousands seeking one-way tickets to Europe.   Scandinavian Air and Icelandic Air were hardest hit because of an extremely large number of U.S. citizens wishing to move to Scandinavia.

The Scandinavian countries experienced many demonstrations of Syrian refugees.  They were upset that after all their trials and tribulations to get safe haven in these countries well-off Americans were welcomed with open arms.

The stock markets had a 25% drop because so many sold their stocks and put the proceeds into foreign banks.  This major sell-off also caused a 25% drop in the value of the dollar against other currencies, especially those of Canada and Europe.

Surprisingly, many multi-millionaires moved to their villas in Switzerland, Mexico, and the Bahamas.  Most company boards were not meeting in the U.S., but were conducting their meetings by secure video.

Many Chinese immigrants went back to China, to the “devil” they understood.  They could plan their lives and careers much more easily under the Communist dictatorship than under the Trump whimsyship.

H1-B workers left in droves.  They thought it would be best to plan when to leave than suddenly have their H1-B status removed.  This “brain drain” worsened even more the value of tech companies already hit with the stock sell-off.  Software updates and new products were delayed for months if not years.  The upside was that older tech workers were suddenly in demand even though their skills were “outdated”  Tech companies realized that these workers could be trained in-house for less money than lobbying for H1-B extensions.

Fruits and vegetables became scarce because the migrant workers disappeared.  Meat processing almost ceased.  Office workers had to vacuum their own floors.  Like the H1-B workers, the migrant workers also thought it would be best to leave on their own terms.  Unlike the H1-B workers, they could suddenly be put into detention centers.

Many countries around the world sought loop-holes in their treaties with the U.S.  Not only did they not think the U.S. would be a reliable ally, but they thought the “toughness” proclaimed by Trump would make them even more vulnerable to any threats by other countries.

This threatened closure of bases also put the U.S. military-industrial complex in a tailspin.  Investors sold their shares at steep discounts because they foresaw a much smaller market for military wares as U.S. bases were closed.

Things got so bad that the Republican-controlled Congress was desperately looking for ways to impeach Trump.  But even as they considered impeachment, the Capitol was besieged by thousands of Trumpistas who saw their hero threatened.  The Capitol police staffing the metal detectors were overwhelmed by protesters carrying pistols, rifles, and automatic weapons.

You did note the date of publication of this post, right?

Immigration: in an ideal world…

In an ideal world, anybody should be able to move anywhere they can find a place to live and work.

I was fortunate to live in a time when I was welcome anywhere as a Univac employee.  I requested a transfer to Europe and wound up in Switzerland and then Italy.  I requested a transfer from Italy to Sweden and was given it.  From both places I worked in or traveled to almost all of the countries of Western Europe.

Because I was "from Roseville", the place where most of the 1100 series of Univac computers originated, I was perceived as an "expert", even when local people could solve many problems better than I could.

I had friends ask me to transfer to South Africa or Iran, both of which I declined.

I really think that anybody anywhere should have the mobility that I have had all my life.  I grew up and was educated in Ohio.  But I chose to work in Minnesota. From Minnesota I spent six years in Europe.  Then I spent three years in SE Pennsylvania.  Then I was able to transfer back to Minnesota.  After 22 years in Plymouth MN, my wife was able to get a transfer to Duluth.

I think everyone should have such chances for the changes we had.

But... It is not an ideal world.  Many of those who claim to want immigration reform don't want reform for its own sake, but "reform" to exclude those they don't like and “reform” to have access to those who will reduce their costs.

The people that "immigration reform" proponents want are immigrants who are highly-skilled.  If you think about it and look behind the curtain, what they really want is lower-paid workers and is having somebody else pay for the education of these "highly-skilled" workers.

These potential immigrants were educated with the help of taxes in other countries.  When "immigration reform" proponents entice these people to the U.S., they are depriving those countries of the benefits of their investments.  Those investments could pay off for a better political and economic culture in those countries.  As the saying goes, "Those with get up and go, go!"

The irony is that who want more "skilled" immigrants are destabilizing many of the countries where they immigrants come from.  Rather than paying taxes for a bloated military that goes more places than it should, these people should be willing to pay for taxes to give the children in the United States a high-quality education.

The learned wanted, learners need not apply

Back in the bad old days before the Internet was ubiquitous, I was the sysop of the Genealogy Roundtable on GENIE (General Electric Network for Information Exchange).  It had a very primitive typed command interface that many users had difficulty mastering.

One user either couldn't print or couldn't save a file from the Genealogy Roundtable.  My being in the Twin Cities and he being in Cleveland made it very difficult for me to know exactly what was on his screen.  I went to Cleveland for personal reasons and as a side trip, went to his house.  I forget what terms were on his screen, but he had a completely different idea what those terms meant than I did.  Once I explained them to him, he was able to do what he wanted.

During this same period, I wrote a genealogy program called Family Events.  One user complained that certain printed charts had lines that shouldn't be there.  I couldn't visualize or understand his problem because my printed charts looked OK.  It wasn't until we were both at the same genealogy conference that I understood the problem.  He was using a non-Apple printer and I was using an Apple printer.  As a shortcut I had given unneeded lines a negative length.  The Apple printer didn't print these lines; the non-Apple printer printed them as long extraneous lines.  I think once back home I recoded the problem in about an hour.

It's sort of like the urban legend of the kid who solves the problem of the truck jammed under a bridge: let some air out of the tires.

Once I wrote the above paragraph I thought of a related subject that I wanted to write about - the "shortage" of "high-tech" workers.  From this thought, I changed the title of this entry from "More on problem solving" to "The learned wanted, learners need not apply".  This "shortage" has been going on for decades.

The basic problem is that too many employers want somebody who can begin working on complex problems on day one.  Once those problems are solved, you may be replaced by someone who can begin working on the new problems on day one.

I've never had a job that I did not require some training after I was hired – from grocery clerk to bus driver to main-frame computer programmer.  My very first computer job I had to teach myself the basics of programming the company's computer.  For my nearly 20-year job with Univac it was constant change and new things to learn.  I didn't know FORTRAN, but I was set to finding and correcting errors in the compiler and its library.  In fact, our supervisor, John Macgowan, never did learn how to write a FORTRAN program, but he was a real whiz at finding and correcting errors in the compiler.  I won't bore you with the details, but it was nearly 20 years of constant learning and change.  I burned out when microcomputers came on the scene and I didn't feel like Univac was keeping up.  So, I started my own company and learned how to program several microcomputers without the benefit of special training.

What I didn't learn was how to run a business.  Then I learned that businesses don't want new employees who will learn.  That is, learners need not apply, we want the learned.

See "So-called high tech shortage".

Quote of the Day – Education, immigration, and taxes

"We've bought into the idea that education is about training and "success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge.  We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.  A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is to its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death." - Chris Hedges, posted on Facebook.  The quote is from "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle".  Click on the title to see more quotes from the book.

Here's some more food for thought.  There are over 1,000,000 (or is it 3,000,000) jobs that can't be filled because there are not enough "qualified" applicants.  There are not enough "qualified" applicants because "qualified" is often very narrowly defined (can you do everything on day one).  Many corporations expect applicants to have gained the "skills" elsewhere.  To gain "skills" one has to have been trained at another company or at a university.  Many large corporations and overpaid CEOs don't want to pay the taxes for a high quality education system.  Many are calling for more H1-B visas to allow for more "highly-skilled" immigrants.  In other words, the taxes in other countries are supposed to pay for educating these "highly-skilled" immigrants.

Personally I'm all for unlimited immigration, but not when it is a dodge to get lower-paid workers.

BTW, I spent six years in Europe as a "highly-trained" foreign worker.  I sometimes had to travel to another country to help out on a problem, even when the local was probably better qualified to solve the problem.