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Along with temporary deportation relief for millions, President Obama’s executive action will increase the number of U.S. college graduates from abroad who can temporarily be hired by U.S. corporations. That hasn’t satisfied tech companies and trade groups, which contend more green cards or guest worker visas are needed to keep tech industries growing because of a shortage of qualified American workers. But scholars say there’s a problem with that argument: The tech worker shortage doesn’t actually exist.
“There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”
For a real-life example of an actual worker shortage, Salzman points to the case of petroleum engineers, where the supply of workers has failed to keep up with the growth in oil exploration. The result, says Salzman, was just what economists would have predicted: Employers started offering more money, more people started becoming petroleum engineers, and the shortage was solved. In contrast, Salzman concluded in a paper released last year by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, real IT wages are about the same as they were in 1999. Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers,” says Salzman’s co-author Daniel Kuehn, now a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.”
The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage,more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. “It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,” Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had “fragmented and restricted” oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. “Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor,” says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.
Asked what evidence existed of a labor shortage, a spokesperson for Facebook e-mailed a one-sentence statement: “We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President’s plan and how it will impact the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”
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Lo que opinan la prensa y otras voces ...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist (BusinessWeek)
Monday, November 24, 2014
E N M I O P I N I O N: Buscando lo que no es...
Por: Ricardo Tribín Acosta
Una buena cantidad de personas piensan que
el dinero es lo más importante en la vida, lo cual es parcialmente cierto pues
en la vida de los seres humanos hay tesoros más importantes que procurar. Según
la enciclopedia Wikipedia "En la mitología griega, Midas era rey de
Frigia, e hijo de Gordias.1 Tenía una hija, Zoe.2. Por su hospitalidad con
Sileno, Dionisio le otorgó el poder de convertir en oro todo cuanto tocara.
Viendo que no podía comer los alimentos
que a su contacto quedaban transformados en dicho metal, pidió al dios que le
liberara de su don, para lo cual tuvo que bañarse en el río Pactolo, el que
desde entonces contuvo arenas auríferas”. Pobre Midas pues su ambición por el
“vil” metal lo condujo a circunstancias de salud muy complicadas y a una
existencia invivible..
Al igual que al rey midas no pocos piensan
que existen gratificaciones que el dinero siempre puede comprar. Alguien por
ejemplo afirma que "Lo real es la salud y no las piezas de oro, y
plata", implicando con ello que, sin salud no tenemos nada, así lo
poseamos todo en el terreno material, lo cual no lo es todo en la vida.
Miami, Noviembre 22 de 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Inician inscripciones en sistema Obamacare (Mercado de Dinero)
Inició la temporada de inscripción abierta para obtener cobertura medica. Y a medida que las nuevas aseguradoras planean entrar (y, en algunos casos, dejar) el mercado, otros buscan ofertas de beneficios para el año 2015. Este es el momento para que los consumidores revisen sus planes, para asegurarse de que están adecuadamente cubiertos.Jennifer Sullivan, directora de ''Best Practices Institute for Enroll America'' asegura que los usuarios deben chequear dos veces sus polizas y verificar que todo esta en orden. Además señala que "incluso si usted desea quedarse en su plan, usted todavía tiene que volver al mercado y actualizar su información."
1. Revise su correo.
Quienes se incribieron en un plan de salud a través de la Ley de Cuidado de Salud Asequible o cambio de residencia en 2014, debería haber recibido dos cartas por ahora - uno de su compañía de seguros y uno del mercado en sí - que le recuerda sobre la inscripción abierta. La carta de su compañía de seguros es sin duda el más importante de los dos, porque ahí es donde usted encontrará si su aseguradora planea mantener su plan existente o cambiarlo en el 2015.
2. Click en Healthcare.gov
Verifique que el sistema este en toda su capaciad de registro e inscripción. Si no se inscribió en la cobertura en 2014, basta con crear una nueva cuenta en el mercado federal y seguir los pasos que determina el sistema.
3. Actualización de su información personal
Su elegibilidad para recibir un subsidio fiscal dependera de sus status familiar o condiciones económicas. El 85% de los inscritos Obamacare en 2014 recibieron créditos fiscales que redujeron sus primas, según la Oficina de Presupuesto del Congreso. Su crédito fiscal puede variar si usted se caso, o divorcio, tuvo hijos o algun familiar se retiro de su casa lo que genera que el costo de su plan cambie.
4. Compare precios.
Incluso si usted ama absolutamente el plan que tenía en 2014, vale la pena hacer compras alrededor para ver si las tarifas o la cobertura van a cambiar el año que viene. También es posible que su compañía de seguros podría cambiar beneficios específicos dentro de su plan, al igual que su cobertura de ciertos medicamentos y tratamientos, la red de médicos y hospitales disponibles para usted. Después de la prueba de conducción de un plan de salud con deducible alto en el 2014, se habrá dado cuenta que usted no se siente cómodo con un gasto tan alto fuera de su propio bolsillo. Ahora tiene la oportunidad de inscribirse en un plan que mejor se adapte a su presupuesto. Las compañías de seguros con frecuencia cambian las tarifas y opciones de cobertura de sus planes.
5. No tenga miedo de pedir ayuda
El proceso de inscripción el año pasado registro fallas, sin embargo, el sitio se encuentra en un nuevo liderazgo este año y ha sido objeto de pruebas para garantizar que será capaz de soportar el tráfico pesado en este nuevo periodo de inscripción abierta. Si surge cualquier problema puede llamar a la línea del mercado de seguros (1-800-318-2596) y hable con un miembro del personal que puede ayudarle a escoger un plan o revise sus beneficios existentes.
6. Mantenga las fechas importantes en mente
Tenga en cuenta que la temporada de inscripción abierta durará sólo tres meses este año, y no seis meses como el año pasado. Usted tiene hasta el 15 de diciembre para inscribirse en un plan si usted quiere tener la cobertura a partir del 1 de enero de 2015. Si se inscribe después del 1 de enero, su cobertura comenzará el 1 de febrero, lo que significa que podría tener un hueco en la cobertura para el mes de enero. La fecha límite para la inscripción es el 15 de febrero, con la nueva cobertura comenzará el 1 de marzo.
7. Sin seguro, sepa que esperar
Más de 8 millones de personas se han inscrito para el nuevo plan de salud bajo la Ley de Cuidado de Salud Asequible, pero millones más han decidido ir no tener seguro. Dependiendo de sus circunstancias, usted podría calificar para una exención que le ahorrará dinero o multas fiscales por no tener cobertura de salud. Por ejemplo, si los planes más baratos disponibles en su estado cuestan más de un 8% de los ingresos de su hogar, o que no ganan lo suficiente para presentar una declaración de impuestos para el 2014, usted debe estar exento. Si ninguna de estas exenciones se aplican a usted, prepárase a pagar. La pena por no tener seguro en el 2014 es de $ 95 por adulto o 1% de su ingreso familiar, lo que sea mayor. En 2015 - sera $ 325 por adulto o 2% de su ingreso familiar.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Obamacare's Problem With Patients as Shoppers (BusinessWeek)
In the next three months, as many as 13 million Americans are expected to shop for health insurance policies in the Obamacare marketplaces, counting people who signed up last year and millions shopping for the first time. They’ll mostly be buying plans with high deductibles—typically they’ll have to pay more than $2,000 for medical care before the insurance policy takes over. That means that after they shop for health plans, they’ll have an incentive to shop around for medical care, too.
All this shopping is a big departure from how Americans used to get health care. For most of the past half century, health insurance was a benefit provided by employers or the government. People who didn’t have it from one of those sources were often out of luck, especially if their medical needs made them expensive to insure. The Affordable Care Act helps many of them get coverage, but not as a straightforward benefit such as a company health plan or Medicare. Instead, it turns patients into consumers.
President Obama suggested last year that shopping on healthcare.gov would be like buying plane tickets on Kayak or a television Amazon—easy, in other words. Unfortunately, the information most people need to make good choices is often confusing, hard to find, or simply doesn’t exist. “I always liken it to sending people into Macy’s blindfolded, and you’re supposed to buy a shirt efficiently,” says Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton health economist. “You come out with a pair of shorts with hearts on it.”
Set aside the website’s disastrous initial launch last year. Even once it was repaired, consumers were still missing clear, reliable answers to questions that any shopper should ask: Will my doctor take this insurance plan? Will it pay for the medicines I take? If I have an unexpected medical problem, how good is the care available to me, and how much will it cost? Given my health, financial circumstances, and risk tolerance, which plan is the best for me? “For a marketplace to function, consumers need to have really good information about what the different plans are offering,” says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The ACA originally intended to make much more information about health plans available, such as data about how many claims a health plan denies and how many people leave the plan. Reporting those transparency measures has been delayed.
Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees healthcare.gov and state-run exchanges, declined to make officials available for an interview. In response to a list of detailed questions about how consumers would be able to navigate the marketplace, he sent a link to the revamped healthcare.gov website.
Finding out whether an insurance plan includes a particular physician, hospital, or medication is also challenging. The latest version of healthcare.gov has a spot for “list of covered drugs” in each plan profile, but in many cases it’s blank. The new site also has clear links to health plans’ provider directories. “Those directories are notoriously out of date, and calling your doctor may not answer the question accurately,” says JoAnn Volk, a senior research fellow at the Center for Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. She recommends people call insurance companies directly to confirm that providers are covered.
Even if your physician is in-network when you sign up, doctors can drop out of plans during the year. Likewise, the list of drugs that are covered, or the amount patients must pay for them, may change. Some states have laws to ensure continuity of coverage, though no federal rules protect consumers if a plan changes midyear. “Eventually I think we’ll see consumer protections in this area, but for the most part they don’t exist now,” says Lynn Quincy, associate director for health reform at Consumers Union.
Another challenge for patients is trying to understand how much they’ll pay for medical care. Premiums are the most visible price tag when people are selecting health plans, but lower-premium plans generally have higher costs when people go to the doctor or hospital, in the form of deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance. Obamacare covers preventive care without cost-sharing and limits patients’ total out-of-pocket costs to a maximum of $6,600 for an individual or double that for a family policy. That applies to covered services—if a patient goes to a doctor out of network or gets care that the policy doesn’t cover, there’s no limit to how much they might charged.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Banks fined record $4.3 bn for corrupting of currency trading (Mercado de Dinero-USA)
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of America have been punished with about 4,300 million dollars in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland, accused of conspiring to get manipulating the exchange rate of currencies and so go ahead operations that trust their customers.
1,400 billion won supervisor Futures Market in the US (CFTC, its acronym in English) together all the affected banks, while the authority to regulate the conduct of the financial sector in the UK (FCA) applied a fine of 1.750 million, the highest fine imposed in the case history. These two quantities a penalty of $ 950 million for the agency that oversees trade in US Currency (OCC) and $ 138 million imposed by the Swiss supervisory (Finma) UBS adds.
As reported by AFP, these entities already punished for manipulating Libor interbank lending rate and also face other lawsuits and suspicions of tax evasion.
The Financial Conduct Authority UK (FCA) imposed on each of these banks fined $ 310 million.
Violations of these banks undermine confidence in the UK financial system and threatening, "he said in a statement FCA. Add this malpractice lasted from early 2008 to late 2013.
UBS adds $ 800 million in fines supervisors markets US, UK and Switzerland.
Citigroup will have to pay a fine of $ 668 million to the CFTC, FCA and Finma.
JPMorgan, with 662 million.
In the British authorities is also located at this level, with 634 million in the case of RBS and 618 million by HSBC.
A JP Morgan and Citigroup, the US OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) imposed a fine of $ 350 million each, bringing the total of each of these institutions exceeds 1,000 million. And Bank of America, with 250 million. These sanctions could grow and expand to more banks because there are other open cases in the US and other countries.
In the forex market a massive $ 5.3 trillion move in day trading, of which 40% passing through the City of London. As a result, the minimum bend the rules of good conduct creates a financial ball effect snow.
"Today we take severe to end the corruption of some, so that the financial system works well for everyone measures", the British finance minister, George Osborne, said being welcomed decided to "fix what is wrong with banks. "
Friday, November 14, 2014
The 10 Best Tablets (PCMagazine)
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