Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
It's not just Steve Wynn saying it...; Steve Jobs tried to drive it home.
Topic Started: Oct 31 2011, 09:11 PM (230 Views)
Banandangees
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
I suppose most of the demonstrators at WS, DC and around the nation as well as those in Greece have cell phones, I-pads and the techono gagets and software produced in Silicon Valley who say they want jobs.... opportunities. Even most black kids (and adults) seen on street corners throughout most American cities talking to somebody have "the latest."

Well, Steve Jobs and other job creators had some good advice for Obama, but....

Apple's founder on Obama: "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done. It infuriates me."

Quote:
 
'You're headed for a one-term presidency," Steve Jobs told President Obama at the beginning of a one-on-one session the president requested early last year. As described in the authorized biography by Walter Isaacson, Apple's founder said regulations had created too many burdens on the economy.

Jobs was an Obama supporter (as was Wynn), but his just-disclosed comments are typical of a new frustration with Washington among Silicon Valley executives. Their high-tech companies are supposed to be the country's engine for growth, but the federal government is gumming up the works.

Mr. Isaacson reports that Jobs offered to Mr. Obama to "put together a group of six or seven CEOs who could really explain the innovation challenges facing America." But after White House aides got involved with planning the dinner, it became unwieldy and Jobs pulled out.

When a smaller dinner was arranged last February, the result was more estrangement of Silicon Valley from Washington. Mr. Obama was seated between Jobs and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The dinner also included top executives from companies such as Google, Cisco and Oracle.

According to Mr. Isaacson, Jobs "stressed the need for more trained engineers and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree in the U.S. should be given a visa to stay in the country." The president reportedly replied that this would have to await broader immigration reform, which he said he was unable to accomplish.

"Jobs found this an annoying example of how politics can lead to paralysis," Mr. Isaacson writes. "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done," Jobs said. "It infuriates me."

Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China because it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "we could move more manufacturing jobs here."

One of the benefits of free trade, including in the movement of labor, is that skills would go where they are most valued. Jobs made the point that Silicon Valley is mystified by a policy that instead educates foreigner engineers at top U.S. universities, then sends them home immediately.

Among the attendees at the dinner was venture capitalist John Doerr, who during an Internet conference in 2008 described the absurdity memorably: "I would staple a green card to the diploma of anyone that graduates with a degree in the physical sciences or engineering in the U.S."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jim Miller
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
Quote:
 
You're headed for a one-term presidency,........
Lets hope he is right about that!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Deleted User
Deleted User

That was good advice. Part of the problem in this country is the high cost of post secondary education and I imagine the same holds true for the US.
Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mike
Member Avatar
Administrator
[ * ]
As note in the piece, this situation was just as infuriating in 2008 as it is now. In other words...President Obama is not the first president who offered up the same excuses.

Giving a visa to an American educated foreign student does not require immigration reform. it requires common sense, a trait lacking in most American politicians.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
tomdrobin
Member Avatar
Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
[ * ]
Quote:
 
Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China because it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "we could move more manufacturing jobs here."


Yea, right! It has nothing to do with factory workers working for less than $1 an hour, with no benefits, no obligations like SS, health care, retirement, workmans comp or unemployment insurance. :sarcasim:
Edited by tomdrobin, Nov 1 2011, 01:06 PM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Fire And Ice General Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply

Website Traffic Analysis