Tag Archives: Outsourcing

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Hope: California set to offer college credit for online courses

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There are forces in motion that could turn the tide against the secular left, and one of them is online education.

Excerpt:

A bill in California’s Legislature would force public colleges to award students credit for taking some outside online courses. It looks likely to pass, and its implications for higher education are vast.

A successful monopoly has an impregnable wall around some much-desired good, such as education, and controls the only door.

The higher education establishment in America has always operated this way. But cracks are starting to appear in its wall. A significant one opened this week.

On Wednesday, a bill was introduced in California’s state Senate to require public colleges to give students credit for online courses from outside providers.

If students can’t take an introductory or remedial class in the traditional way, they can turn to offerings from businesses such as Coursera, Udacity and StraighterLine, or the nonprofit EdX, a joint project of Harvard and MIT.

The bill looks likely to pass in some form.

[…]For the first time, colleges would have to offer credit for courses outside the academic establishment. As StraighterLine founder Burck Smith told the New York Times, “This would be a big change, acknowledging that colleges aren’t the only ones who can offer college courses.”

Up to now, online teaching could offer plenty of knowledge but not the credits leading to degrees.

Colleges could refuse to recognize the courses, and most did. That balance of power would shift if Steinberg’s bill becomes law.

That would be the start of real competition.

If online courses can teach more students just as well and cost the public less, the professors behind the walls will have to change their hidebound ways or lose more business to outsiders.

Either way, the public would be well served.

The faster we can disrupt the current higher education monopoly and focus students back on getting marketable skills at a reasonable price, the better off we’ll be. The financial crisis actually helps with this, because young people now have to be more serious about what they are choosing to study and how much they are paying to study. We have a chance here to turn the tide. It’s good news!

News

What causes outsourcing, offshoring and tax avoidance? Greedy Democrat tax policies

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I have to link to this Fox News editorial, because they linked to my blog, and because it features a sensible libertarian Wayne Allyn Root, whom I blogged about before.

Excerpt:

The signs are everywhere that a tax rebellion has begun.

The latest U.S. Census showed us that the states with low taxes enjoyed the fastest population growth- states like Nevada, Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

Not surprisingly, the states losing the most population are all high tax states like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and of course Obama’s Illinois.

These states that Americans are running from are all governed just like Obama wants to govern the entire country. Soon these same Americans running away from California, New York and Illinois will instead be running away from America.

Ask the co-founder of Facebook, who recently renounced his citizenship and left for Singapore (where the capital gains taxes are zero).

Ask big-time Democratic contributor Denise Rich, who recently renounced her citizenship to leave for Austria.

The trickle is turning into a torrent. Record numbers of wealthy Americans are giving up their citizenship- eight times more than before Obama became president.

Of course we already know that only one year after the UK imposed a “Millionaires Tax” two thirds of the millionaires in England disappeared off the tax rolls.

High taxes have worked well in England…they are about to endure an unheard of in history triple dip recession…the third recession in 5 years. Folks that’s called a Great Depression.

We already know that millionaires are escaping France at a record pace because of high tax rates imposed by the new Obama-clone Socialist President of France. Even leftist actors like Gerard Depardieu have been forced to abandon the country they love.

The famous actor isn’t alone. Requests by citizens to leave France are up by 500%.

But then came the coup de grace. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just announced he is leaving France because of taxes.

High taxes are even chasing away the presidents of their own countries!

High taxes work great in France. Their Labor Minister announced just this week that France is “totally bankrupt.” His words.

I removed all the links from the excerpt except the link to me. But you can see all the links on the original Fox News version of the article.

I think that there is this attitude on the left that the hardest-working people are like sitting pigeons. That they can be financially raped over and over by rhetoricians who preen themselves in the public eye, while demonizing their victims. It doesn’t go on forever. Eventually people who produce scale back their efforts, or just move somewhere else. Why work for other people who hate you? Charity is one thing, but slavery is something else entirely. Companies also respond to incentives, and shift to greener pastures where the socialists are not in charge.

News

Politifraud: Left-wing Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” is literally true

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Here’s Politifact’s “Lie of the Year“:

It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign — that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.

People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.

PolitiFact has selected Romney’s claim that Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

Now that the election is over, Reuters is reporting that… Chrysler is going to build Jeeps in China: (H/T The Weekly Standard)

Fiat (FIA.MI) and its U.S. unit Chrysler expect to roll out at least 100,000 Jeeps in China when production starts in 2014 as they seek to catch up with rivals in the world’s biggest car market.

Output could double, the Italian carmaker’s Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, without giving a precise timeframe.

Chrysler, in which Fiat has a 58.5 percent stake, said on Tuesday it had agreed to make Jeeps in China with Guangzhou Automobile Group (601238.SS).

[…]”We expect production of around 100,000 Jeeps per year which is expandable to 200,000,” Marchionne, who is also CEO of Chrysler, said on the sidelines of a conference, adding production could start in 18 months.

The Romney ad said: “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

And the literal truth is that Fiat, an Italian car company, owns a 58.5% majority of Chrysler. And the literal truth is that Chrysler IS “going to build Jeeps in China” –  exactly what Romney said. We now know that for a fact because it has been reported by Reuters. Jeep production is starting up in China, it is not being expanded in the United States. Politifact has exposed itself as a left-wing organization that is willing to lie in order to get their Democrat candidate elected.

What happens when you raise taxes on businesses and punish people for working hard and playing by the rules? Very simple. They leave and move to a place where they can keep more of what they earn. Obama likes to hear the sound of applause from those who depend on government for handouts and bailouts, but he is being applauded for spending other people’s money. Money he himself did not earn. Eventually, people get sick and tired of being abused by big-mouth politicians and they take their capital and move on. It’s the Democrat Party that causes jobs to be shipped overseas.