₦airaland Forum

cheikh:
ekt_bear

^^  Northern tribes vs Southern tribes . Please read the Euro/debt debates/opinions of the northern tribes, It's hilarious and almost shocking making NL tribalists sound very civilised indeed . Sincerely, the antics of the southern tribes are shocking and does not merit any sympathy let alone assistance given that they do not inherently believe in paying tax etc. Ireland is in a better position to survive/ help herself with support. They like her fellow northerners are relatively prudent and pay their tax.

Haha yeah. Europeans are pretty tribalist, lol. The way the northern europeans talk crap about southerners is hilarious to me.

Greece, Italy and co are the Hausa-Fulani of Europe

Kats, I'll probably address your post more thoroughly this weekend.

But in a nutshell, the US has different obligations globally than a country like Germany.

Obviously if we could shift over the military spending burden from the US to Europe, it would make the US quite a bit stronger economically.

So I'm not sure it is fair to compare a country that has zero international obligations, and in fact has the US to protect it (Germany) to one that has many obligations.

Anyway, more later.

Imagine industrial action turning what should be a 4 year course into an 8 year course.

4 years of your life wasted

Anyway, Pukkah is right.

Tex, I'm not anti-doctor. I just don't believe in government employees constantly striking when they don't get what they want.

If these doctors are being so dramatically underpaid, why aren't they being snapped up by private clinics?

Me if I work for the gov't and they don't pay enough, but I'm halfway decent at what I do in an important field like medicine, I'll go to the private sector. Where I can be guaranteed of getting a market wage.

So what should be done, Anambra should just give in to the strikers? Give them whatever they want? And what will prevent the docs from striking again in 7 months time when they want another raise? And again and again? Then at that point the doctors will have made a slave of the Anambra government.

Do you have evidence btw of Anambra doctors being the worst paid of any docs in Nigeria? Total remuneration btw, not just base salary.

Basically, none of this makes sense to me. If Anambra is truly underpaying its doctors by so much, then many of them would have left for more lucrative opportunities. Instead of leaving outright, they are striking. Which suggests to me that they aren't being underpaid relative to market wages after all.

I don't understand why this Engr Igbini is trying to push all the blame onto Shell.

Seems like he is looking for a scapegoat.

Unless Shell somehow suddenly became responsible for maintaining all the roads in Delta State

Seems like corruption to me for the FG to buy the bad loan of the minister of power.

That would be scandalous at least where I live

I like them. As others have said, skinny doesn't necessarily mean zero T&A. Sometimes you'll be (pleasantly) surprised

I also like non-slim girls too.

I'm not even an ACN member. But you have to put the interests of your state/people above that of your party.

PDP in the SW seems like they want power by any means, not necessarily to improve the lot of the people. Until that changes, good look winning elections.

^-- I guess I should have realized you are a PDP Yoruba.

Given that you party has been a tremendous failure in the SW, then why should anyone view it as an alternative, at this point in time?

If your party was even making efforts to reform itself, I could understand. But it is not.

We cannot afford incompetents and mediocrities in the SW.

Regarding corporate greed, that is just the culture of the world. Well, at least America, let me put it that way.

If you don't try to make as much money as possible, your stock will be punished, investors will be unhappy, people will write mean things about you

I don't know if you noticed how Apple didn't make the analyst's earnings prediction on Tuesday (but increased their profit by like 50%+), and their stock got pounded (lost about 5% of its value.)

This is a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world. Only the strong survive

[quote author=Jenifa_ link=topic=242057.msg9386848#msg9386848 date=1319179185]doens't change d fact that his comments were clearly sexist and your response was "at least they are interested in discussing the topic"
wth[/quote]Lol I was in no way endorsing his statement. Maybe I should have condemned it more. I think it is clear he is just screwing around though. Don't take him too seriously imo

The misogynist thing is probably (well, hopefully) just a NL shtick

If you want concise, use a scripting language like ruby or python.

Doesn't really matter which of the above you pick, both are good.

Just pick one and master it though, I think.

I'm not saying you are wrong. My point is, whether wrong or right, at least you are interesting in discussing the topic and learning more.

Some of these things, the answers aren't clear cut at all (does shifting manufacturing over to China hurt you in the long run? What should the US do in response to loss of manufacturing? What is the impact of H1-Bs on the US economy?) On those things, not even obvious to me that anyone is "right" or "wrong". . . mostly just educated guesses.

I dunno, at least they show an interest. Misconceptions can quickly be corrected.

Better than 99% of humans who don't care and thus will remain misinformed.

First, the US consumer has not gotten poorer. Their wealth might have increased more slowly than the Asians, but this doesn't mean they are getting absolutely poorer.

Second, it isn't Silicon Valley's job to create jobs for the rest of America.

I do agree that services alone aren't likely to sustain this country. So who knows, maybe in the long-term we are fvcked. But less fvcked than Europe, I expect 

On a serious note though, this was sort of inevitable. Manufacturing simply makes no sense in America because costs are too high relative to China. Eventually manufacturing will be too expensive in China too and it'll shift over to other countries.

Who knows, maybe one day Africa will become the factory of the world the way that China is today

Anyway, I don't know what the answer to America's problems are. But saying, "Oh, you guys should keep your factories in the US despite the fact that you'd make more money if they were overseas" is not likely to be a good solution.

Katsumoto:
But when everyone shifts production to Asia, US workers become unemployed and consume less. Isn't that why the US is still in a rut? And what has happened to all those companies that moved abroad to make a quick buck? How many of them are bouyant currently? Asian buyers are mainly into luxury items.

Well I as a manufacturer cannot be the one to stimulate employment myself. I don't think the cause and effect works out quite the way you imply. Everyone is trying to cut down on costs and thus make more money.

[quote author=Jenifa_ link=topic=242057.msg9386504#msg9386504 date=1319170177]even the companies that are not outsourcing are increasingly using H1b1 workers 'cause they're cheaper, can be recycled and can't form unions.[/quote]I cannot talk in general about all industries. But in the tech sector, talent is at a premium. I think the unemployment rate in this sector (at least where I live) is like 2 or 3%. So there is a scarcity of talent.

The H1-B visa program is an excellent way for the US to grab more talent from other countries. Do such people tend to be cheaper? Yes. But that doesn't mean they are inferior. They work hard and are generally as bright if not brighter than your typical American tech worker. A H1-B guy from one of the IITs (India Institute of Technology) is going to be quite a bit smarter, harder-working, and more efficient at his job than your average American dude.

Not sure what you mean by "recycled." Also not sure what the relevance of "union" is in this context. At least in tech, I don't know of any unionization (and don't see the need for it.)

Basically if some Chinese factory worker can do a job for $200/month that his American counterpart would require $3k/month for (maybe $2k in salary, but there are hidden costs like healthcare, retirement plans/pensions, etc), you pretty much have to see if you can shift the labor-intensive work over to China. The cost savings are too huge.

Katsumoto:
I don't agree with the reasons for shifting production abroad. Greed was responsible for that.

Err. You have to. Otherwise you won't be able to compete price-wise with these Asian manufacturers. Even the Asians are shifting from Taiwan over to China. You have to go to where your goods can be produced more cheaply, otherwise you are at a disadvantage.

At the end of the day, most US corporations will pay for that because they will be at the mercy of consumers in other countries. These corporations will have very little influence in these markets and will be exposed to downturns, currency fluctuations and government regulations and the US consumer will buy less of these products over time. They had a good thing going until they started to outsource.

Ah. I mean, shift my manufacturing over to China, but then ship and sell the goods to customers in the US. So not Dell manufacturing for Chinese consumers, but for American ones.

As of late I've been doing a little bit of Java.

I am starting to like it a lot.

Java has PHENOMENAL libraries!

Any functionality you want, there is bound to already be a nice library you can use.

I don't like the verbosity though.

Overall, I think it is a fairly decent language to start with.

I'm also a huge fan of Ruby. Very nice language. Concise and powerful, but not an ugly mess to read (like perl, for example.)

@Ileke-IdI:

Err, yeah, maybe I misunderstood what you are saying.

Anyway, I was just explaining why Dell has to shift production overseas. So maybe this quite doesn't address what you raised.

[quote author=Jenifa_ link=topic=242057.msg9386431#msg9386431 date=1319167794]lol
what happened to the "hardworking immigrant" stereotype?[/quote]I was mostly just de-PCfying his statement.

BTW, there isn't necessarily a contradiction. Perhaps the immigrants are on average harder working than those from their country of origin. Doesn't mean they are as hard working as Germans.

Depends on who you are comparing to.

They have to leave the US. PCs at this point are a commodity. You cannot afford to produce commodities in the US any more. Have to shift your manufacturing over to China or Asia.

So you either play the game Apple is, by selling essentially "luxury" computers (with very fat profit margins), or play the game IBM did. . . sell off your computing business and focus on higher-margin businesses like services.

This is why HP (the current #1 computer manufacturer) may or may not be screwed going forward. They have some very difficult choices to make over the next few years.

Dell has basically sucked @ss as a company for a while now.

They chose the wrong path and now cannot differentiate themselves from the low-end PC guys.

Didn't they fall to #3 in market share behind Lenovo recently?

IBM on the other hand was brilliant in choosing when to leave the PC business.

US at least has everyone else by the balls.

If the US goes down, then so does everyone else.

This is the best way to do it.

How does that saying go?

"If you owe the bank $1000, the bank owns you. But if you owe the bank $1,000,000, you own the bank."

Katsumoto:
That sort of migration is unlikely to increase German GDP due to the different working culture of Northern and Souther Europeans

Lmao

In other words, Southern Europeans are lazy, indolent, and not as productive

Anyway, very interesting stuff.

Katsumoto:
The consequences to Greece of being kicked out[b] is estimated to be between 45-55% of Greek GDP.[/b] The cost to Germany of leaving the Euro is approximately 20-25%; even that is a steep cost for a solvent and strong country like Germany.

Man, I didn't know it was that bad! Damn. And I thought we had it bad here with 9% unemployment.

The third option is to restructure the Greek debt which will negatively affect the ability of most countries to raise capital from the bond market. Restructuring Greek debt will also take down a number of European banks with high exposure to Greek debt. French and Spanish banks have huge exposure to Greek debt.

The social problems arising from any of the above will affect all European countries as people move to bouyant countries. Crime and other social vices will go up. Immigration will become a big problem.

Which of these three options do you think is most likely? I'm guessing #3?

Seun probably makes more money indirectly though with "interesting" characters.

If you eliminate all the controversial people on NL and made it purely about politics, then I suspect that traffic would go down and so would advert revenue 

Hehe

Notice that he himself puts trollish threads on the front page. There is a reason for this

This chy101 fellow. . .lmao

Like a rabid dog who will attack friend or foe

Very hilarious watching him operate

She has strong liver if she could disfigure her own face like that to discredit the dude.

Lmao

If no artificial insemination, then I'd be screwed. For the rest of my life, lol.

But I wouldn't run away, I'd face the task and give it my best shot

^-- almost as if they should split the EU into two parts.

One for the deadbeat southern Europeans and another for the fiscally prudent northern Europeans.

Yeah I don't see why anyone is taking shots at the US given that Europe has far bigger problems, at least right now

Seems shady. How is this ethical?