"Waiting for Superman" (Bill Gates) exposed by Robert Reich

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

Years ago right here on DU, while discussing "Waiting for Superman," I wrote something similar to this (bold text).

Bill Gates, for instance, is just another Carnegie and Rockefeller. No one gets that disgustingly rich without fucking people over both on their way and to remain on top (it's a contest). Each turned philanthropic. Douchebags often turn philanthropic. People who show reverence for Bill Gates tell me how little they've followed of his career prior to creating his foundation or what he's trying to accomplish with the foundation.

The Bill Gates Foundation is trying to dismantle public education. "Waiting for Superman" was his charter school propaganda campaign. The entire movie was about Americans not being competitive with the ROW. The subtext here: Gates is rationalizing why he won't pay top dollar to American IT workers and engineers. By convincing America that our education is wonting, he gets cheap labor from overseas. Take it a bit further, he and Apple are in a race to get their products into to schools. Tons of money to be made. Philanthropy, turned propaganda, turned profit motive. I wonder how many Bill Gates Centers there will be???? That Bill Gates, he's a swell guy.

Robert Reich just posted this on his FB page:

The number-one priority of America’s high-tech firms in the fight over immigration reform has been to increase the annual cap on the number of “skilled” foreign workers they can bring to the U.S. each year under the H-1B visa program. (This year’s cap of 65,000 was reached less than a week after applications for the program were accepted.) High-tech firms say they can’t find the skilled programmers, computer system designers, and software engineers they need here in America. "The government should just let the market work” argued one high-tech executive recently.

High-tech executives are the ones who don’t want to let the market work. If they really faced a shortage of high-tech workers in America, they’d pay higher wages. In fact, the wages of programmers, systems designers, software engineers and others have barely budged over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. High-tech firms want skilled foreign workers because they don’t want to pay more than they’re paying now. According to the latest government statistics, the median wage for new H-1B holders in computer-related occupations is only $50,000 – way below the median wage for those occupations in the U.S., and even below the starting salaries of new U.S. graduates in these fields. So I'd say "no" to increasing the number of H1-B visas. You agree?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

1. Found my thread from November 2010

Did I get the sub-subtext of "Waiting for Superman" right?

Bill Gates: I want to hire cheap labor, so I'll get engineers from overseas whilst selling you the idea that our education system has left me with no alternative since, as I've been telling you for years now, we have a shortage of engineers and scientists.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9497007