Startup Act 2.0
In the guise of a bipartisan bill to keep startups and foreign graduates with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) graduate degrees, working innovating and creating start-ups and jobs here in America, the GOP has offered a tax haven; a zero percent tax investment in foreign jobs to the detriment of Americans.
Businesses have soured somewhat on high tech off shore jobs because remote workers several time zones away, tend to work doing what you wrote, not what you meant or what you need. Local workers with good language skills and more 'face time' can more easily fulfill project requirements. This bill brings outsourced jobs to America, but not for Americans.
As a STEM professional myself, I see not only robust competition from foreign workers now, but a numerous term modular contract positions for the duration of the business project, and avoidance of 'permanent' employees and long term integration of technical expertise into the company.
Touted as a high tech startup and jobs bill, Startup Act 2.0 is primarily a tax haven with a ZERO percent tax on investments in 'high tech' companies. It is also a labor cost reducing measure. It authorizes 75,000 visas for foreign STEM graduates who will be motivated to accept relatively low wages to get their visa extended. This will DISCOURAGE Americans from getting advanced STEM degrees and degrade the quality and quantity of job prospects for US STEM workers. It will lower wages, benefits, and will treat STEM workers as commodities rather than integral parts of business industry and society.
The hypocrisy here is that the 'free market capitalist' supporters of this bill want want to kill the natural reaction of the market to increase wages of American STEM employees because of their relative scarcity here at home.
The bill also siphons off a fraction of federal agencies' budgets to pay educational institutions to instruct STEM graduates to become entrepreneurs.
The bill lacks assurances that these new start-ups by STEM graduates are actually 'High Tech' or that there is a substantial requirement to hire Americans.
As written, this bill will create a quick way to 'import' cheaper foreign offshore workers to compete for American jobs, discourage Americans from going into STEM careers themselves, and create a "high tech" tax loophole for investors to pay Zero tax on their profits.
http://www.govtrack.us/...
10:42 AM PT: awaiting revision ...