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Whoever is working on the bill is disconnected from reality and the damage it is doing long term here.

Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :)

Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they graduate... USA will lose here and other countries win big time on people with great science backgrounds with brains who are willing to work and move the science forward. It will take decades for American educational system to change (if it ever changes) and generate the replacements.

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> Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.

I think that's exactly why people are focusing on IT. The H-1B program is meant to allow companies to hire foreigners with rare skills that are hard to find domestically. In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems. There should be no problem continuing to hire PhDs and other foreigners with actual unique skillsets at $130k.

The abuse of h1b program by IT firms is the issue that has to be separated out and resolved on its own.

There is no reason why we should send a freshly graduated physics scientist back to Uganda or whatever because he can't find an employer willing to pay him/her some abstract 130k salary straight out of school (which is A LOT OF MONEY).

Again, when I hire - I do it strictly based on skills and experience. If I have to do a bit more paper work to get this talented guy work for us I'll do it - but there is a limit. And at 130k limit a lot of these brains will flow back overseas. It would be a huge mistake for USA to get rid of willing to work just talent like that.

I don't see any reason why h1b visa holders shouldn't have a high bar to reach. The whole point of the program is to bring the best of the best, not the average or mediocre, which could likely be filled by an American somewhere.

People seem to be missing his core point - 130k is absurd money for most industries, aside from Tech and Finance.

edit: and not all locations in America pay the same amount of salary for tech workers either.

and not all locations in America pay the same amount of salary for tech workers either.

Indeed. The $130k limit should be raised to $310k in SF, NY, DC, LA, and Boston.

130k salary is absurdly high amount of money for people outside of IT and finance. Stop living in a bubble. It will price out a lot of talent that will be forced to leave the country. Wich is a huge mistake for American society.

I disagree that it would be a huge mistake. American wages are stagnant, and lowering the labor pool will raise demand for workers.

If that talent is really that much difficult to find locally, they'll pay it, don't worry.

And if they don't, that doesn't make the situation any worse. It's impossible to get a H1B VISA right now and they have zero chances to get one, because the quota is ridiculously low and they are all taken by the Indian sweat shops, on top of requiring 1-2 years ahead for the procedure.

While yes, that newly minted physicist shouldn't be sent back upon receiving her diploma, the H-1B visa is NOT the program that's supposed to keep her here.

> In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems.

Really? How much should it cost to do common work like building crud applications or administering systems? Right now, (based on all the H1-B, and similar visa holders I know, which is a good amount) it's ~2X the median household income to pay one visa holder to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to make $200-300K to sling crud apps and keep the lights on in a datacenter.

That's the point. It's to discourage employers from using H1-B visas to hire people to make CRUD apps and instead hire domestically.

I think companies will just outsource crud jobs. There's enough talent outside the US. Until now, they were being brought in with H1b. Now they'll just do if from across the world.

> There should be no problem continuing to hire PhDs and other foreigners with actual unique skillsets at $130k.

You're applying your software-dev tainted view of salaries to the sciences - how much do you think a typical PhD-holding research scientist earns?

Scientists used to make a good living in the USA. Now the market is flooded with cheap foreigners and science is a road to poverty. Ending the employment of cheap foreigners, including as TAs and RAs, would go a long way to making science a respectable profession again.

And it would open the field to American women. When math and science professors can't make a decent living to support a family until after their prime child bearing years, any claims of equal treatment and equal opportunity are nothing but a sham. Science careers today practically demand that women permanently give up any hope of a family just to get on the professor track.

And things are just getting worse. It's time to stop importing foreign science grads.

Foreign science grads are what is driving the US as a leader in R&D. Look at the post-docs at labs in MIT, look at the US Nobel prize winners - the majority of them are immigrants

If companies are limited to domestic scientists then they'll quite happily move their R&D departments to countries with more relaxed immigration laws. Foreign universities will happily take the best researchers from around the world that are denied work in the US.

We're seeing this in the UK from the Brexit fallout. We were getting the brightest from around Europe working in our research labs. Now that we're going to make it more difficult for them they're probably going to go elsewhere.

The elephant no one seems to talk about is: Why are universities not accepting more "local" grad students? In my experience, it was the standardized tests. I was completing an undergrad in math while attempting to the GRE. Meanwhile I heard stories of students in other countries essentially focusing on the GRE as their undergrad equivalents weren't as time consuming/rigorous.

In my experience, standardized tests play almost no role in STEM grad school admissions. Why would a math department care about your score on a vocabulary test like the GRE, as long as you speak fluent English?

The keys are, above all, good recommendations from respectable academics and some kind of research experience followed by high undergrad grades. A high GRE score can't substitute for any of those.

Of course, the foreigners can manufacture the grades and recommendations with a little cash. Maybe even the research experience. They probably do have to study English to pass the standardized tests: The one that matters for them is the TOEFL.

> Of course, the foreigners can manufacture the grades and recommendations with a little cash. Maybe even the research experience. They probably do have to study English to pass the standardized tests: The one that matters for them is the TOEFL.

Wow. Do you have any source for this? I would love to hear one. DO you have ANY idea how difficult it is to get an application accepted at a top tier grad school? Especially if you are an international student? We have to compete against millions of our own country folk at our local examinations, which are way more difficult than the american equivalents. Google IIT-JEE for a starter, and probably try to solve a few sample questions. We work hard to get to where we are and don't expect/feel entitled a job/education just because we are born in a certain country. No one is conspiring to keep local students out, it just happens to be that when graded on a uniform scale (set by the universities themselves (Not every foreign institution's scores are accepted)) the international counterparts are better. With respect to my credentials and experience, I was a grad student from India in one of the tier one schools and work as an architect in the Big 4. You see a huge international presence here in the big companies frankly because we compete at a completely different scale than what you would like to think. I have interviewed enough people to not judge them based on where they come from or how well they can talk english.

We have to compete against millions of our own country folk at our local examinations, which are way more difficult than the american equivalents.

It's much harder in America because it doesn't matter how you do on the examinations. Your fate is decided by personal opinions and relationships and what your local school thinks of you. There is no simple IIT exam or A-level or Baccalaureate or Sooneung where you can just study hard, write a great exam and get admitted.

How we dreamed of the ease foreign students had with their exams! Instead it's a deep dreary slog of obsequiousness, obedience, busy work, group projects, supplication, and being seen but seldom heard. And the results are secret evaluations you're never entitled to see and which are never documented in public.

But that's all for undergrad.

The fact remains that the only exam that matters much in top tier grad admissions for US schools is the TOEFL and that's only for foreigners. Documented research work experience is much more important than any test.

If you want to go to grad school and you spend more than like maybe two weekends studying for the general GRE, maybe you should consider other options. (The subject GREs are another can of worms entirely)

Trust me the people who spent all their time focused on the GRE don't make it to decent grad programs.

The elephant in the room isn't why aren't more universities accepting 'local' students. No department would choose a foreigner over a local. You wanna know why? How much the student is going to cost them. Foreign students never qualify for in-state tuition (well at a state school anyways) and right off the bat are much more expensive to their advisor's budget. Local students can also apply for NSF Graduate Fellowship, and bring in their own funding, something most foreign students can't. Both of these factors make it so that the first preference is to hire local.

That said, in a large number of departments (especially in CS, and other sciences) you see a burgeoning international student population. Why? There just weren't enough decent local applicants to go around and science needs its foot-soldiers.

>That said, in a large number of departments (especially in CS, and other sciences) you see a burgeoning international student population. Why? There just weren't enough decent local applicants to go around and science needs its foot-soldiers.

That's not really true. The basic problem is that while a foreigner can take a US PhD and apply for a fairly prestigious job in their home country, an American with a US PhD gets their career stuck in a rut. Multiple post-docs, for low salaries and long hours, followed by a desperate rush to find a job in a national lab, an industrial lab, or academia. There are hundreds of applicants for each permanent job, and even if you get a permanent job, you're not really guaranteed job-security (tenure). Many "permanent" jobs are even on soft money, which means if you fail to bring in enough grants (and grant rates have fallen dreadfully low in recent years due to Congressional budget cuts), you're a "professor" who can't pay for food or housing.

American academia relies too much on having legions of cheap grad-students to do much of the footwork, and then throwing those "students" out of science entirely when they graduate. It also relies on Congress actually funding the NSF, NIH, NASA, etc. at rates proportional to how much science is being done, which of course nowadays Congress steadfastly refuses to do.

American science careers are in crisis because the career model has become based upon exploitation: getting as much cheap labor out of as many people as possible before throwing them away.

In grad school i was one of those TAs teaching science to 1st/2nd year university kids. Let me tell you, i was horrified and could not believe these kids paid $50k/year to attend these essentially "baby sitting" classes with high school level information.. at most. 95% kids knew nothing IMO and were planning to go to med schools, i pissed off many of them (as i later discovered) by not giving them anything higher than a C (honestly they deserved to fail). They thought i was too hard one them, but all i was looking for is understanding of the subject and they clearly had very over the surface level of understanding .. Where i come from they would not even be able to enter the university at all...

To me the educational system is clearly broken, most schools in USA are unable to produce quality talent. One of the things that annoyed me was the love of multiple choice tests .. i never encountered one in academia until i came to the USA. What, they tell you the answer when you take the test? Whats the point of the test?

Until USA fixes education system ground up starting from the elementary school to high school to college there will continue to be a need for talent from outside of the country. Until teaching becomes a highly respected and competitive profession (see Japan) - things will not change.

There is a lot of demand for smart well educated people in this country and Since America does not have enough of these people inside (see last election results lol) there will continue to be a flow of brains from the outside of the country.

One of the things that annoyed me was the love of multiple choice tests

We said "multiple choice" only to the foreigners and the most uptight profs. They're properly called 'multiple guess' by American students.

No, we Americans call them "multiple-choice tests" too. And they're bullshit.

There aren't a ton of job for PHds in chemistry, biology, chemist, math etc. They end up working at hedge funds or web developers or things not necessarily related to their PHd. Look at big pharama and see how much they spend on R&D or basic research. Its a very small percentage of revenues.

You are clearly outside of the field. There are tons of jobs in the biotech industry for qualified graduates. The issue is finding people with appropriate scientific and industry backgrounds. This is why h1bs are hired. I don't care what color you are and where you come from. If you know your stuff I will hire you.

I do know something about the industry. A couple a of years ago Merk had a massive layoff. Basically there mission was to get rid of R&D because R&D wasn't cost effective. They would much rather just buy up startups when a drug looked promising. I think most of the other big pharmas are doing the same. I have friends who are phds doing stuff that a tech could do. Look at how many BMEs with BS degrees are getting jobs. A lot of these jobs don't need a phd.

Who do you think is driving a lot of the research work at the biotech start ups that the Merc and others are buying up?

Independent investment? Is this a trick question?

I don't know that much about biotech startups. Maybe you can tell me who pays for them?

Rich guys, speculators, VCs

the scientists that got laid off, and then found funding elsewhere.

Biotech products are seen as harder to copy (me too drugs), require an expensive-to-validate pipeline (like vaccines), and look very attractive as a novel mechanism of action (as compared to traditional small molecule drugs). Most pharmas are inexpert in large bio-molecule mechanisms and drug design, and the fact that small molecule high-throughput-screening infrastructure cannot compete in that space makes it attractive as a game changer. (Since HTS has not shown the ROI that was hoped.) Many also see RNA-based or immune-based therapies as the next revolution in drugs.

if there's really a scarcity, then there shouldn't be a problem paying higher wages as these bills require right - especially given how huge money-spinners successful drug molecules can be.

Yes, there is a problem paying 130k. For a masters or even phd straight out of school that's a lot. (I'm excluding you living in bubbles like SF).

Even in SF not exactly everybody makes that much. And note that SF is in California, which is a high-tax state. So the cost of $130k salary is much higher than that (and you get to actually keep quite less than that). And SF specifically has long been gunning for levying additional payroll tax on top of that.

Relative to what? There's no such thing as an absolute "that's a lot".

If you poke into it, you'll probably find that the "lot" assumption is typically "relative to what other masters and PhDs from universities are paid". So why not hire them instead?

You seem to be assuming that salaries are based only on scarcity. This is of course wrong - they also are based on available budgets. If there's nobody to hire for available money, the result may be not more money offered, but less startups surviving. Startup can be hugely successful - but more likely it would be wasted money. Salary floor means more money wasted, means higher risk, means less startups. Or at least less startups located in the jurisdiction having price floors.

I don't at all assume that and nothing constrains you from hiring your own citizens at lower salaries if they'll accept them or investing in training them, making your colleges more accessible and affordable etc. The proposals merely say if you want to hire non Americans, pay more. If you don't want to invest in training your citizens and also don't want to pay more to hire outsiders, maybe you should relook at your business model or incorporate in another country.

This level of open regulatory capture, gaming of the system and not looking out for the interests of the 99% strikes me as dangerous and destabilizing over the long term (but you know that already - that's why Trump won). No one wants a de-stabilized nuclear power.

I'm saying this as a citizen of a country that will certainly get affected by any of these proposed restrictions.

> nothing constrains you from hiring your own citizens at lower salaries

Except if those are not available, or do not want to work for this salary, e.g. because fringe benefits of the position (getting into US, visa being handled by somebody else, etc.) do not apply to them. Or just because they are used to much higher standards of living and demand salary that pays for well located apartment in SF, new Tesla car, etc. while some other people would be OK living with roommates and using public transportation.

> making your colleges more accessible and affordable

I'm not sure how a startup should go about making colleges more accessible and affordable. And why more accessible college necessarily would produce more highly qualified professionals exactly required by this startup and not just more people with college diploma, which means increasingly less as everybody has them now.

> The proposals merely say if you want to hire non Americans, pay more.

That is an import tariff. Tariffs are measures that harm consumers and destroy value, ask any economist.

> not looking out for the interests of the 99%

You are assuming 99% have the same interest. It is not true - it's more likely you ascribe a narrow interest to a lot of people without even trying to consider what their actual interests are.

> No one wants a de-stabilized nuclear power.

That's not even an argument. "I am right because you will lead to a nuclear war". Really?

> Except if those are not available, or do not want to work for this salary, e.g. because fringe benefits of the position (getting into US, visa being handled by somebody else, etc.) do not apply to them. Or just because they are used to much higher standards of living and demand salary that pays for well located apartment in SF, new Tesla car, etc. while some other people would be OK living with roommates and using public transportation.

In such a case, the point of view of your democratically elected representatives & president seems to be that either you should pay more or you should relocate your business to another country where you'll find people working for lower salary.

Your choices therefore are - become politically active & work to change the new policy, figure out ways to game the new policy (which is what led to the mess in the first place) or rethink your business model.

> That is an import tariff. Tariffs are measures that harm consumers and destroy value, ask any economist.

Unfortunately, the social harm that results from ordinary people losing their livelihood or hope of bettering their lives (as opposed to go-getting business-owners) tends to not enter the calculations of academic economists. Politicians of course have always instinctively understood this (Idle hands are a devil's workshop - to give you an idea of how old this is) and that's why they ignore the advice of economists & impose import tariffs in the real world.

If this was true, salary increases would follow suit. Biotech is not a well-paid industry, especially considering the level of education required. Ergo, we have way more people than we need in this industry already (yes, business owners probably disagree).

>The issue is finding people with appropriate scientific and industry backgrounds.

My wife worked in biotech. It's very easy to find people with the appropriate undergrad and Master's degrees. It's hard to find someone with a postdoc in exactly what your company does. Unfortunately, the firm wanted to do exactly that: any advancement required going back to academia for a very precise degree/research program. There was no system of internal training or advancement at all, and as a direct result, the firm is (still) chronically understaffed, chronically overworking its employees, and frankly not at all a good place to work.

Thing is, that's your problem as a biotech firm, since the doctoral and postdoctoral job track was never meant to produce workers for industry. You really ought to just take people at an earlier stage of their career, train them for your unique needs, and advance them over the years. While doing so, you should also provide competitive salaries, reasonable hours, and job security.

Oh, and respect for basic safety. None of this "if a chemical fire starts, see if you can put it out before pulling the fire-alarm" crap I've heard about.

Lastly, if we're going to talk xenophobia, why should a firm in the Northeastern United States receive visas to hire a Serbian postdoc (educated in one of Europe's many cheap, publicly-funded university systems!) instead of hiring and training up an undergrad from Nebraska? Are Nebraskans less deserving to "immigrate" to the Northeast than Europeans?

Or are American firms just trying to leech off other countries' public education systems while not paying into making the American system comparably cheap and accessible? How come the undergrad from Nebraska has massive student-loan debt, while the European postdoc has been earning net income since grad school?

"Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science." Yes but not everyone who learns to code can get a job coding. Not everyone can get into Google or Facebook just cause they learned to code. The software engineering interviews don't test your ability to code, they test your ability to problem solve w/ data structures & algorithms.

If you live in middle America flyover country it's hard to get any tech job. And the H1-B program is making it a lot harder.

If you think banning access to international talent will make next startup owner to set up shop in Omaha, you are sadly mistaken. It'll be Toronto, or Vancouver.

If you think there won't be people that would try to start businesses in America, you are sadly mistaken.

Of course there would be. There are people trying to start business in Somalia, US is not that bad :) It's just there would be less of them, and when they hit the limitations they'd tend to move to places where such limitations do not exist.

>If you live in middle America flyover country it's hard to get any tech job.

Mind, that might have something to do with middle America having defunded its state university systems, making skilled labor difficult to produce. We live in an economy where gluts of unskilled labor are a very bad thing for productivity, and it's about time state governments got that through their damned heads.

You are exactly right. Single minimum wage doesn't make any sense considering there is such a wide gap between IT and everything else. However keeping minimum wage to the 1989 level hurts H1B IT workers more because many of them literally end up getting just that even if they qualify for far more. I guess the issue is not solvable easily because to create job titles and assign it minimum wage number that is, say, at least 10% more than average current is herculean task in itself.

Your point stands, I just wanted to note that the wage level was established in 1998, not 1989. There is a typo in this article, possibly misread from the bill summary https://lofgren.house.gov/uploadedfiles/high_skilled_bill_sx...

If the demand for other types of workers isn't high enough to warrant that level of pay, why do they need to bring in foreign workers?

Lower pay doesn't mean abundance. For example, professors for mathematics, theoretical physics, geology etc would be low paying job but its also hard to find people with great skills in these areas.

I don't think academic jobs are covered in this. The current system also has exemptions for academic H1-B workers (no lottery).

Also, hard science PhD students are typically hired on J-1 (when they stay in academia/research) or O-1 visas (if they find a relevant position the industry).

After you graduate you have to get h1b to work. Nobody is going to pay straight out of school biologist 130k.

Again, a lot of these people find positions on J-1, O-1, or cap-exempt H-1 visas.

Edit: you can downvote me but it'd be nice to explain why at least. I have a hard time understanding how raising the salary requirement for capped H-1B visas will affect core science PhD students.

There is no shortage of biologists. Pay and conditions in the life sciences is abysmal. The sausage factory relies on graduates for cheap labour.

So if foreign students knew the couldn't even get a poorly paid job after graduating, would they go elsewhere? Would this cause a collapse of the university pyramid scheme? Would labs have to start paying real living wages for staff?

Lots less science would get done in the short term. US universities would no longer get the best and the brightest from around the world. The size of departments would plummet. But in a few years the number of graduates wouldn't totally dwarf the number of jobs available. That might not be a bad thing.

Let's hope you are not in a life/death situation later in your life where you get some disease for which treatment could have been available earlier if that foreign student was "allowed" to stay and do the work in the USA...

All because of some delusional billionaire who is allowed (by us) to play his real life monopoly game.

The lack of graduate jobs in biology is one of the reasons why fewer Americans choose to study in the area, and often rapidly leave the field after graduation, usually with a massive student debt. Its extremely hostile to women, a career break is a career end. Its typical of America's decline in STEM fields.

So the system is so fundamentally broken it needs massive re-engineering. I don't think the trumpists have a clue about how to do it, nor care, but their magic 8-ball approach to reform will have an impact.

Yeah, if only they came to the USA, received an incredible education, and then went back to where they came from and helped that country find or administer treatments for basic diseases that kill people in other countries.

received one of the most expensive educations in the world that effectively requires working in a first-world country to pay off after.

That's something to consider before matriculation. It's just as much a problem for Americans as it is for foreigners, so sympathy might be hard to find...

The difference of course is that if you come to a US university expecting to make US wages afterwards, that's one thing. If you suddenly get sent back to a third-world country, that's a totally different thing. The problem is America has effectively been selling these people a false bill of goods.

Has "America" been selling anything? Other than a few private schools like Boston University who view "international" students as their meal tickets, everyone here is largely indifferent to their presence. Meanwhile there are e.g. Chinese government programs to maximize Chinese study in USA.

Let's hope we don't see any more of these ridiculous hypothetical, Rube Goldberg karma, curses disguised as well-wishes here on HN. All because Trump trolling has addled our brains to the point we can only perceive our own apocalyptic fever dreams.

As there is a shortage of jobs and overabundance of students, some of these students not being allowed to stay is not going to decrease the amount of people working in research.

But every decision made could have such a consequence. The US is still a more diverse country than most others with bright people everywhere. The universities have only so many space to accommodate students. We have no way to predict the future success of anyone. How can you not say in the same way that admitting a foreign student results in someone else local being denied an education who was "destined" to cure some disease?

A lot of people with core science backgrounds are working on h1b visas today in this country. This bill can really screw up a lot of lives.

I'd argue the situation already has. Untold hollowing out of American kid's futures to save a couple bucks on K-12 education and a bit on wages.

In what sense? Why are they entitled to a PhD?

O-1 is only awarded to an exceptional few.

In theory it should. In practice, I have anecdotal evidence that makes me believe you mostly need a convincing immigration lawyer.

Like any bureaucratic form, you just need to check the requirements boxes. There's spirit and practice. Not a whole lot of them get issued but a lot more than intended, though telling people to abuse an O-1 instead of an H-1B seems to be passing the buck.

You're misunderstanding the immigration system if you think you "need" to be on H-1B. H-1B is just one of many statuses you could get. O-1 is one that is perfectly appropriate for a brilliant PhD.

(Source: I am on an O-1)

You and some other folks seem to be oblivious on how H1-B works and this bill itself. You need to have 12 years of working experience OR bachelors degree OR a mix of both for H1-B eligibility.

Regarding students (PhDs or anyone on F-1 visa), they will get straight path to permanent residence.

At least the pdf file for new H1B visa bill means that there will be new line or new path for F1 visa holders.

Also, F1 visa students provide good enough subsidies and education discounts to American students (both in-state & out-of-state tuition).

There is no straight path for students from F-1 visa to permanent residence.

I would agree with this. These new changes are clearly attempting to address the rampant abuse of the system by the likes of TCS and Infosys and in the process they are affecting other legitimate h1b candidates.

A potential solution can be something like a different type of work permits or different requirements for h1b applicants applying after they studied here, something along those lines.

And probably for the best. We kind of need the US to take a back seat for a while. Let it be an inbreeding backwater that it clearly wants to be, the world will breathe easier for it.

We've been drifting in this direction for decades now... if someone else wanted to take the wheel, why haven't they done so already? Sure, Putin wants to be the daddy, but he just doesn't have the industry to get there. Other than him? It's like the rest of the world believes the hype, even more than we do.

Or maybe the hype is true?

China certainly is doing a great job at this and Trump's dismissal of the TPP means China just get a major leg up in its regional ambitions.

The US still is an 800lbs gorilla, but it got there by making a lot of aggressive globalization, immigration, military, and investment moves. Now we have an administration that is against all those things and is run by a man who has a cult of personality behind him and can do 'not wrong' to his base. We're on a completely new path that, historically, has not ended well for modern economies. Isolationism and protectionism in a globalized economy simply does not work. Ask Hugo Chavez how well his Venezuelan experiment worked.

>We've been drifting in this direction for decades now...

This is untrue. Ignoring Bush's recession, we've been on a non-stop upwards path in almost any metric that matters: gdp, gdp per capita, military power, science publishing, space, tech innovations, environment regulations, social progress, healthcare access, etc. We are hard to beat when managed correctly. The current administration is going against all the things that have given us a leg up over the years. That is something to be concerned about. US supremacy is not a given. Its hard fought and Trump is giving up the global fight for bizarre reasons like trying to bring coal and manufacturing jobs back, neither of which is even feasible considering natural gas/renewable competition and what automation is doing to manufacturing right now.

It's fun to pick on W, but it's pure fantasy that his anything has been our main problem. USA was a powerhouse from the late 1930s through the late 60s. Big important things got built and sold and used efficiently. Basically until the Baby Boomers entered the workforce. We've coasted ever since. The military spending you like so much has been more of a drag than a benefit, but perhaps only marginally since we export lots of weapons.

I'd like to believe that China will be the next nation to drag the rest of the world in the direction of progress, but they have so much standing in their way... USA might come to its senses before they get started...

>This is untrue. Ignoring Bush's recession, we've been on a non-stop upwards path in almost any metric that matters: gdp, gdp per capita, military power, science publishing, space, tech innovations, environment regulations, social progress, healthcare access, etc.

You mean, ignoring the Second Great Depression that, outside America's richest metro areas, never ended and is still ruining lives right now?

Oh yes, other than the unbearable, unfathomable misery of tens of millions of people, we're doing great!

Where else do software engineer get paid close to 130k? Not too many other places.

It does appear that that's what we want to be; I question whether the world will be breathing easier once it happens. The tantrums of an insanely weaponized and idiotic civilization bumbling towards irrelevance don't instill in me a sense of calm.

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