The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain
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The culture I found in Sweden for instance is one that is much better for the employees than the fast-paced top-gun style of programming expected in the US. Sure my peak will probably be 60k, but that 60k will also come with a much better social quality of life. That's the problem with the US that would risk brain drain in my opinion. Money attracts people, but treating them well will keep them and the US is starting to fall away from treating its workers well.
Edit: just think about this. Most Americans talk about how they have so much work to do they don't get vacation. Well in Europe you usually get your 2 weeks and in many countries you get 4 contiguous weeks without question. Couple that with better healthcare options, and yeah the US is not looking so great.
1. Pharma companies develop drugs with US subsidies and make their profits off US citizens while European countries put price ceilings on their drugs.
2. US essentially defends the world, allowing other countries to spend money elsewhere.
http://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe-...
You really think that? I mean come on
If? In the entire history of NATO, the mutual defense provisions of the treaty have been invoked exactly once, and that in response to an attack on the US, and the non-US NATO contributions were not insignificant.
that's the point
Many Europeans gave their lives in Afghanistan, responding to an attack on the U.S., and also in Iraq on a fools errand. The U.S. is the predominant power, but that doesn't make others insignificant.
I find it really weird how over the ocean they are always pounding the self on the chest but they never think about how some of us need to deal with the consequences of the decisions they made in the past. You can bicker a whole day of keeping people out and travel bans but you need to ask yourself what is one of the reasons we have them in the first place.
Military spending is also not about the bill but funding the American military complex by forcing shoddy products (JSF) to other countries. I know this is the reason why this country is still debating about replacing our old F16 fleet.
America is not perfect in that regards that they only brings safety to the world or they do everything because they have high moral values.
Because they know you're a soft touch? How many 30 year old "Syrian children" from Pakistan and North Africa are you going to settle before you realize most of the people coming to Europe are coming for the free benefits and not because they're fleeing war? Shouldn't Syria be pretty much empty by now?
Besides, there was a country which kept migrants bottled up in Africa until France and the UK decided to settle old scores.
>Military spending is also not about the bill but funding the American military complex by forcing shoddy products (JSF) to other countries. I know this is the reason why this country is still debating about replacing our old F16 fleet.
Nobody's forcing you to do anything. You could buy from the Swedes, or the French, or even the Russians. And no, the JSF is not a "shoddy" product. It's just too expensive. Do you expect the US will bomb your country if you don't buy it? Don't buy it.
>America is not perfect in that regards that they only brings safety to the world or they do everything because they have high moral values.
Nobody's claiming to be perfect. All I'm saying is we're wasting money protecting Europeans who are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Europeans who refuse to spend more than a token amount on defense and then expect the US to "take the lead" whenever something bad happens. If it were up to me you'd be on your own.
The majority is definitely not coming for what you call 'free benefits', and most of those who do will be sent back home in due time, if their home countries accept them back. Unfortunately it's quite common that they don't, and then there's not much left to do but allow also these people to stay. Can't really deport people when their home countries won't let them through the border control.
Those people are not leaving. You may tell yourself they're leaving. Your government may tell you they're leaving (someday), but when push comes to shove the media will be blanketed with sob stories and accusations of racism if anybody actually tries to repatriate them.
I wouldn't support the US reneging on its current security agreements, particularly with Japan, since we forced them into their current pacifist regime, but if South Korea, Japan and/or NATO wanted the US out, I wouldn't oppose it.
I'm afraid there's a point at which America's overwhelming military, cultural and political dominance itself becomes a problem. Even if one can argue that, as hegemonies go, you could do worse, superpowers and their chess games are also holding the world back.
Why? If US does nothing for their security, then there's zero point of US spending money on it. It is like code - if the line is NOOP, then it should just go.
If the US has treaty obligations that require its military engagement, then those need to be upheld, or else the US should try to renegotiate them. Otherwise, even if the security situation is made worse, the US should respect other countries' sovereignty if they want them gone.
Because of Pax Americana, most people can't even grasp the concept or seriousness of, say, a neighboring nation dropping bombs on your city just because they want your territory. The US is insulated from such concerns, Europe is rife with them :)
Because of “Pax” Americana, many people have a vivid and direct understanding of a remote nation dropping bombs on your city because they aren't satisfied with your internal politics, even though they don't want to be bothered with the general burden of governing the territory.
If US stops initiated wars, I bet the world can be a safer place already...
http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/01/design-critique-puttin...
Absolutely untrue. It's amazing how this "fact" continues to be shared even when shown to be false.
SG&A is a catch all. It included things like staplers, secretaries, etc. it's not purely marketing.
You conveniently forget the European drug companies who develop drugs—and completely pay for the research—while negotiating price ceilings, and then export the same drug to the US, selling it 5x the price for pure profit (minus distribution/marketing/lobby costs).
Disclaimer: my Dad managed research at one of those large European pharma companies.
Other users have reformed themselves this way (I'm one of them), so I'm sure you can, once you internalize the value of what we're shooting for here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It isn't primarily an ethical issue, if that helps; it's about trying to avoid degradation into boredom. Flame-style comments provoke worse, both quality- and quantity-wise.
If we don't like subsidizing Pharma companies maybe it should just stop doing it. It's not like Europe is asking us to. Similarly, I'm all for closing bases. If the US wants to close bases and cut military spending, who's stopping us?
Given the strength of most European countries and their lack of natural resources, the chance of a large war being a net positive for Russia is small. Of course, sometimes there are internal reasons to start a war. Falklands and some US wars and, I think, most of Russia's small wars after the cold war come to mind.
The US doesn't “defend the world” by any stretch of the imagination. As for what it does commit to defending, well, other countries wouldn't let the US put the forces and facilities in their countries that the US wants there for global force protection of the US didn't also make a credible commitment to mutual defense; the US doesn't “defend the world” as a charitable service, it agrees to assist with the defence of select countries in order to contain others, secure access to key resources, and be in a position to project force to advance US interests anywhere in the world.
If you're reading this and would like a concrete example of what the guy above me means, take a look at the U.S. history in major foreign bases like Okinawa. Okinawa does not exist so we can defend Japan. It serves as an Asian FOB, helps contain North Korea / China, secures our access to important shipping routes, and of course "projects force".
The "U.S. protects Europe and the rest of the world" is just some jingoist narrative with no factual basis.
In addition, and as far as agitprop goes, this particular argument begs the question: if this is the case, why are we doing it in the first place?
This kind of juvenile ideology, claiming some pretended affront to some national interest to justify some weakly supported exceptionalism and eventually supremacism, is old as the world. As I don't want to invoke Godwin so early in the afternoon, I'll just mention this is also quite a popular theme amongst wife beaters.
A significant segment of the US population is following a well known path for all of those acquantied with early 20th century European history. It's only that the US is still catching up with all that, being such a young nation, and not having been vaccinated against fascism like pretty much most of the old world. It's gonna get rough I'm afraid.
Europeans often have this illusion of a working social democracy compared to the US suggesting their by default offered benefits to be superior to the offers from the US. That's not the case. In a lot of middle-income-class positions you get most of the things you described as perks. Health care support check. Additional vac days check. Plus a much bigger paycheck.
Surely I can agree with treating the workers well and in my book this equals with not exploiting them (so no excessive overtimes, phone calls, onduties etc). But this is not a universal thing in Europe you cannot really generalize this and a lot of the EU companies can be very exploitative even if it's ILLEGAL.
I am an American that found peace and happiness in Europe however because I am American you are right to say I'm biased. You don't live in a place all your life and not notice the negatives more.
I do feel incredibly lucky in this situation - I know not everyone gets the stuff I do. But I feel like maybe you might be mistaking "programming in SV/startup community" for "programming in the US". The rest of the country (for the most part) isn't as completely crazy and (sorry to say) idiotic with programming jobs and lifestyles as SV is.
There are great companies all around the world, and there are crap companies all over the world.
From what people are saying (myself included) is that you can find those jobs in the US but possibly with double the salary. There's more variation.
Just another anecdotal rant to add to the pile :)
If you don't care about brand name then work in other parts of the country, even remote. Easily pull down six figures and live like a king compared to Europeans. Typing this from Europe.
When I used to work in Netherlands, regular employees only worked 4days / week for 36 hrs. They would take a day off in the middle of the week.
Having experienced both, the European work life is much more preferable to me, especially when you have a family.
What I was trying to say is that in the US you get to get nice salary and the euro perks quiet often but in Europe you are pretty much stuck when it comes to money.
I don't care about getting it myself. Although, it should be pointed out, you don't have to 'negotiate' for health care or notify someone of your preexisting conditions or any of that crap. You just have to turn up and you'll be treated entirely for free.
But I also want to live in a country where this applies to everyone that doesn't earn as much as me too.
At my company, we were driven by by high code quality. We would try our best to minimize escalations, we will never release new code on Friday or late in a day because people have lives. We really made sure no one was working late or on weekends. And we were still competitive and profitable business.
Then we get bought by a Fortune 500 company. Slowly new rules come in. Deadline driven projects. Code Quality is no longer important. People are expected to release barely working code just so that we can do a press release. People are working late and on weekends. Code is released on Friday at 5PM because who cares about employee happiness.
The result is smartest people have already left the company. This has led to more escalations and less gatekeepers to prevent bad design decisions. People are constantly leaving. I am still here but I am passively looking, so are most of the remaining people. Right now, market is good, so I might see a pay raise but I have told recruiters, I can take pay cut for a great work-life balance.
* Long (1+ years) state funded parental leave.
* Childcare at a negligible cost.
* Free education all the way through University.But if I understand you correctly, your argument is that once my expenses are met, I might as well give the rest of my money to the government?
This is not really a controversial position since almost all jurisdictions have some version of progressive taxation.
Among other effects, it compensates somewhat for value added taxes (eg sales taxes) that consume a disproportionate fraction of the income of poor people.
I never claimed it was controversial but the consequence of this (good or bad) is that I feel more inclined to ask for more free time rather than a raise. From a government position, the good is that it potentially opens up for more people getting employment, the bad is that I will pay less taxes (because I earn less). Had the progressive tax rate hit me less hard I might instead work to increase my salary so that in the end I would pay more in absolute money with the lower margin tax rate than with the current one.
The compensation you talk about goes both ways. If you have a high income, you're more likely to have a higher education and with that accumulated student debt that needs to be paid off. It can also be seen as one incentive to push yourself through getting a university degree, which again is seen as beneficial by most governments.
I guess you can see it both ways, either from a fairness perspective or a utilitarian perspective. I'm personally quite fond of fairness but, and this is a large but, I'm convinced that too much focus on fairness can be detrimental to everyone, including those who consider themselves unfairly treated (and hope to get even by more fairness). See my example above, if I paid more in absolute money but less in relative, that would seem less fair, but it would be more beneficial for everyone. Of course it would benefit me more thus be a thorn in the eye of some.
Case in point; my state offers a 40% tax break to manufacturing companies. No, sorry, the governor vetoed that. They offer a 40% tax break to ONE gargantuan manufacturing company. I'd have to pay full price.
I could compete from China. I could play on an even playing field in Europe if I'm gonna pay out the nose anyways. Or I could stay in the US and get bled like a stuck pig until incumbent players can pay a pittance for my operation's desiccated corpse. American dream, my ass...
Are there EU nations that give so little paid vacation? At least in the West, I think at least 3 weeks (non contiguous) is the norm...
I can get up to six weeks with roll over. Used up 4 weeks for my wedding, still had 2 weeks left, saved one of them up so I'd have 5 weeks in total the next year.
It is very hard to paint the US with a broad brush.
Having to use pto for sick days also doesn't happen anywhere in the EU.
That is, you get at least 5W in summer (typically).
The uk for exemple I think has 28days pto as a minimum, but as bank holidays count against those 28, it's hard to get a long holiday.
Source (article 7):
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
Well, I ended up working with a team in Switzerland and holy crap, they work hard! Emails coming in at all hours of the night, meetings that go well past dinner time.
I didn't notice any difference in work life balance. Our office has the same vacation policy as HQ, so even that was the same.
He got a good offer from his home country. Isn't that a good thing that he gets to go home to his country and contribute there? he fact they can spare $250k for him to buy a house and $1M in grant money says a lot about China.
Having been in academia for a bit, it seemed there was an oversupply of PhD in some fields. There are just not going to be enough university teaching positions and not enough Googles or Teslas or other companies needing that many employees with such advanced degrees.
He mentions it's Trump's fault. Let's criticize Trump but not sure if attaching it to this particular case makes it productive. I think they meant this H1-B overhaul
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/18/524569185/trumps-latest-execut...
Another Axios reporter seems to think the update to H1-B overhaul is mainly targeted at abuse by India-based staffing companies like Tata, Wipro and HCL
https://www.axios.com/changing-h-1b-rules-computer-programme...
Look at what capitalism has done to standards of living and life expectancy across the world over the last 100 years. In terms of the quality of human life, it is so staggering how effective capitalism has been. I think your view point of certain people being disadvantaged with regards to our current form of capitalism is short sighted. Sure, some physics phd may not be fully utilized, but that is at the cost of a system that is changing the world for the better.
What we are arguing is whether forcefully changing the inefficiencies (how do we even know they are inefficiencies? We dont. We can only speculate) you see in capitalism would help society overall. But that is like saying in the course of human evolution, we need to enforce mating rules to "change the course", sure we could do that, but how impossible is it? Would it even help? Are we even smart enough to figure that out?
I look at the characteristics of capitalism across two different zones of operation. One a sort of pre-industrial/pre-buildout phase and the other a post-buildout phase. The performance was great in pre-buildout where it's pretty easy to direct just about any additional economic activity to creating new value. So just about any activity that increase profits - increases general well being in the region.
But for nations in the post-buildout it's pretty sketchy, mostly more and more capital allocation going to momentum activity (three years of provable ROI...) instead of fundamental value creation. Increased profits don't necessarily spread out to general well being.
Nations like China, and many African nations, etc are in the earlier phase and it is certainly improving human quality of life in those kinds of regions - but other nations in post-buildout it's a very mixed bag where fundamental improvements are flat or even reversing. China is arguably in the middle of build out and may have another decade or two to go where current capitalistic tools work well for it. Africa is even earlier on that curve - but the US is definitely in the post phase.
I'm not even advocating any specific change - just observing that there's a big difference in the effects of economic activity in the two phases. And that the US in the second phase is really not delivering quality of life improvements to society at large in the same way as earlier. If one agrees with my observations though - it is easy to think that some sort of change is warranted.
Are there actually fewer positions available?
If so, what is the cause?
There is lots of evidence that our universities have become less effective in both teaching and research - prioritizing administrative and income generating functions for example. Perhaps this results in fewer jobs available. Or perhaps professors are simply retiring older (I have heard this too).
I agree that blaming Trump seems wrong. While media reports have been hyperbolic little if anything has changed so far. The proposed new "points" system actually gives highest priority to people like that young Chinese Ph.D mentioned in the article.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/cotton-perdue-trump-b...
It seems in particular we're seeing (1) more people get PhD's (see page 3) and (2) a lower proportion of PhD's securing post-PhD employment (see page 9).
[1] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16300/digest/nsf16300...
1. More people are getting PhDs, which means if the job supply remained constant, higher percentages of people won't get a job.
2. There are fewer "real" academic jobs, because universities have evolved to focus on cost-cutting business practices, tenured faculty are expensive, and an endless stream of abused adjuncts has no down side except the quality of education provided by your university, and who cares about that anyway.
The $250k for a house is weird, but in the US we make deals like spousal hires that might seem strange in other places.
They've claimed that the person in the article is going back home because he received no teaching offers. That's standard practice for foreign individuals on a visa in the US. You have to be doing something to stay here. We're not going to let you live here just because you felt like you wanted to.
---
Other than the politicking going on in the article: "OMG TRUMP IS SO BAD AMIRITE?!" (Paris accord disagreement, etc) What I think up for debate is:
Should foreign contribution in the economy on a national level be considered fair and healthy for our economy?
My concern is due to depressed wages competing on non-equal levels causes more long term harm to the consumer and the businesses involved.
With the (IMO pretty broken) tenure system in the US, research-track academic jobs can be very lucrative and with many researchers un-fireable regardless of what they do academically makes research both more expensive (folks goofing off) and less valuable (sharp researchers cannot find positions) for the society that it can be. I think we need to tune the system before we talk about more funding as a solution
My experience was on a "pure science" / paper and pencil side. Maybe it was the fact that one does not need grants for labs, etc. that takes pressure off as well. Among the grads (at least in physics) the split between experimentals and pure would be crystal clear any weekend: the first were in the lab, second played warcraft :).
So if anything, their return to their home countries only solidifies American strength. For the time being, at least.
I haven't had much time to read into this, but it feels like the advantage the United States has over other countries in terms of academic institutions has stagnated.
Where are the Bell Labs, PARC, Los Alamos Labs of the 21st century?
Where are the Neumanns, Heisenbergs, or Einsteins of this era?
Probably not here.
The agitation of identity politics and growing wave of anti-intellectualism is keeping our best minds apart.
What would happen if we increased research funding by X percent? How did we settle on the current funding levels? I would be curious to see a reasonable source for this. A cursory google search mostly returned opinion pieces that we should increase funding for science. I agree, but hard(er) numbers would be better. It would be great to see a back-of-the-envelope ROI for X percent funding increase in T time. Obviously funding can be applied in many ways, and the ROI is difficult to measure, but someone must have studied it.
For the immediate future, the US remains the best place for research. But dominance can begin to change before the effects become obvious, like a large company that's still profitable long after it's become irrelevant.
maybe US universities are just not efficient enough. maybe US universities are basically bloated, government subsidized fat-cats that cannot compete in the global marketplace.
but it raised a question i couldn't answer: how do such unproductive blobs of corporate greed survive at all? i mean, if it's not government subsidies. is it some sort of protectionist regulatory regime (e.g. sort of like the TBTF Wall Street banks enjoy)? some kind of collusion? a secret cartel?
Biotech or anything related to "Stem cells" or "Cloning" are the past ones, future ones may be AI.
And cryptocurrencies and that entire area of research is quickly becoming untenable in the USA.
Immigrants are more than cheap labor.
edit just for a bit more diversity: Madeleine Albright, Schwarzenegger, Ang Lee, Tesla, Fermi, Audrey Hepburn, Sataya Nadella, Jerry Yang, Cary Grant...
edit 2, correction: Ang Lee's Wikipedia page says he's a resident and not a US citizen. Another alien undercutting US labour like James Cameron and Ridley Scott.
Then you have go on and prove that for every one of those imported "rock stars", you wouldn't have gotten an equally great person from the local group. It's not immediately obvious that those things wouldn't have sprung up without that external "rock star" being brought in. We're often told that people aren't islands, so it may very well be that the local environment/culture is the one that helps create these "rock stars", and they just happen to be in the right place / right time.
I use "rock-star" because I have no idea what else to call them. Leaders, high-achievers, smart-people, role models?
one might argue, on a national level, that because lack of education -- not talent -- is the true limiting factor, there are plenty of existing US residents who are capable of filling these jobs. the US can simply train from within and promote from within.
at the same time, the standard American theoretical response for the lack of expertise and trained labor required to grow the companies is: "we can't find anyone here who can do the job. period. we absolutely have to import people from foreign countries."
one might argue, on a national level, that there's no point in spending government money to further the education of US residents. they'll never be able to do the work anyway. instead, America might as well write these people off and import different people who already have the talent, expertise, training, education.
don't these ideas contradict each other? which theory is right?
Americans don't worry about whether a theory is correct. We worry about how much money can be made by believing in it.
I don't want to start an immigration argument, but the skills based system that has been proposed and was in place in Canada would have let Einstein, von Braun, Brin, Fermi, Yang, Albright, etc. into the country.
For most of my career, I've watched as shitty body shops stuff unqualified candidates at low rates to "farm" them into more valuable workers. They don't hire onshore workers because they lose the visa leverage and hose many of them with "company town" style bullshit like corporate housing.
I'd love to have the opportunity to pull in some equally unqualified urban and rural high school students whose only prospects are Walmart, truck driving or the army and give them the same opportunity. Many would suck, but many others would flourish and build meaningful careers.
Great, but not the important question. The important question is: are citizens more than cheap labor?
This is clearly not true. If you look around you, much of what you own, use, etc. comes from other countries, including the ideas, science, and technology behind them. Just off the top of my head, in one industry: The web, Linux ... why would we think for a moment that Americans have superior ideas to everyone else?
Also, if the U.S. doesn't buy goods, services, labor, etc. from other countries, then they won't buy them from the U.S. The U.S. is only 5% of the world's population and maybe 20% of the world's market (due to the wealth of its citizens). A U.S. 'Brexit' from the world would be an economic disaster.
US university administrators are fat. Start cutting.
1. was he deficient in some way that makes him unsuitable for the job?
2. did the university not provide the needed skills for the teaching positions he was applying for?
3. is the supply of qualified applicants so high that many receive no offers?
4. is there just not enough funding to employ every qualified academic?
5. is the regulatory environment such that we force many qualified jobseekers to look elsewhere?
...and so on. these seem to be the more pertinent questions in this case, not the political "trump is xenophobic and his policy sucks" slant of the article (whether you agree with that sentiment or not), because the uncertainty around imiigration policy doesn't seem to have had direct bearing in this situation. li didn't get a job in the US, so he's going to china, where he did get a job. pretty straightforward.
with that said, i believe we should allow much more immigration, not less (contrary to trump's position), but the light and disjoint reasoning in this article was a head scratcher.
Sure you can expand research grant money, as the article mentions, but what more than that? A guaranteed job? A blank check? The author should have spelled out some realistic reforms.
I'd hardly call 140+ out of 3000+ applicant returnees a brain drain. Sounds like they don't offer this to foreigners either. Someone forgot to tell them how politically incorrect that is. Plenty of smart people from other countries would love to take their place.
And so what if they go to Canada, our friendly northern neighbor, ally, partner in this hemisphere, and subscriber to our intellectual property laws. I don't necessarily consider that a "drain", more like just living in "alternative version USA". Not like they can't easily return to the US if a better opportunity came up and or the political climate shifted more to their liking.
This was an amazing thing for me how China can pay more than Europe (and America). How the world has changed in just a few decades.
Alas, at the way things are going with regulations, particularly in tech, and the increased... polarization and radicalization of politics here, I'm starting to think that it's time to leave again.
And here's the thing-- I bought a car on a 5 year note and it's not even paid off yet.
Pretty soon, any kind of innovative work in the crypto space (Eg: trust-less atomic swaps between blockchains for example) is effectively illegal, UNLESS you can raise $100M to hire enough lawyers to prove you never have custody of the coins.
Much cheaper to move to a friendly jurisdiction, raise the same $100M and put it into engineering salaries.
As far as politics goes, I don't think America is that much worse (if at all worse) than other high paying countries.
If we can keep them here, this will be a big boost for Canada long term.
If there's not enough money then why is academic pay better in the US than almost anywhere in the developed world?
We don't have to pay as well, someone else will always be willing to ravage their own country to beat us at that game. We just have to not screw up the local society and environment as badly as the superpowers.
We can offer many of those features simply by leaving the huge local ecosystems intact and accessible, and by avoiding changes that cause parts of the population to become desperate.
It's hard to find good postdocs in AI with the job market right now.
For biologists or other oversupplied PhDs, salaries are much lower.
There was similar discussion on proberts AMA, there's simply no easy way to hang out here to work on cool side projects. The closest thing is the E2 visa, which would require all of my savings.
What is the point of this article?
People assume the U.S. is a first-world country, but there's no reason it can't be like Russia or other nations with poor government, corruption, and a culture that doesn't value education.
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/22/help-wanted-americans-don... (featured on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651019)
Also, the lifetime wages of college degree holders shows demand is pretty high for them.
Finally, when people say college isn't necessary, they meant 'not necessary for lower class kids'. I assure you that every Senator who proposes cutting education funding is sending their own kids to college, as is almost everyone reading this on HN.
The difference was that, back then, if we were to go back to Taiwan, there wasn't a guarantee that a US-trained Ph.D. would get any sort of employment.
It is similar, yet different with China: in the past 5 years, I have seen China, flushed with cash (from, you know, Americans) aggressively investing. Infrastructure investment is the most obvious -- for example, ambitious rail plans that not only stretch across China, but also into Europe and Africa. There is also an aggressive investment in cultural influence as well. (For example, trying to get Wushu recognized as an official Olympic sport).
And then there is advanced research. There are two teams in the world that researches quantum tunneling communication, and one of them is a Chinese team who was a protege of the PI of the only other team trying to pull it off. There is massive investment into AI/ML, into space, into military (both a carrier program as well as asymmetric military technologies such as drone carriers).
A postdoc in America doesn't really get much respect, not in the way the Chinese and Taiwanese do. You could struggle here in America, writing research grants, and your family doesn't know or doesn't even care. Or you could be offered being a director of a lab with a lot of funding. Family members and neighbors might not know the science behind what you do, yet they admire and respect you.
I remember this documentary about the creation of the Three Gorges Dam and the displacement of some families along that river. They showed a girl in a family who was sent off to work on the cruise ships for tourists who wanted to see the Three Gorges before it got flooded. The family needed money so they sent their daughter off -- a very Chinese things to do. The girl didn't want to work and the mother is telling her, sorry, this is for the family. You know what dream the girl was giving up? It wasn't an entertainer, or an entrepreneur. She wanted to become a scientist. She saw scientists as the heroes.
That's something I never hear in America.
I think a lot of people in the West forget that (despite the Cultural Revolution), the Ming dynasty Chinese at its ascendent had more reach, technological prowess, and industry of any other society ... and they deliberately turned inward: completed the Great Wall of China, recalled the exploration fleets, shut down their massive network of steel foundries, just before the time the Europeans were starting to explore and to colonize. China has had many cycles of empire expansions, consolidations, and fragmentations.
And I see America making the same mistakes ...
I'm only passingly familiar with the Ming dynasty's attempts to isolate itself from the outside world. But I've never heard anyone describe it as a rejection of technology the way you're implying here. I'd love to read more about "Chinese Ludites" if you have links.
The US will always be the beacon of innovation in the world. These are just doom and gloom clickbait articles.
This is nonsense. Just ask Rome, China and every other country that had it's turn at the top of the heap. We can argue about how and when this will change, but the only thing we know for certain is that it will.
Maybe a brain drain is something the US needs. An oversupply of "brains" isn't a good thing. We need a balance.