The Stressed States of America

[DisposableHero]

I'd rather go first Native American but whatever gets you there!

See, I think getting a faithless EC vote is more demanding of respect. An elector thought her contribution to America so worthy of recognition that they were willing to ignore the mandate of the electorate they represent to ensure she received that vote, whereas being born Native American really wasn't her doing at all.

[Skroe]

It's certainly made me angrier about politics for that's for sure, mostly because of Trump's statements about his fellow Americans and the Russian stuff. Stressed? No not me. But it's certainly darkened the mood of family and extended family members about the news.

My pro-Trump friends... I just don't talk politics with them. I won't change their minds and there is no "victory" in doing so.

There is only one person I've legitimately gotten mad at irl over the election and it's, sadly, my grandmother. She's Mexican (she was my grandfather's second wife and isn't biologically related to me, but she's always been my grandmother), but has lived in the US since the 1960s on a greencard and this was the first election she was a US citizen for (she became a citizen after my Grandfather passed). She was pro-Trump and thought Hillary vile. And she asked over Christmas "don't I think America needs a strongman, who makes people in government do things, like other countries in latin America to help the people".

Yes, she basically voted for Trump because she thought he'd be an excellent Latin American dictator.

The entire thing is so multi-dimensionally fucked up. A mexican immigrant voting for Trump? In the land of the free but voting for the strong man.

Of course being a senior citizen in a conservative part of the country (rural Florida) and pretty much the Fox News principle audience, she believed all the Benghazi / Obama is a secret Muslim, and so forth mountain of lies as fact.

[Magicpot]

That is a relatively low priority issue. First we need to address our national border and illegal migrant issues then we could focus on climate change after that.

"We are consciously fucking our planet permanently but lets worry about some brown people coming into the US first"

Do you even listen to yourself, you disgrace.

[Skroe]

Weak border control, 10 million illegals.



Okay. I think we should give highly skilled non-whites(and whites) an express lane into the US. However if they come with demands and ultimatums then I don't want them. For example if we have to weaken our borders just to attract a handful of talented people from the Mid-East then it's not worth it. We don't need them to prosper.

Okay. Then they'll take their skills to Europe or China. Let's be clear. This _is_ already happening, pre-Trump, and will continue to happen. I went to one of the top schools in the world for computer science. I have a B.S. and M.S.. I work at a prestigious robotics company. Half the people who work here are foreign. Half my American-born friends I went to school with left the country years ago and live in Asia-Pacific or India. One or two gave up US citizenship.

I'm going to tell you where this leads in 20 or 30 years. Right now the US has four main centers of finance: New York City, Boston, Chicago and Silicon Valley. And it is no co-incidence all four have vibrant tech sectors. Money goes where the talent is. In fact Europe's key problem, up to this point, is only London is comparable.

China is trying to build Hong Kong and Shanghai up to similar status. In a couple of decades, they will succeed. The talent will then flow there and relocate there, either from here or the rest of the world, or both. And that talent will not flow to here.

So that round of innovation... it won't be American. It'll be Asian. It may be Americans workin in Asia, but it won't be something that directly profits the US in the way our tech dominance in the 1990s and 2000s has made us the world's premier technological power. The US has 5% of the world's population, 25% of it's wealth. The only way we've been able to stay on top and as rich is through technology.

Unless we, nationally, take specific steps to protect and grow those advantages, they will wither away.

There is a thread around about the Singularity and Ray Kurtzweil. I'm usually suspicious of Singularity talk and Kurtzweil in general. It's too much an article of faith and deeply understates the technical challenges. But supposing it is right, there is no reason to believe that "the Singularity" will happen inside the United States, at an American company or in an American lab. We Americans have taken that for granted. We shouldn't. And there is actually historical precedent for this. In 1993 Bill Clinton and Congress had to choose - save the Space Station Freedom, or save the Super Conducting Super Collider (a particle accelerator several times the size of the Large Hadron Collider). Congress and Clinton chose Space Station Freedom, which was internationalized and became the International Space Station. The SCSC was shut down and much of America's most talented physicsts - an uninterupted string of dominance that we capitalized on since World War II and the manhattan project - relocated to Europe to work for CERN on the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC discovered the Higgs boson. Many major physics advances are made by CERN now and fewer by the US based FermiLab. America's role in physics is a shadow of what it was 30 years ago. All because we wanted to save a couple billion.

Losing tech will be worse, because much of it is in consumer products and IT. Finance will move with it. And Americans will be poorer. But hey at least some fucking Wisconsin shoe factory will be open.

You want to prevent that from happening? Realize the more important thing about highly skilled immigrants PrimaryColor: you need them a hell of a lot more than they need you, or America.

You are not equals.

[ringpriest]

The german magazine "Die Zeit" wrote an article about psychological consequences of the political changes of the last years election.

Please read

http://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit...ase-population



If you are american, has the change last year influenced your stress level? Do you believe that you are flooded with informations (and in special false informations) or do you think you are able to properly handle the stress level created by the information overload?

Yeah, it's almost like broken American democracy elected an insane, incompetent, aspirational dictator.


As someone who was until recently a US citizen, I can only think that I'd be among those going insane if my freedom, personal and/or financial security were in Trump's hands; now, he still can influence those, but not nearly as directly as if I were still residing, or had any financial stake, in the US. It's a little worrisome, mainly for family members who are still US citizens / residents in the US, but also for the possibility that he'll do something utterly insane - like declare war on one of my homes, or destroy human civilization (or more likely, just crash the global economy).

I've been limited with my US-news diet for a long time (not that other sources are necessarily more unbiased, but they do have less Trump (and watching Xinhua slap him around is always fun)); news is always biased, and seldom really useful or complete - I don't think it's gotten particularly worse for me (but social media is something I don't really consider worth my time to begin with, so I may not be in the path of the hurricane on this).

[ringpriest]

Okay. Then they'll take their skills to Europe or China. Let's be clear. This _is_ already happening, pre-Trump, and will continue to happen. I went to one of the top schools in the world for computer science. I have a B.S. and M.S.. I work at a prestigious robotics company. Half the people who work here are foreign. Half my American-born friends I went to school with left the country years ago and live in Asia-Pacific or India. One or two gave up US citizenship.

I'm going to tell you where this leads in 20 or 30 years. Right now the US has four main centers of finance: New York City, Boston, Chicago and Silicon Valley. And it is no co-incidence all four have vibrant tech sectors. Money goes where the talent is. In fact Europe's key problem, up to this point, is only London is comparable.

China is trying to build Hong Kong and Shanghai up to similar status. In a couple of decades, they will succeed. The talent will then flow there and relocate there, either from here or the rest of the world, or both. And that talent will not flow to here.

So that round of innovation... it won't be American. It'll be Asian. It may be Americans workin in Asia, but it won't be something that directly profits the US in the way our tech dominance in the 1990s and 2000s has made us the world's premier technological power. The US has 5% of the world's population, 25% of it's wealth. The only way we've been able to stay on top and as rich is through technology.

Unless we, nationally, take specific steps to protect and grow those advantages, they will wither away.

There is a thread around about the Singularity and Ray Kurtzweil. I'm usually suspicious of Singularity talk and Kurtzweil in general. It's too much an article of faith and deeply understates the technical challenges. But supposing it is right, there is no reason to believe that "the Singularity" will happen inside the United States, at an American company or in an American lab. We Americans have taken that for granted. We shouldn't. And there is actually historical precedent for this. In 1993 Bill Clinton and Congress had to choose - save the Space Station Freedom, or save the Super Conducting Super Collider (a particle accelerator several times the size of the Large Hadron Collider). Congress and Clinton chose Space Station Freedom, which was internationalized and became the International Space Station. The SCSC was shut down and much of America's most talented physicsts - an uninterupted string of dominance that we capitalized on since World War II and the manhattan project - relocated to Europe to work for CERN on the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC discovered the Higgs boson. Many major physics advances are made by CERN now and fewer by the US based FermiLab. America's role in physics is a shadow of what it was 30 years ago. All because we wanted to save a couple billion.

Losing tech will be worse, because much of it is in consumer products and IT. Finance will move with it. And Americans will be poorer. But hey at least some fucking Wisconsin shoe factory will be open.

You want to prevent that from happening? Realize the more important thing about highly skilled immigrants PrimaryColor: you need them a hell of a lot more than they need you, or America.

You are not equals.

I think you're right on the money here - in my experience (admittedly, in only a narrow slice of the pie) Trump has already massively accelerated this; no one ought to be deceived by the relatively mild coverage Trump's "muslim ban" attempts have received in the US, or the way they've been put on hold by judges - for anyone even a little bit worried about the wisdom of going to the United States, they've been a complete game changer.

I don't actually expect that many American citizens to leave (I expect the number to be several times higher under Trump, but still a tiny drop in the bucket of US population), but tourists, potentially well-off or skilled immigrants, visa-holders going to school or working have all been made to feel very unwelcome, and given strong signs that Trump's America is likely to go full-Nazi - and they are leaving; it's of great benefit to corporations in place to pick up the pieces (and that many of those same corporations are in excellent positions to poach work that nations like China no longer want handled by US firms is just icing on the cake). I don't know when (if ever, given the Trump regime's mix of incompetence and prevarication) hard numbers will be available on the real effect he's having, but just based on what he's done so far, it's going to hurt - if he keeps going down the current path, it's going to hurt badly. And as you pointed out, it won't be some sort of immediately obvious grievous wound to American capability, wealth, and prestige (though he's certainly capable of doing that as well), but a "death of 1000 cuts", that will take long enough the GOP will doubtless attempt to spin it as "not our fault".

[ringpriest]

What? There's millennials that believe everything they fucking read and ones that believe nothing they read. This has always been the case.

I agree with your statement though. I think it takes a large amount of dis-credibility to outright disregard a source (Alex Jones) but most mainstream media is unbias enough where I believe it's possible to determine the validity of a story on a case to case basis.

The bigger problem (and part of what helped bring Trump to power) is that, especially in the US (although true elsewhere to one degree or another) the "news" is irrelevant - the media are not telling you what you need to know; I'm not positing any sort of conspiracy here, mind you, it's just that the media want eyeballs, viewers, ad revenue, etc. And they know what it takes it get it, but what gets that attention (particularly in this day and age) is not what will inform anyone about the particular or general circumstances that could help them make life better for themselves or for everyone.

Media reporting on Trump during the election was mostly "valid" - they reported things he said accurately, the facts presented about him were virtually all true, and the opinions interpreting his words and actions were credible and credentialed. Certainly, they covered what he said, and did often presented it in a deservedly unfavorable light, and yet, here is what Americans were told about Trump:



Words *not* in that cloud of coverage: fraud, lawsuit, scam, bankruptcy, actor (among others) - even Russia barely gets a mention; I mention this because I think it serves as a great example of how "the media" can present "truthful" information, that is still completely inadequate to make an informed judgement. To paraphrase Nassim Taleb, news is worthless - anything you need to know, you'll find out by talking to people, and anything you actually want to know, you need to go find out for yourself. Now, more than ever (although it's been very true for the century-plus mass-media has existed), people need to understand that when it comes to "news" they (and their minds and attitudes) are the product that is sold to advertisers and others.

[Deleted]

If you are american, has the change last year influenced your stress level?

Yes it has, it has lessened quite a bit - mainly due to the fact that REAL Americans rose up and rejected the progressive/liberal agenda and elected a person who could very well turn out to be the best POTUS in modern history. So proud of the 63 million that voted Donald J. Trump for President.

The second is all of the belly-laughs I have had watching the mainstream media implode and the complete marginalization of the Democratic party and liberals/progressives in general.

Those 2 things have alleviated any stress I had in my life (and I really didn't have any to begin with)

[Theinquisition]

I hope those on the far left who have made a lifestyle and subcultures based upon perpetual victimhood and virtue signaling get so stressed out they die

[Skroe]

I think you're right on the money here - in my experience (admittedly, in only a narrow slice of the pie) Trump has already massively accelerated this; no one ought to be deceived by the relatively mild coverage Trump's "muslim ban" attempts have received in the US, or the way they've been put on hold by judges - for anyone even a little bit worried about the wisdom of going to the United States, they've been a complete game changer.

I don't actually expect that many American citizens to leave (I expect the number to be several times higher under Trump, but still a tiny drop in the bucket of US population), but tourists, potentially well-off or skilled immigrants, visa-holders going to school or working have all been made to feel very unwelcome, and given strong signs that Trump's America is likely to go full-Nazi - and they are leaving; it's of great benefit to corporations in place to pick up the pieces (and that many of those same corporations are in excellent positions to poach work that nations like China no longer want handled by US firms is just icing on the cake). I don't know when (if ever, given the Trump regime's mix of incompetence and prevarication) hard numbers will be available on the real effect he's having, but just based on what he's done so far, it's going to hurt - if he keeps going down the current path, it's going to hurt badly. And as you pointed out, it won't be some sort of immediately obvious grievous wound to American capability, wealth, and prestige (though he's certainly capable of doing that as well), but a "death of 1000 cuts", that will take long enough the GOP will doubtless attempt to spin it as "not our fault".

Will Americans leave? Will not at first, but skilled Americans eventually will. And if you think about it this makes absolutely a ton of sense. Highly skilled foreigners come to the US because of economic opportunity and a better life. There is no reason Americans themselves will not be immune to that should, in time, other countries offer better deals. The CERN experience keenly illustrates that which is why I brought it up. With the shut down of Tevatron as well, US-based physics has some specialized particle accelerators (usually at high risk of getting shut down), or otherwise forwards work to the LHC and gets back the results. But in the 20 years since the end of the SCSC, many American physicists relocated to Europe and as I recall reading, more and more American undergraduate and graduate physics students are foreign born.

Within my own field, America does well in Robotics, but the gulf has narrowed and Japan and South Korea have peer-level programs. The thing about Robotics is that it's extremely expensive to build these things. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. We need a lot of money to do our work - from industry and government.

The company I work for gets a lot of money from the Federal government, but because of Trump's election, then the Muslim ban, it's frozen seeking money for new Federal projects. Simply put, it's terrified about losing talent. People in my industry get poached all the time, and Chinese robotics research firms are making hard plays for the best researchers they can get. All that stuff we read on the internet about Robots one day putting Americans out of work? The Chinese Government is making damn well sure those robots are going to be built in a factory on the Chinese coast. To do that they need good people, and they are getting good people.

Previously what kept people in the US is our openness, hospitality, opportunities and reputation. This is a place that young foreign scientists in their 20s and 30s want to start families and maybe one day bring their parents over to live here. Trump is doing WONDERS to wreck that reputation. And without it... give people enough money, and they will leave.

Me? Personally I have very strong nationalistic feelings about science that I know aren't great for a scientist to have. But I'm mostly kept here by family. But to be realistic, if my parents are gone in the 20 years, I'd probably go to wherever pays me the best.

The moronic Trumpkins who whine about "globalism" simply do not get that there is no undo the fact that we live in a global economy, that our wealth is based of global industries and our opportunities are global in nature. There is no winding back the clock to 1885 localism or working in the plant like pap in the 1950s. The world changed, and so must we.

No one I know has left my company yet, but I know that a few are considering it, and probably will, on the projects I work on or near, sometime this year. And, with my company on the market for a buyer, there is always the risk of Nissan or Toyota buying us and moving us all to Asia wholesale. Would I follow? Again... for the right money yes.

American Trumpkins need only look at the World War II European brain drain. Pre-War, most of best scientists in the world were European. Post War, most of them made new lives for themselves in the US and never went back. Europe never caught up in many fields, and when they did, it was because the US squandered an advantage.

That is already happening to us now because of things the US has or has neglected to do the last decade. And that will get worse in years ahead. Either this country has do something about it or be prepared to lose everything. And I do mean everything. What is the United States without its technological superiority, financial market dominance and military superiority (also ebbing away, again due to tech investments by China)? A country in the 20s and 30s on every metric, not big enough to have India's problems... not small enough to have Germany's efficiencies. In other words continent spanning mediocrity and decline.

[Macaquerie]

I hope those on the far left who have made a lifestyle and subcultures based upon perpetual victimhood and virtue signaling get so stressed out they die

Acting edgy on the internet means you're cool.

[Theinquisition]

Will Americans leave? Will not at first, but skilled Americans eventually will. And if you think about it this makes absolutely a ton of sense. Highly skilled foreigners come to the US because of economic opportunity and a better life. There is no reason Americans themselves will not be immune to that should, in time, other countries offer better deals. The CERN experience keenly illustrates that which is why I brought it up. With the shut down of Tevatron as well, US-based physics has some specialized particle accelerators (usually at high risk of getting shut down), or otherwise forwards work to the LHC and gets back the results. But in the 20 years since the end of the SCSC, many American physicists relocated to Europe and as I recall reading, more and more American undergraduate and graduate physics students are foreign born.

Within my own field, America does well in Robotics, but the gulf has narrowed and Japan and South Korea have peer-level programs. The thing about Robotics is that it's extremely expensive to build these things. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. We need a lot of money to do our work - from industry and government.

The company I work for gets a lot of money from the Federal government, but because of Trump's election, then the Muslim ban, it's frozen seeking money for new Federal projects. Simply put, it's terrified about losing talent. People in my industry get poached all the time, and Chinese robotics research firms are making hard plays for the best researchers they can get. All that stuff we read on the internet about Robots one day putting Americans out of work? The Chinese Government is making damn well sure those robots are going to be built in a factory on the Chinese coast. To do that they need good people, and they are getting good people.

Previously what kept people in the US is our openness, hospitality, opportunities and reputation. This is a place that young foreign scientists in their 20s and 30s want to start families and maybe one day bring their parents over to live here. Trump is doing WONDERS to wreck that reputation. And without it... give people enough money, and they will leave.

Me? Personally I have very strong nationalistic feelings about science that I know aren't great for a scientist to have. But I'm mostly kept here by family. But to be realistic, if my parents are gone in the 20 years, I'd probably go to wherever pays me the best.

The moronic Trumpkins who whine about "globalism" simply do not get that there is no undo the fact that we live in a global economy, that our wealth is based of global industries and our opportunities are global in nature. There is no winding back the clock to 1885 localism or working in the plant like pap in the 1950s. The world changed, and so must we.

No one I know has left my company yet, but I know that a few are considering it, and probably will, on the projects I work on or near, sometime this year. And, with my company on the market for a buyer, there is always the risk of Nissan or Toyota buying us and moving us all to Asia wholesale. Would I follow? Again... for the right money yes.

American Trumpkins need only look at the World War II European brain drain. Pre-War, most of best scientists in the world were European. Post War, most of them made new lives for themselves in the US and never went back. Europe never caught up in many fields, and when they did, it was because the US squandered an advantage.

That is already happening to us now because of things the US has or has neglected to do the last decade. And that will get worse in years ahead. Either this country has do something about it or be prepared to lose everything. And I do mean everything. What is the United States without its technological superiority, financial market dominance and military superiority (also ebbing away, again due to tech investments by China)? A country in the 20s and 30s on every metric, not big enough to have India's problems... not small enough to have Germany's efficiencies. In other words continent spanning mediocrity and decline.

Why would putting a temporary ban on refugees from 6 third world countries motivate your employer to freeze requests from funding from the federal govt?

Im all for attracting the best and the brightest from all over, but i fail to see the correlation here.

Im Not Sure why we are morally or otherwise obligated to import hundreds of thousands of people who come from cultures where killing gays and atheists is okay, and women are treated like second hand citizens.

I also feel like you are overlooking some of the social and economic problems countries in the eu and asia will be facing over the next 20 years.

Europe is facing cultural strife and possible eventual collapse of the welfare state with the unfiltered migration they are experiencing.

Japan isnt having enough children to maintain a growing economy.

Chinas economy is still facing issues due to devaluing of their economy.

India im not to familiar with, but you figure theres a reason why they are coming over here in droves.

Im not saying everything here is perfect, but to say that one shit president will mean the end of pax americana is a stretch.

- - - Updated - - -

Acting edgy on the internet means you're cool.

Thanks, your approval means a lot to me.

[Skroe]

Why would putting a temporary ban on refugees from 6 third world countries motivate your employer to freeze requests from funding from the federal govt? Im all for attracting the best and the brightest from all over, but i fail to see the correlation here.

Because some of our employees are from those countries or have family from those countries (namely Iran and Syria). Second of all principle... international attraction of talent is an important part of the globalized nature of the tech industry, which is why you saw pretty much every tech company worth a scrap file a friend of the court brief with the first Muslim ban.

If country bans become normalized, it will act as a disincentive in attracting talent. People will become afraid to work here because of the risk that maybe their home country will be next under Trump. That is a perfectly rational fear.

If you want a quasi example of how tech has had to deal with stuff like this, before Gay Marriage was legalized in the US, companies opened offices 5 minutes across the border in Canada, so that LGBT employees could work out of there (and under Canadian law) and have their partners get the benefits they were denied in the US.

The muslim ban, in other words, is the latest in a long line of profoundly anti-business policy that does nothing to help our security and just alienates people this country needs to attact. And the fact is, my company, knowing it, will wear that "we didn't cooperate with Trump" record as a matter of pride.

Im Not Sure why we are morally or otherwise obligated to import hundreds of thousands of people who come from cultures where killing gays and atheists is okay, and women are treated like second hand citizens.

Think about exactly what you're saying supertony. You're condemning people for the crimes or atrocities of their country men or country.

I know you didn't mean it like that but that is profoundly un-American, and actually against the entire principle of post-World War II human rights. People are to be judged on their individual merits and demerits, not on those of whatever group they are from.

Obviously people who kill gays should not be welcome here. But just because someone comes from such a country doesn't mean they shouldn't be welcome. Did they specifically do something? No they didn't. So what are they guilty of being? Born in the wrong place? That's what I mean by un-American. This country is suppose to be the one where being born in the wrong place is the one thing that SHOULDN'T matter as a matter of principle.

I also feel like you are overlooking some of the social and economic problems countries in the eu and asia will be facing over the next 20 years.

Europe is facing cultural strife and possible eventual collapse of the welfare state with the unfiltered migration they are experiencing.

Vastly oversold in the US. Fact is, for the horde of "invading muslims", we're talking a few million people in a continent of over 600 million.

They'll manage.

So why are you hearing about it? The alt-right is constructing a parallel: brown people invading Europe from the middle East, brown people invading America from Mexico... Western Civilization under threat! That's utter nonsense though. Most of Europe's struggles is that their and our defintions of integration and multiculturalism are different. Furthermore European and American history is different. The United States makes the demand of assimilation - and the vast majority of immigrants do. Meanwhile many European countries have colonial history soaked in blood, and stripping people of large aspects of their culture is a much more controversial thing for that reason. It hearkens back, in a way, to complicated colonial history.

They'll work it out. But Europe isn't even the threat. Europe's tech sector will remain moribund. It's Asia pacific that is going to eat our lunch.

Japan isnt having enough children to maintain a growing economy.

Japan also solved it's healthcare crisis in about 4 years in the 1990s while we Americans have been grandstanding losers about it for fifty years. I'm not joking. The day the US sorts out healthcare, we'll treat it as some sort of accomplishment. That's a farce. We'll be like 60th place in the race. Japan saw it's future in the 1990s and rewrote their laws, and did it efficiently and rapidly.

I would not underestimate Japan's ability to innovate on policy and economics.

Chinas economy is still facing issues due to devaluing of their economy.

A China with 1.2 billion people and, one day, 700 million middle class taxpayers, will devour global finance and with it tech. Period. It won't even be close. It'll be a great white shark in a fish tank with Seal. And the US is the Seal.

A huge part of the US's power comes from it's ability to generate money. 226 million tax filings in 2015... most of them middle class or upper-middle class. That gives the US tremendous revenue generation power, which enables its military might, enables the entitelment programs, enables continent-spanning public services. Enables everything.

China as a middle class country, even one whose citizens make a third what US citizens make, will be that and more just due to the number of people. It's like if the entire revenue generating capacity of the entire Western World was combined into one country, and then with another US on top of that. That's not China-hype, which I hate... that's simple math.

Moroeover consider the fact that the current pillars of US wealth are historically recent creations. Once we were an angrarian country. Then we went industrial and through trade became the largest economy in the world (around the turn of the 20th century). Industrial gave way to post-industrial and the service sector grew. Finanance and Tech, increasingly important parts of the US economy today, were far smaller 30 years ago.

That is to say, the thing that will make the US or China the world's leading economy in the 2050s is probably something that is a relatively small part of our economies today. It may be automation. It may be space. It may be some section of finannce today that is spun off and revolutionizes how money moves around. Who knows. But the point is, the more talent we have to capitalize on that change, the better the chance we'll be situated to dominate it. You ever wonder why China is diversifying in such a forward thinking way so much? Buying up nuclear power tech? Buying up solar power tech? Buying up robotics? Buying up materials? Because it doesn't know which, or any of these will be the "next service sector", so to speak, or the "next Google" at a smaller level, but it is casting a wide net because it bets one of them will be.

India im not to familiar with, but you figure theres a reason why they are coming over here in droves.

It's only modestly increased over the last 15 years. What is happening is that first and second generation Indian-Americans are starting to enter positions of prominence.

Im not saying everything here is perfect, but to say that one shit president will mean the end of pax americana is a stretch.

Pax Americana is under greater threat thanks to Trump, but even had Hillary been elected, I'd still say, we're in deep trouble.

The fact is our country spends a remarkable amount of time patting itself on the back but a remarkably little bit of time planning for the future. It misattributes luck to skill, on a regular basis.

Pax Americana is under threat because Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as predicted in the 1990s, as progressively devouring public finances, and our political leaders and hundreds of millions of Americans are living under an ongoing series of delusions about our spending problem. Republicans want to make some really dumb principled stand about Healthcare and Free Markets which doesn't matter. Democrats are at the utter mercy of government-as-a-solution dogma (among other things). Make no mistake about it: Pax America is finished if the US cannot pay for the things that maintain it, and the US has about 10-12 more years of being able to spend as it does due to those growth. Don't believe me? Trump finding $54 billion in discretionary cuts for a paltry $54 billion increase in defense spending. $54 billion. What a joke. Twelve years years ago, when boomers were in their 50s, the budget was operating on scales of the hundreds-of-billions. The fact we're having some dumb argument about $54 billion just shows how tight money is becoming.

Pax Americana is under threat because our technological superiority is eroding. Commercial technology, freely available to all countries, has become far superior to government-invested technology. This is a historically new thing. Remember: the most advanced space program in the world is SpaceX, the US Government is the world's largest IT Customer (from the private sector), and Android is quickly becoming the world' leading military operating system. Whereas the US once constructed ARPANet, it now buys from Google. This only happened because since the 1990s the US has bought commercially to save money, and under-invested in technological research development (something Trump's budget makes worse), especially basic science.

Pax Americana is under threat because our educational system is a joke. Some places in the US, like Massachusetts, are ranked so highly that if they were independent countries they'd be in the top three in the world. But many of the largest systems in the country are a disaster, and this is leading to an under-informed, under-educated, under-skilled citizenry. When I last posted what I did about foreign workers up above, some alt-right schmuck here said "good, they'll hire more Americans". The thing is: there are not ENOUGH Americans to fill the jobs. Getting a job in tech is easy. There is far more jobs than workers. The US will NEVER produce enough computer scientists and engineers to satisfy demand, without a fundamental culture shift, and the fact is without these foreign workers, companies will be able to execute fewer projects. But with fewer American-born workers in these fields, the company's allegiance becomes more in question.

To put it another way, don't be surprised if over the next 20 years a major US tech firm relocates, wholesale, to Asia-Pacific and no-longer is an American company, because it long since stopped being able to hire large numbers of Americans - the US didn't produce enough and there was more finance elsewhere.


Pax Americana is under threat because the since 1992, we've gotten really comfortable at the "humble brag" as a country, and it's skewing our priorities. When We're the "superpower". We're the "indispensable nation". We're the most powerful country in the history of man. It's all bullshit. That describes our inheritance. That's what we, teen, 20, 30, 40 year old Americans were born into and entrusted to perpetuate. The baby boomers have spent a life time squandering it. Trump, probably the last Boomer president, is in an oh-so-fitting way, doing as much as possible to raid the Greatest Generation's legacy for every last scrap of good, before the boomers die off. Millennials are at in inflection point: we'll either be the generation that restores what our parents treated so shabbily, or we'll be the first generation to live through American decline (but not the last).

It's just a matter about how serious we take our problems. We got a bunch of fucking fools here, and around the country - and let's be clear, these knuckle-draggers are fundamentally stupid people who have no clue what they're talking about - who obsess over things that truly don't matter. "Islamic Radicalism". "Immigration and Illegals", "the Southern Border", "Social Justice Warriors", "the Regressive Left". All that shit is a distraction against what's going to truly fuck us: an America too stupid to innovate, too poor to capitalize on its innovations, and already in a distant seventh place.

Want to enhance Pax-Americana? Make it dirt easy for highly skilled immigrants to live here. Quadruple government investment into science and technology. Look at Japan or Singapore for a healthcare model. Come to a grand bargain on education.

Or we can do what we Americans are so awesome at doing, and worry about nonsense ("regressive left"... idiots...) and come up with bullshit (Trumpcare) and avoid doing anything that will stick because we want to win dumb political fights. It's not like the world isn't gunning for us or anything.

[Skroe]

Another factor that makes a lot of tech companies and especially the government miss out on some of the best talent is that there are quite a few of the most talented that would rather not stop doing drugs. I understand being against hard drugs, but they're definitely missing out on the people who just smoke weed.

Some companies only piss test when they offer you a job, but the vast majority don't do it regularly or by surprise in tech. Mine does though, probably because a lot of people often work with or in the vicinity of machines and there is an insurance concern if someone where to get hurt. But we're the exception.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Never felt more relaxed and productive in my life.

We need to engage with all the enraged Americans, tranquilize them with logic. Explain to them that humanity is fine, there is no doom on the horizon.

I have to wonder where this attitude was from conservatives in the years 2009 to 2016. Considering all of their fears were imagined, lul.

[May90]

I don't know, I'm pretty happy with my life. Sure, the election outcome was disappointing, and the rise of nationalism is a sad state of affairs - but, well, I go to work I love every day, I have enough money to get everything I need for a comfortable life, I live peacefully in my apartment and don't disturb anyone, I enjoy my hobbies, bicycle rides and morning runs!

Life goes a long way, if you stop taking every external event as an attempt to assassinate you psychologically and just calmly take notice of what is happening and plan your life accordingly. And I am saying it as one of the people who, because of Trump, cannot travel to the international conferences outside the US, since there is no guarantee I will be able to come back. Life goes on, no matter how much of an idiot the guy is in the White House, and how much the Congress people are willing to catfight over every issue hoping to score political points and not caring about accomplishing anything.

[Super Kami Dende]

I'd say most people that are stressed are people that overindulge in Social Media, well any Media in General.

Since everything these days is "OMFG EVERYTHING IS BAD!!!" Fearmongering.

Funnily enough the people who are crying the most about their country being divided are the people dividing it the most.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Weak border control, 10 million illegals.

I certainly had a hard time sleeping when I thought about a Mexican man picking watermelons in a field a thousand miles away from me. I was never scared of such things before, but I have been properly taught how to be a good conservative, and one of those things is being mortally terrified at the thought of someone picking crops...

And they're not a citizen!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I literally just soiled myself thinking about it.

[Macaquerie]

I certainly had a hard time sleeping when I thought about a Mexican man picking watermelons in a field a thousand miles away from me. I was never scared of such things before, but I have been properly taught how to be a good conservative, and one of those things is being mortally terrified at the thought of someone picking crops...

And they're not a citizen!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I literally just soiled myself thinking about it.

I feel like it's giving them too much credit to say that they're scared of immigrants, most don't seem very frightened at all, they just want somebody to beat up on to feel better about themselves.

[Noradin]

I mean is Trump literally Voldemort now? Is that what this is? How we elected someone called President He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is going to be difficult to explain to our children.

Do you want me to take that question literally?
If so, then yes, in that article he is. Literally. But only literally. :P