agreed. America's attitude towards china has been absurd. instead of seeing it as an opportunity for us to step up, we deflect responsibility as if america was forced to offshore its manufacturing and venerate idiots over scientists.
I think a big part of it is that the admission that offshoring was a bad idea that has created a threat to American hegemony would require acknowledgement that neoliberalism has been an abject failure and a ruse by the upper class to suck up capital
and political power from the middle class.
That sort of discussion and the consequences from having it just isn't on the menu.
There isn't going to be a massive wealth redistribution in the other direction to offset the redistribution that has taken place over the last 40 years. There isn't going to be taxation reforms to prevent this from occuring again. There isn't going to be a focus on white collar crimes from the Justice department.
Things are just going to slowly get worse and worse in America.
Well, a peaceful one anyway. As much as it sickens me. We don't have to go back more than 200 years to see what happens when the wealth gap gets too large.
Is this comment a bit reductionist? Sure. Doesn't mean its more wrong than right.
What are you talking about? The current president was elected on the platform that offshoring was a bad idea that has created a threat to American hegemony. Free trade is politically dead now.
The current president has payed lip service to reshoring and revitalizing domestic industry but what have the results been?
There's been no significant antitrust actions or a focus on white-collar crimes. These are critical in stopping bad actors in American society from accruing more resources and power.
There's been no real investment in education or industrial capacity that would enable the US begin to compete with China in green technology and manufacturing automation.
There's no cohesive and consistent plan to encourage domestic manufacturing, it's just these nonsensical on again, off again tariff announcements that absolutely destroy the ability for anyone in industry to make long-term plans.
Talk is cheap. What's needed is a systemic, sustained effort and we’re not seeing it in America.
> Tariffs are not now, have never, and will never lead to an increase in domestic production.
I disagree. Its a pretty straightforward market force.
> The US has done this multiple times already and the result is always the same.
Personally, I don't buy the argument that "it didn't work 100 years ago, so it can't work today." The circumstances are entirely different. The global economy is entirely different. The US's role in the world is entirely different. We are also not in the middle of a great depression, which I imagine would also affect the outcome.
> The results, everywhere, every time, forever, are always the same.
In 2018 the US instituted steel tariffs and it increased domestic steel manufacturing.
> I disagree. Its [tariffs] a pretty straightforward market force.
By themselves, tariffs do not and cannot provide assurance of any outcome, they can only amplify the effects of the other economic policies in force at the moment.
As for the current policies, the effects are clear - further monopolization, inflation, lower standard of living and asset trickle up (more like waterfall to the sky), combined with circus politics, phony heroics, wars and empty promises.
That might be positive for some but certainly not for the majority.
I'd call the first part utterly counter-productive and stupid.
The fact that he just signed a bill utterly decimating the last important work done in this country also runs counter to the idea that he's doing fuck all about it.
And, the example completely ignores the conversation part of the OOP. The last 40-50 years of neoliberal drunken greed by the people at the top isn't going to be suddenly reversed for the next fifty years. There are few ways of reversing that. All, uncomfortable.
> I'd call the first part utterly counter-productive and stupid.
I don't think there is a better method of onshoring than tariffs, personally. You change the cost of offshoring and see what the market does. IMO its the least complicated and most capital efficient way of doing it. That being said, changing the tariffs every week kills most of the benefit of that simplicity.
> The fact that he just signed a bill utterly decimating the last important work done in this country
Tariffs are a demand-side change, there's also subsidies for supply-side.
But the manner in which they were done shows a lack of planning. Whatever it is you want to on-shore (or prevent from being off-shored), tariff that, but not the economic inputs to make that.
Want to make more EVs domestically? Don't tariff electric motors. Want to make more electric motors domestically? Don't tariff bolts, insulated wire, or high performance permanent magnets. Want to make more high performance permanent magnets domestically? Don't tariff neodymium.
If you tariff everything, you're putting off manufacturing that depends on anything.
> Tariffs are a demand-side change, there's also subsidies for supply-side.
Yes, but subsidies are typically more complex to implement than tariffs. Imports are already controlled via customs, so you're piggybacking off existing oversight. New subsidies require entirely new oversight.
> Whatever it is you want to on-shore (or prevent from being off-shored), tariff that, but not the economic inputs to make that.
Why? Its impossible to account for second order effects beforehand IMO. I think its way better just to put up flat tariff, see what's working and what isn't and adjust from there.
I don't think this admin is doing tariffs correctly, but I welcome the added incentive for domestic manufacturing and mining.
I’m not pleased with Trump’s trade policies either but your central claim was that nobody is willing to address the issue at all, and that’s simply not true. You, me, and Trump all probably mutually disagree with each other’s preferred solutions, but we aren’t in denial about the problem itself. It is one of the most widely discussed economic and national security issues we have if not the most.
It was not my intent to have a conversation about whether or not someone can believe Donald Trump and whether or not his rhetoric matches his intentions. That conversation is played out and not productive. You simply can't and it simply doesn't.
I am not optimistic that the systemic solutions to the problems that I'm talking about are going to come from anyone in American politics and it is obvious to me that American hegemony is waning with little hope of it returning.
I worry about what this means for the future of democracy if a country run by an autocrat becomes the dominant power.
> I am not optimistic that the systemic solutions to the problems that I'm talking about are going to come from anyone in American politics
As I said, I think we probably both disagree with each other and Trump about what those solutions are. But what you said was that no one in American politics is willing to even acknowledge the problem in the first place, and that was false.
Because let's be real here all the patriotism is just a facade the rich want to keep the money for themselves. Singing the national anthem on the fourth of July is cheap.
Yes, especially if you’re part of the CCP [1]. Well if they’re taxed at all. Can’t be taxed if you hide your wealth.
At least the wealth of the richest people in the US is made by people producing value and services. Bezos is rich because people like myself find Amazon and AWS to be quite good.
IMHO, the biggest wealth problem in the US is the rise of upper-middle class “elites” and management class. The one driving “mergers and acquisitions” to reduce competition between grocery stores or using rent control software to eke up rent costs.
> Intelligence community’s report on wealth and corruption of China’s rulers is overdue
> The truth is, the party is illegitimate. It is so for three reasons. First, it was formed and nurtured by the Communist International, a worldwide organization, and the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of power in 1949 was made possible by Stalin and the Red Army.
Lol, this is the most obvious propaganda article I have seen in probably years. You should be embarrassed to post this in HN.
Not particularly, it's easy to read between the lines. Almost every news has propaganda in it, it's just a matter of degree. The comment I was replying to had obvious anti-US propaganda so why not reply in kind?
The actual report on CCP leaderships wealth is interesting to read though.
Nah, regardless of the source posted I would likely not have credibility with the sort of folks who can't read an opinion piece with a strong belief and stance on something and consider those opinions and points anyways.
Personally it's not surprising that the people most interested in exposing the mass illicit wealth of the CCP politburo would be those who believe the CCP is illegitimate and harmful to the Chinese people. However since pro-communist propaganda is in vogue these days perhaps reading a counter view will expand some people's thinking. The article I linked was interesting precisely because it accepted and believed that the obvious corruption of CCP leadership is bad and called for exposing that.
The article reads like it’s written by a boomer who had his worldview frozen in 1990. I can’t take that article or anyone who posts that article seriously lol.
I wish we could operate on the principle of data sharing in science. What a waste of resources to needlessly replicate and compete. Also, great, somebody else is doing it so we don’t have to! Less work for us.
This is already how astronomy, and specifically cosmology, research works in the US (and most other places). Data is made public within a short period of obtaining it on a schedule (usually less than a couple years) that is set before data is taken.
It is far from clear that the Chinese government supports this type of open data sharing.
Agreed. The US has squandered so much money over the decades that they're now over $300k/taxpayer in debt, with interest to that that being the fourth largest cost, and two of the top three being insufficiently funded programs that simply steal from the grandchildren.
It would be even more embarrassing if we didn't cut back on non-essential spending.
Yeah, let's cut back on the relatively small investments in science that actually grow the economy, particularly at a moment in time when our geopolitical competitors are making enormous investments, and when leadership and talent in science is more important than ever.
Just walk around the Boston area and look at how much of the economy is driven by federal research funding attracting global talent to universities, which then generates ideas and the next generation of talent, which feeds the biotech companies, which grow the economy.
Letting all of that happen in China instead of the US just to make a tiny dent in the deficit (and to punish progressive institutions and prevent cultural change from immigration) is unbelievably fucking stupid.
Trump just added 4 trillion more in debt funding tax cuts for billionaire. The amount of money science research gets in the US is pennies compared to that. Investments in science always returns on investment in the form of technology. The internet was a research project mind you.
Not to mention almost all the breakthroughs on top of the initial Web happened in the US: Mosiac, Netscape, Apache, Yahoo, Google, etc. Many of them started out as "non-essential" research projects.
That's the same company twice, Apache which was just another standard implementation of httpd (the cern thing) and one company that isn't and wasnt relevant outside of the us and surely isn't known as tech driver around here (Yahoo)
Actually a great summary of why the world does not actually blindly thinks USA! When they think about tech advancements
Apache was quickly spun off from its NCSA roots to become its own thing. There's a lot of history here that you're twisting around or ignoring. I'm not even American but, while lots of other countries made their own contributions, it's insane to argue that networked computing would have advanced anything like it did without the US's innovations borne of their (former) attitude of experimentation and exploration.
That doesn't defeat the point. It makes the point that research benefits all. That research can't happen in vacuum. It needs to be funded and culture and institutions build around it.
For a technology forum, the sheer volume of pettiness and anti-science and technology attitude is confounding.
People here sounds like the most mediocre managers I've ever worked with in my life.
This is a really interesting story. It's not the US pulling back so much as it is China's rapid and incredible growth. According to this graph, the only period of US scientific expenditure stagnation was during the 2008 housing crisis. Our expenditures over the last decade have been increasing at a pretty good growth rate too.
The data points for the forthcoming years will be interesting (sad) to see after all of these cuts.
This, and many other things in the area of science, is an embarrassment.
However, I feel that what is argued about, by all sides, misses the point.
The US spends 2X what China does on civilian space programs, and 4X what Europe spends. We spend 2X as much on health care, 1.5X as much on education, and 2X as much on science research.
Our systems are inefficient and corrupt, and that is what needs to be addressed.
Arguing for or against how much money we need to spend or to cut is just the modern day circus that distracts everyone from the real problems and provides everyone on both sides with feel good excuses.
The first few areas are easy,since budgets are known and there are actual comparative measurements that have been done.
Health. We spend $5T a year on our "health", which is 2X the per capita amounts spent by western European countries, yet we have poorer outcomes. We have poorer outcomes not just among lower income classes, but also poorer outcomes when comparing upper class incomes between the US/Europe
Education. We spend 1.5X per capita compared to western European nations, and we have poorer outcomes
If we would simply match the budgets for these two areas with European budgets, and even accept the fact that they would have better systems in place, we would save $3T a year. This is a fairly direct measure of how much more efficient Europe is with their resources. They are either that much better/smarter than we are, or we have a corrupt system, or a combination of the two.
Public construction costs. It costs 50% to 200% or even more to build public projects in the US than in Europe. That is, if we can even complete our projects. One of many reports and analysis: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/us-rail-projects-take-...
Other areas are difficult to have direct comparisons, and it is difficult to compare results. The US solution to everything is to pour money into it. And it seems that any cut, any type of cut at all, portends doom.
Military. We spend $1T a year. We have something like 1200 military bases, over half are international. We have massive cost and time overruns all the time. Yes, we may have the best military in the world, but it certainly feels like the taxpayers are being taken advantage of. You may feel differently. I do not think we need 1200 based. I do think that the military industrial complex profits way beyond what is reasonable.
Science research. We spend about $1T in R&D, almost triple of Europe. We pay our researchers 2X-3X what researchers make in Europe. Yet it seems that any type of cut to science budgets is met with the proclamation that we will lose all of our researchers to Europe. Our major research centers need a 70% incidental budget on top of their grants otherwise they will go out of business. CEO's of major non profit medical research centers need to make millions and millions of dollars per year. There is something wrong here.
Space. We spend 2X what China spends, and 4X what Europe spends. One example is the costs of space telescopes: China spends 9 figures, Europe spends 10 figures, and we spend 11 figures. NASA's SLS rocket is a case study in how to literally brun up billions and billions of taxpayers money. We can, and need to do better.
Corruption is not always the simple graft of the CEO and board. Corruption also comes in the form of a system where too many people make too much profit to want to make the system better.
Saying things are expensive is not saying they are corrupt or inefficient. What specific problems and examples of corruption do you believe should be fixed?
Similarly, overall spending patterns do not mean corruption or even excess. We get huge economic returns on science and space spending, for instance.
Look at the source you cited. Labor is expensive here and infrastructure projects often create public outrage that makes them take longer. That's a problem but it's not corruption and not something you fix by slashing spending.
I wanted to give you an example of what I see is not just corruption, but an example of how feedback loops of self interest combine to create systemic issues that threaten our entire society.
It is "known" in the research industry that getting government grants, especially NIH grants, is "gold" in that they provide large sums of money, and, importantly, that a large part of these grants have little accountability and are not used directly for the research. Peoples careers are rewarded for successful at getting these grants, and there are societal mechanisms in place to insure these grants continue to flow. A lot of organizations are so dependent on these type of grants that when an attempt was made to reduce the unaccountable and "incidental" nature part of those grants to what is standard in non-governmental charities, there was fear that entire important research organizations would be brought down.
This is an example:
- My congressman has a public campaign to support the political and legal fight to preserve the ability of research organizations to carve out nearly half, or 42% of government research grants so that they can be used for general organizational needs, and not directly for the research projects they are awarded to. Part of this political and legal fight is about making these carve outs more accountable, as they currently are not. For comparison, non profit grants from non federal sources provide for 0% to 13% carve outs. The new proposal is to reduce the carve outs to 13%, in line with these other organizations, and to have stricter accounting rules. The more common name for this is the 69% indirect costs added to federal grants, as compared to the standard 0% to 15% added by non governmental grants.
- The former CEO of one of these nonprofit research institutes (Dana Farber) was making $3M to $4M per year. This is not unusual for the CEO's of many of these larger non profits.
- This CEO is the mother of this particular congressman.
- This former CEO had 50+ of her research papers called into question due to claims of fraud. These papers were called into question by an outside researcher.
- Six of these papers were retracted due to fraud, several dozen others were "updated". These papers are used directly or indirectly to acquire government grants, and are also used to justify making this person CEO.
- One of this former CEO's co-authors on some of these papers was also the Director of Research Integrity for the institution, who also investigated the allegations (though not the ones he was a co author on).
> Corruption is not always the simple graft of the CEO and board. Corruption also comes in the form of a system where too many people make too much profit to want to make the system better.
maybe i misinterpret, but are you saying but it seems your saying some profit from govt spending is ok, but too much crosses a threshold to corruption?
if thats the case, how do we set that threshold? whats the criteria?
(i don't disagree per se, just curious on the thinking around this)
What I should have said is that the system is corrupt, not that there is corruption in the system. There will always be profit to made in the system (there has to be for it to work), and there will always be corruption to some degree in the system, but having a system that is corrupt is a different type of thing.
I believe our health system itself is corrupt. There is no one person or group of people that are causing the problem, it is the way the entire system works that is the problem.
Looking at the amount of health spend as a percent of GDP, it has gone from 5% 60 years ago, to 12% 30 years ago, to 18% today. This is clearly a trend that is unsustainable. Compare this to the EU which is more like 10%-12% of GDP (not that they do not have problems)
This increase is bad enough, but we also have a system that is worse in all the ways that count - percent of population that is covered, outcomes at every class level, and the complexity of the system.
From a societal perspective, the health system is simply out of control - it continues to grow and profit in excess of what the economy can support while at the same time provides less and less value than what is clearly possible by looking at other countries.
The answer is not to simply cut spending and fire people in a random manner
The answer is also not to simply tax and spend more.
> I believe our health system itself is corrupt. There is no one person or group of people that are causing the problem, it is the way the entire system works that is the problem.
thanks for the clarification!
> The answer is not to simply cut spending and fire people in a random manner
> The answer is also not to simply tax and spend more.
yea, its a difficult problem, i'm guessing one issue is the cost of medicine and also insurance?
probably with such a system that is so messed up, it will take a multi-pronged approach (and a party to campaign on it) i'd guess...
It's funny, I'm told my whole adult life "We can't be like Europe! We're too different! We're too heterogenous/big/special/insert_excuse_here!"
And yet, we can point to a number on their balance sheet and say full stop "This is what we shall spend and nothing more, if it still sucks, skill issue."
WHY does America spend trillions more on healthcare than our peers? Is it because of welfare queens on Medicaid? Or is it the scumsuckers in the private health insurance industry, in a system that keeps most people in all but indentured servitude to their employer to even be able to afford the privilege of getting dropped by the insurance companies the second you get sick?
Is there waste? Sure.
Tell me how just going in like Ron Swanson and slashing the shit out of every budget while simultaneously blowing up the debt with tax cuts fixes any of that.
Slashing will not fix the problem. Nor will more taxing and spending fix it.
The problem is systemic. We have an out of control health system that is steadily growing as a percent of GDP while providing less and less value to less and less people.
On the other hand, the US is close to bankruptcy. And that's not all the current admin's fault.
And their cuts are trying to avoid that, although they have thrown out many babies with the bath water. It's hard to blame them for trying to avoid default, which would be far worse than anything.
The program apparently cost $900 million which is not a trivial cost.
And will soon launch their own version of Hubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuntian
Deeply embarrassing as a US citizen.