531–540 of 606 posts
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The U.S. is under control of the Israel? We all know what you really mean. How do messages like this end up on HN? Is it the Reddit sub we have that's attracting these types of people?
Highlighting Israel's inexplicably strong influence over US foreign policy is not the dog-whistle you seem to be implying it is.
The US has spent orders of magnitude more defending Europe.
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> Also, if the US restores their democracy We don’t have elections anymore? When did this happen?
China also likes to claim it is a democracy because it holds elections. It is fair to say that the USA is still a democracy, but not because of elections. Elections have little to do with democracy. In fact, if the majority of the population hold the view that elections equate to democracy, you don't have a democracy.
Plenty of places called China have or have had elections. Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.
Oh, you mean the mainland? You can vote for The Party, or vote for The Party. I see nothing undemocratic about that!
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Meanwhile, China has "genius camps" for young people, to skim off the cream of the cream of the crop, so they can go on to do amazing things for their country. It blows my mind what we've done in the last year, to damage our ability to compete on the world stage.
It bears repeating: for everyone who insists that the US Executive Branch isn't compromised by our enemies, what different actions would someone who was compromised and trying to speedrun the destruction of American power, influence, and hegemony have taken?
The avarice and narcissism of our leader, along with all the yes-people, grifters and people devoid of ethics and morals he has assembled around him have led to the current situation. Also, it appears a lot of people in the administration are not very smart, but think they are. We can never underestimate the damage that can be done by a stupid person that thinks they are smart. In this case, these people have incredible amounts of power.
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Meanwhile, China has "genius camps" for young people, to skim off the cream of the cream of the crop, so they can go on to do amazing things for their country. It blows my mind what we've done in the last year, to damage our ability to compete on the world stage.
In the US education for talented students is under attack from the left as well as the right (just in different ways).
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China doesn't want as a prime goal to become world leader. They just want to expand their infrastructure, science, production, everything for their own prosperity. If there is no other competitor left, then world leadership will be a by product. They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal (see military presence, coups and secret diplomatic deals in foreign countries that the US was doing after WWII in order t…
> They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal They are just pacifically planning on invading Taiwan at the moment. They also install secret police stations in foreign countries to chase and pressure Chinese citizens or people of Chinese decent into doing their bidding.
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How could they not be? If people cannot emigrate to the US then they won’t settle there. A relatively open immigration policy absolutely helped make America diverse. I’m pretty sure that’s what OP is referring to, not DEI or whatever the latest boogeyman is.
I don't think open immigration in America's earlier years stemmed from a desire for diversity. It was more like "holy shit we need workers, I guess we can tolerate some Irish and Chinese people if we have to". It seems like a reach to call that a "diversity policy".
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No, you do have to choose because money for education (or anything) isn’t unlimited. There’s a real question of how many resources and what kind of ROI you’d get from trying to educate that bottom 20% to the same level. I saw this play out when I was in school: profoundly intellectually disabled students getting 1:1 or even 2:1 teaching, trying to get an 18 year old to be able to read 3 letter words, while AP classes…
> No, you do have to choose because money for education (or anything) isn’t unlimited. The US is the richest nation on Earth. It can easily afford to educate its people. If you really think we'd need to find new sources of tax dollars to fund that, I have a whole lot of suggestions for where to start and I'd bet that you can easily think of a few low hanging fruit yourself. > There’s a real question of how many resou…
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> The US government is now more authoritarian than the Chinese government Nah we’re not playing this game. Try asking the CCP officials in person about Uyghur internment camps, or Tiananmen Square, and see if your family isn’t all arrested. Ask Olympian Alysa Liu how the CCP targeted her father to try to coerce her to skate for China.
I think the next 3 or so years in the US are going to be a real awakening for you, if the last year hasn't. It's going to become more and more difficult to shove your head deeper into the sand.
See how I can have a different opinion and not get arrested? Whereas if you ask someone in China if they’re communist, they’re not allowed to say “No.”
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In the US education for talented students is under attack from the left as well as the right (just in different ways).
How so (genuinely curious)?
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> against the backdrop of challenging sociological factors and mass low-skill immigration I'm pretty sure that poverty is the issue here. Kids who don't get enough to eat, don't get enough time (or perhaps too much time in some sad cases) with their parents, kids who don't have many opportunities tend to do worse at standardised testing. This is entirely fixable, but it's not (unfortunately) just a matter of funding…
“Poverty” might be the cause, but it’s not just poverty by itself. Every country has rich people and poor people. The U.S., however, has that normal spectrum, plus subpopulations that have unique circumstances that aren't accounted for just by income level. Look at NAEP scores: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/some-racial... (Table 1). Asians average 312 in 8th grade math, compared to 293 for whites a…
Culture is a thing, as I'm sure you know (we discussed it some time ago here). Like, in general, (many) Irish people value education above and beyond what would be expected of similar socio-economic groups, which lead to their descendants doing better than might naively be expected. The Asian thing is almost certainly similar, given all the memes that exist around demanding Asian parents. Jewish people have similar cultural beliefs.
However, you can't really aggregate up to an White level, as these factors will vary massively. Same with Asians, you'd need to control for a lot of factors.
Fundamentally though, it's better for society if everyone gets a chance to develop their potential, and my argument is that this doesn't happen to the same extent in the US as it might elsewhere, because of large gaps in income inequality and social forcing functions (if everyone you know drops out of school early, or doesn't take it seriously then most people will too).
> “Poverty” might be the cause, but it’s not just poverty by itself. Every country has rich people and poor people. The U.S., however, has that normal spectrum, plus subpopulations that have unique circumstances that aren't accounted for just by income level.
I get that you're more familar with US society, but this is a thing basically everywhere. Like, African descendants in the UK are probably one of the most successful immigrant populations, rather than less succesful than the average in the US. I honestly think that the US "unique circumstances" are cope for the lack of decent income mobility and social safety nets that prevent a larger proportion of people from realising their potential.