4 ms·

TL;DR summary: we're not good at educating people, but that doesn't matter because (a) only the top few percent matter, and (b) we can import talent to make up

TL;DR summary: we're not good at educating people, but that doesn't matter because (a) only the top few percent matter, and (b) we can import talent to make up for domestic shortfall. I don't agree with either of these. Only the top quartile matter, and therefore the bottom three-fourths can wallow in ignorance and stupidity? We don't have universal healthcare because of this fucking attitude. If you have ignorant people, you end up with an ignorant, fucked-up culture. We pay for the ignorance of average Americans in so many ways that it infuriates me even to get into this discussion. Secondly, I don't think we can count on being a destination country forever. Our immigration policies are getting worse over time, while European countries and Canada are becoming increasingly attractive. The gap is narrowing. There was a time when the smartest in the world wanted to come to the United States-- not necessarily New York or Silicon Valley, but even central Ohio. Now, they're equally attracted to Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, and even Japan (which is less xenophobic than its reputation would indicate). I don't think the smartest and hardest-working people come to "America" anymore. They go to star cities, industries, and companies: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and U.S. research academia are top-notch, and happen to be in the U.S. People come to the U.S. because a few currently-leading locations are here, but what does this do for the rest of the country? Also, New York is arguably the world's best city and Silicon Valley is the world's best suburb, but these places are also ignominously expensive. Living in the star cities, we can easily delude ourselves into believing that we're insulated from the decline in "flyover country", but the bare fact is that we suffer every day (when we pay rent or make mortgage payments, the prices being so high because it's so hard to get a high-paying job outside of a few locations) for what has happened to the rest of the country. American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture. Hours of schooling are just a proxy measure and not a very good one, but the lack of attention paid to education in this country is a big fucking deal.

dantheman 14y ago
We don't have universal healthcare for a variety of reasons, most of which highly educated agree with. Many people don't seem to understand that federalism is slower and the idea is to see what works. The problem is that healthcare reform is not being appropriately worked on at the state level - primarily due to huge interventions at the federal level that prevent experimentation. Anyway, there are tons of high paying jobs outside of NY and SF - people choose to live there because the like the culture and the cities -- that's why the rent is high.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 14y ago
  When you really start looking at US healthcare you find most of the problems are associated with bureaucracy and a tiny fraction of people dominating healthcare costs. Which is why it's impossible to fix healthcare at the state level or you have the vary sick flocking to states where healthcare has been 'fixed'. PS: The US government pays more per person for healthcare than any country with universal healthcare. Instead, the free market's focus on passing the buck adds more overhead than any 'free market' efficiency gains. 'Medical Billing' is practically the definition of dead weight. Random inspection of 5% of clames will rapidly catch outright fraud, instead we get the worst of both worlds with plenty of fraud AND overhead costs.
  - dantheman 14y ago
    Vermont is going to go single payer and MA already has Obamacare - neither of which imho are good models, but I don't see people flocking to them for health care.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Rent is high in New York and Silicon Valley because the markets are warped by regulatory corruption and the extreme illiquidity of the market. Right now, local incomes can support those levels (just barely) but that can change, and when it does, urban decay will set in. Urban decay starts at least a decade before prices start to drop, because people hoard real estate rather than selling it when the market softens. The problem with real estate markets is that there's extreme demand inelasticity, which means that declining conditions (reduced effective supply) actually cause aggregate prices to go up, in the same way that a hurricane in the Gulf drives up gas prices even though it's not a good thing. The idea that high rents come from "desirability" is hopelessly naive. Very rich people can live whereever they want, so the difference between a $50-million apartment vs. a $10-million one is driven by those factors: how old the building is, how many third-world despots and celebrities live there there, whether it has a view of The Park. For the rest of us, the rent we pay is dictated by scarcity conditions rooted in regulatory corruption and the slow reaction of new housing construction to economic forces (i.e. that 10 jobs can be created faster than 10 houses)-- not "desirability". Real estate agents want you to believe that the reason The Rent Is Too Damn High is that New York is such an awesome place to live, but economics don't bear them out. Supply-side disruptions and failures push up prices much more than actual value increases or income improvements. Regarding high-paying jobs outside of those locations, they exist but there aren't as many as there should or could be. The near-impossibility of getting funding for a new technology business away from the coasts is a real problem. Venture capital is ugly and I'd really like to see us, as a society, come up with something better, but it's the only option for a lot of companies in the global marketplace. As for universal healthcare, we would have had it in 1948 if the Dixiecrat racists (who were afraid that a universal plan would require them to desegregate the hospitals) hadn't threatened to destroy Truman by stonewalling everything he did. Universal healthcare plans have problems-- Canada's system is far from perfect, and the UK's NHS has some serious flaws-- but all of those plans are leagues better than the horrendously shitty system that we have in the U.S.
learc83 14y ago
>American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture. What does lack of culture even mean? We have plenty of culture, in fact we export it to the rest of the world. It may be different, but just because you don't like it, you can't say it's not culture. >...but the lack of attention paid to education... How can you possibly say that. We spend more money per student than all but a few countries. And we are constantly worried about our students falling behind. This stuff is regularly all over the news--nearly every politician ever elected talks about improving education. So, yes we definitely "pay attention" to education. Obviously the problem is not with the attention we pay, but with something else.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  American culture is extremely variable, and that's a good thing. It's a strength. The mean is low but the variance is extremely high so we hit quite a good share of the high notes. However, we still live in a society where bullshitting, useless rainmakers get more respect than engineers, scientists, doctors and professors who actually build, fix, make, and understand things.
  - enjo 14y ago
    That last sentence is true for every single country I've ever lived in or spent time in. Wether it's highly paid footballers, cricket players, Starcraft players, or some other form of celebrity. Don't pin that as anything remotely close to uniquely American.
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      But everything is a matter of degree, and America's got quite a severe degree of antiintellectualism. For example, in most countries, if top scientists say the globe is warming because of CO2 emissions, people simply accept it and start trying to find ways to lower their CO2 emissions. In America, whole organized fronts start claiming that the scientific method is a conspiracy concocted to bring certain politicians to power.
- 14y ago
Spooky23 14y ago
The Techcrunch article is just outright racism and elitism, dressed up in business-speak. If written in 1930, it would probably lament on the "white mans burden" and how our averages are dragged down by those wretches in society who just cannot move forward. There was a time when the children of european peasants could get a great education in an urban school, go to well-regarded public colleges for little or no money, and do great things. That's why NYC is a great city today.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  How do you pull racism out of an article that makes absolutely no mention of race?
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    There's certainly some proto-racist implied nationalism (of the bad kind) in saying that the USA can avoid having to educate its own children by exploiting a continual flow of immigrants.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      It's proto-racist and nationalist to imply that people of other nationalities can innovate just as well as Americans? Um, ok. I totally see the racism and nationalism now.
      - Spooky23 14y ago
        Ask yourself a couple of questions. Where are the 23% of high school students who aren't graduating? Where are the children getting great early childhood education in the US? Where did the top 5% of college students go to high school?
      - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
        Let my lay it out for you. Racist Point 1: Americans do not really matter to America. In fact, the American populace mainly exists to supply America with peasants and servants (as in: workers in service jobs), not serious value-creators who receive good compensation. Racist Point 2: Foreigners all love America and want to come to America and form its elite. The notion that non-Americans might prefer to live in their own countries, or that there's a point to their existence other than immigrating and forming the American elite, does not occur.

dantheman 14y ago

We don't have universal healthcare for a variety of reasons, most of which highly educated agree with. Many people don't seem to understand that federalism is slower and the idea is to see what works. The problem is that healthcare reform is not being appropriately worked on at the state level - primarily due to huge interventions at the federal level that prevent experimentation. Anyway, there are tons of high paying jobs outside of NY and SF - people choose to live there because the like the culture and the cities -- that's why the rent is high.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Retric 14y ago
When you really start looking at US healthcare you find most of the problems are associated with bureaucracy and a tiny fraction of people dominating healthcare costs. Which is why it's impossible to fix healthcare at the state level or you have the vary sick flocking to states where healthcare has been 'fixed'. PS: The US government pays more per person for healthcare than any country with universal healthcare. Instead, the free market's focus on passing the buck adds more overhead than any 'free market' efficiency gains. 'Medical Billing' is practically the definition of dead weight. Random inspection of 5% of clames will rapidly catch outright fraud, instead we get the worst of both worlds with plenty of fraud AND overhead costs.
- dantheman 14y ago
  Vermont is going to go single payer and MA already has Obamacare - neither of which imho are good models, but I don't see people flocking to them for health care.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Rent is high in New York and Silicon Valley because the markets are warped by regulatory corruption and the extreme illiquidity of the market. Right now, local incomes can support those levels (just barely) but that can change, and when it does, urban decay will set in. Urban decay starts at least a decade before prices start to drop, because people hoard real estate rather than selling it when the market softens. The problem with real estate markets is that there's extreme demand inelasticity, which means that declining conditions (reduced effective supply) actually cause aggregate prices to go up, in the same way that a hurricane in the Gulf drives up gas prices even though it's not a good thing. The idea that high rents come from "desirability" is hopelessly naive. Very rich people can live whereever they want, so the difference between a $50-million apartment vs. a $10-million one is driven by those factors: how old the building is, how many third-world despots and celebrities live there there, whether it has a view of The Park. For the rest of us, the rent we pay is dictated by scarcity conditions rooted in regulatory corruption and the slow reaction of new housing construction to economic forces (i.e. that 10 jobs can be created faster than 10 houses)-- not "desirability". Real estate agents want you to believe that the reason The Rent Is Too Damn High is that New York is such an awesome place to live, but economics don't bear them out. Supply-side disruptions and failures push up prices much more than actual value increases or income improvements. Regarding high-paying jobs outside of those locations, they exist but there aren't as many as there should or could be. The near-impossibility of getting funding for a new technology business away from the coasts is a real problem. Venture capital is ugly and I'd really like to see us, as a society, come up with something better, but it's the only option for a lot of companies in the global marketplace. As for universal healthcare, we would have had it in 1948 if the Dixiecrat racists (who were afraid that a universal plan would require them to desegregate the hospitals) hadn't threatened to destroy Truman by stonewalling everything he did. Universal healthcare plans have problems-- Canada's system is far from perfect, and the UK's NHS has some serious flaws-- but all of those plans are leagues better than the horrendously shitty system that we have in the U.S.

learc83 14y ago

>American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture. What does lack of culture even mean? We have plenty of culture, in fact we export it to the rest of the world. It may be different, but just because you don't like it, you can't say it's not culture. >...but the lack of attention paid to education... How can you possibly say that. We spend more money per student than all but a few countries. And we are constantly worried about our students falling behind. This stuff is regularly all over the news--nearly every politician ever elected talks about improving education. So, yes we definitely "pay attention" to education. Obviously the problem is not with the attention we pay, but with something else.

michaelochurch 14y ago
American culture is extremely variable, and that's a good thing. It's a strength. The mean is low but the variance is extremely high so we hit quite a good share of the high notes. However, we still live in a society where bullshitting, useless rainmakers get more respect than engineers, scientists, doctors and professors who actually build, fix, make, and understand things.
- enjo 14y ago
  That last sentence is true for every single country I've ever lived in or spent time in. Wether it's highly paid footballers, cricket players, Starcraft players, or some other form of celebrity. Don't pin that as anything remotely close to uniquely American.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    But everything is a matter of degree, and America's got quite a severe degree of antiintellectualism. For example, in most countries, if top scientists say the globe is warming because of CO2 emissions, people simply accept it and start trying to find ways to lower their CO2 emissions. In America, whole organized fronts start claiming that the scientific method is a conspiracy concocted to bring certain politicians to power.
14y ago

Spooky23 14y ago

The Techcrunch article is just outright racism and elitism, dressed up in business-speak. If written in 1930, it would probably lament on the "white mans burden" and how our averages are dragged down by those wretches in society who just cannot move forward. There was a time when the children of european peasants could get a great education in an urban school, go to well-regarded public colleges for little or no money, and do great things. That's why NYC is a great city today.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
How do you pull racism out of an article that makes absolutely no mention of race?
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  There's certainly some proto-racist implied nationalism (of the bad kind) in saying that the USA can avoid having to educate its own children by exploiting a continual flow of immigrants.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    It's proto-racist and nationalist to imply that people of other nationalities can innovate just as well as Americans? Um, ok. I totally see the racism and nationalism now.
    - Spooky23 14y ago
      Ask yourself a couple of questions. Where are the 23% of high school students who aren't graduating? Where are the children getting great early childhood education in the US? Where did the top 5% of college students go to high school?
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      Let my lay it out for you. Racist Point 1: Americans do not really matter to America. In fact, the American populace mainly exists to supply America with peasants and servants (as in: workers in service jobs), not serious value-creators who receive good compensation. Racist Point 2: Foreigners all love America and want to come to America and form its elite. The notion that non-Americans might prefer to live in their own countries, or that there's a point to their existence other than immigrating and forming the American elite, does not occur.