American Economics Thread

Even ignoring the massive selection bias associated with this type of analysis (with restrictions associated with which foreign-born individuals get employment authorization + US-born Asians are overrepresented in San Francisco/San Jose and U.S. born children generally stay in the metro areas where they grew up) - this effectively concedes the point - US firms (including thousands of successful software publishers) are primarily staffed by U.S.-born residents educated in the United States - and thus by implication, U.S. education is thorough, efficient, and effective. What’s more - the towering global successes of less notable U.S. software publishers - such as Oracle, Adobe, PayPal, Salesforce, VMWare, ServiceNow, NetApp, ADP, Citrix, Ansys, among others - are made by individuals in mid-career and beyond (those educated in the 1990s/early 2000s). Every indicia of educational quality shows education is much better than it was 2 decades ago.
Oracle, Salesforce are going to be pretty close to FAANG, they are at most a half tier below and exhibit similar demographics. PayPal, Adobe, VMWare not much further behind. Engineering quality at ADP is generally going to be more significantly lower, and I personally am not as familiar with the others. In any of these tech focused companies, East Asians/Indians are over represented. All of these tech companies as a whole still represent the top quartile of software engineers in the US. Majority of software engineers in the US are not going to be working at a software-oriented tech firm, they are distributed across firms of varying sizes across a diverse set of sectors. Outside tech and a subset of finance, the bar for software engineers in the US is pretty dismal.

Quality of education in US exhibits significant stratification. If you look at private schools and the top school districts in the country, education in the US is top tier. Otherwise, quality of education exhibit high degree of variance across different school districts. The quality in the least funded school districts are dismal. And at the university level, the US has dozens of world class universities. While unfair, the US education system more or less prioritize education for students with the highest chances of success. And if you look at the demographics of the top school districts, guess what trends you can observe? Increasing proportions of Asians. In many US metro areas, the ranking of a school district exhibits statistically significant correlation with the proportion of Asians. And as proportion of Asians in the best school districts increase over time, then the corollary is that the percentage of Asians in the most competitive STEM jobs will also increase in the future.
 

chgough34

Junior Member
Registered Member
The selection bias is that the smartest available to the US make it to those positions and those are East Asians, both from abroad and those who have dominated the best education that American can offer.
The selection bias is that foreigners are overrepresented the only jobs they are allowed to work and that career preferences transmit vertically.
The only point conceded is that US firms are heavily dependent on imported and/or Asian minority input at the upper and most critical rungs and thus by implication, US education is thoroughly, efficiently, and effectively dominated by the Chinese and other East Asians at home and defeated by Chinese education abroad.
It’s not. Not sure why you continue to continue to harp on this point. East Asian enrollment is ~2-3% of total elementary/secondary education enrollment in the U.S. As previously explained - US born residents don’t need to work in any particular job to continue to be allowed to stay in the United States and that will result in a much more diverse range of education and career choices.

also, the Asian immigrants are going to be firmly rooted in the U.S. - they have decades in the U.S., houses, US-born children, US professional networks, U.S. assets, U.S. citizenship (and by implication, no citizenship of Asian countries), accounts receivables from social security and Medicare, etc and doubly-so for their children who have only no material ties to other countries. Those “Asians” are firmly rooted in the U.S. and no other country. Their race and national origin are tbh, quite irrelevant, outside of a civil rights context.
What's more, American successes rely on the foundation that it has built in the past. In regards to technologies of the future, the US is completely unable to compete with China, and that remains the case even with the willing and unwilling recruitment of Western Europeans and vassalized Asian nations. That is why today, an innovatively-defeated US can only resort to political means to attempt to slow down China's inevitable victory in the tech war and dominance of future technologies.
The U.S. having effective education is not contradictory to China having effective education. The two statements are quite harmonious. Even ignoring the questionable statement that “the U.S. is completely unable to compete with China”, for example, see the melting down on this site about ChatGPT and Nvidia earnings; the network effects, scale, technology, workforce development, and existing capital stock that US firms have built over the decades have will endure into perpetuity and continue to drive US firms to the top of the rank tables for decades in the future, regardless of what happens in China.

For example, even though it’s been the greater part of a decade since the ZTE ban went into force, in 2023, Intel made more in a month than SMIC made during the entire calendar year.
 
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manqiangrexue

Brigadier
The selection bias is that foreigners are overrepresented the only jobs they are allowed to work and that career preferences transmit vertically.
Puahahaha, so the "only" jobs that East Asians are allowed to work are at the highest rungs of innovation? I know the US has picked up the new hobby of shooting itself in the foot eversince 2016 but do you y'all have to do it with a shotgun?
It’s not. Not sure why you continue to continue to harp on this point.
That's ironically what everyone else here thinks about you, the person who thinks everyone else is driving the wrong way on the highway. And also, I harp it because it's true, the data shows its true, anecdotes show it's true, only American lawyer/politician excuses try to escape that truth.
East Asian enrollment is ~2-3% of total elementary/secondary education enrollment in the U.S.
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And when it comes to STEM PhDs, Asians go up to 13% (page 9) and then when we go PhDs in the STEM workforce, that's 45% (post #6,788 on this thread). We just get better and better. The higher you go, the more of us there are. But I'm sure you'll come up with some American cope excuse to make yourself feel better this time too.
As previously explained - US born residents don’t need to work in any particular job to continue to be allowed to stay in the United States and that will result in a much more diverse range of education and career choices.
As previously explained, this has no good implications for you. If it bears any influence on this topic, it means that the US allots its most sensitive and intellectually important jobs to foreigners, which is probably only done because its locals aren't up to the job.
also, the Asian immigrants are going to be firmly rooted in the U.S. - they have decades in the U.S., houses, US-born children, US professional networks, U.S. assets, U.S. citizenship (and by implication, no citizenship of Asian countries), accounts receivables from social security and Medicare, etc and doubly-so for their children who have only no material ties to other countries. Those “Asians” are firmly rooted in the U.S. and no other country. Their race and national origin are tbh, quite irrelevant, outside of a civil rights context.
Ahahaha, yes, yes, they are all very loyal and American. Tell the FBI to stop targetting and investigating Chinese American academics because they are just Americans like white people! See what your own FBI thinks about your assertion. In WWII, the US military sent Japanese American soldiers to fight Germany and German American soldiers to fight Japan; they avoided as much as possible sending one to fight against his own ancestral lands. Apparently, you can't figure out why...
The U.S. having effective education is not contradictory to China having effective education. The two statements are quite harmonious.
Zero sum game; a child with Down Syndrome develops and reaches milestones too. But the US has trapped itself in a hostile competition against China; now, if it swims slower than the Chinese current, it's going backwards.
Even ignoring the questionable statement that “the U.S. is completely unable to compete with China”, for example, see the melting down on this site about ChatGPT and Nvidia earnings; the network effects, scale, technology, workforce development, and existing capital stock that US firms have built over the decades have will endure into perpetuity and continue to drive US firms to the top of the rank tables for decades in the future, regardless of what happens in China.
Melting down for what? ChatGPT? It's a toy, and China makes one on its heels within months of its debut. Nvidia earnings? I'm not even aware of what they earn nor do I care to find out about this midget making a mountain of of a molehill. Nobody in China cares about Nvidia while everyone in America freaks about about Huawei/SMIC/SMEE. Here; I'll show you meltdowns right in your congress about China's success and America's inability to compete:
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Every CCP session is about how to improve China. Every US congressional session is a meltdown about what dirty tricks they can muster to stop China from running the US over. It's to a point where, "Let's just breed the pandas and keep the babies illegally" has become a serious topic.
For example, even though it’s been the greater part of a decade since the ZTE ban went into force, in 2023, Intel made more in a month than SMIC made during the entire calendar year.
Intel is a general computer company while SMIC is a semiconductor fab company. Intel's job is to make money integrating parts. SMIC's job is to give China an independent and indegenous lithography line, which no other country has. SMIC sends shivers through the halls of American congress, where every effort is made to just slow it down. Nobody in China cares what Intel does.
 
The U.S. having effective education is not contradictory to China having effective education. The two statements are quite harmonious. Even ignoring the questionable statement that “the U.S. is completely unable to compete with China”, for example, see the melting down on this site about ChatGPT and Nvidia earnings; the network effects, scale, technology, workforce development, and existing capital stock that US firms have built over the decades have will endure into perpetuity and continue to drive US firms to the top of the rank tables for decades in the future, regardless of what happens in China.
Completely unable to compete may be an exaggeration, but it's already a forgone conclusion US and West will fall behind in tech within two decades. This is apparent in the massive effort and political capital the US is expending to protect its core markers from Chinese competition. Despite the high quality of US education, which again is only available to a small proportion of the US population, coupled with immigrants and outsourcing, the US cannot amass the requisite talent to prevail. The most critical form of capital in technological innovation is human capital, and the quantitative and qualitative edge China holds is insurmountable. Using tech companies as an example again, partially because they are a good proxy for baseline quality STEM talent in US and mostly because it's a field I am intimately acquainted with, 90% of FAANG software engineers are not even at the same level as Tencent/Alibaba/ByteDance/Huawei engineers. And US tech companies pay 2-3 times per per engineer which each outputs only 40-50% the value. Quality of education only goes so far, but work ethic and culture are even more important.
 
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