I feel like it is the biggest drop. A young, productive population is one of a country’s biggest advantage. The US has natural resources, a relatively stable political system and high trust society (at least for day to day interactions), but the biggest weakness going forward is a smaller proportion of young workers.
Why would any country not want the fruits of 40+ years of labor from the examples of the people in the article?
Compared to say Afghanistan maybe, but compared to other developed countries, not really. Political gridlock for most of the time, and a two party system that practically guarantees a constant back and forth with the ones currently in power spending most of their time to undo what the previous ones did during their time in power.
> high trust society (at least for day to day interactions)
That's not the impression i get from the people screaming they need to carry weapons to feel safe.
> but the biggest weakness going forward is a smaller proportion of young workers.
Today's young workers in the US (but that's not in any way a US specific phenomenon) feel that many things that were normal for the previous generation (e.g. home ownership) are simply out of reach. Adding more young people without fixing the underlying issues causing the already existing ones to struggle hard is not going to make anything better.
> Political gridlock for most of the time, and a two party system that practically guarantees a constant back and forth with the ones currently in power spending most of their time to undo what the previous ones did during their time in power.
This sounds like the definition of stable. But what I actually meant by stable is where you can reasonably expect legal decisions and regulations to be predictable and hence plan around-able. Contrasted to a place where you have to pay unknown bribes to shifting allegiances, etc.
>That's not the impression i get from the people screaming they need to carry weapons to feel safe.
I would bet 90% of Americans do not go to sleep worrying about safety, or choosing to carry guns all the time because of it. But the high trust I was talking about was for things like being able to trust the plumber you called knows his stuff, or that you will get paid on your regular payday, or the food and medicine you buy will be as advertised.
> Today's young workers in the US (but that's not in any way a US specific phenomenon) feel that many things that were normal for the previous generation (e.g. home ownership) are simply out of reach.
Prices are a function of supply and demand. The US is not lacking in supply of land, but maybe it is lacking in supply of land near desirable regions experiencing economic growth. Old people are not going to be able to develop the land into homes, nor are they going to spur economic growth. Young people raising children does that.
> Adding more young people without fixing the underlying issues causing the already existing ones to struggle hard is not going to make anything better.
Adding young people, especially qualified young people who produce things people want, especially outside the country’s borders, is exactly what would make things better. It would increase demand for products and services, without increasing debt.
> That's not the impression i get from the people screaming they need to carry weapons to feel safe.
I don’t want to dive too deeply into this, as it isn’t the heart of your comment - but I do want to say that as someone who carries a firearm every day, it’s not because I feel unsafe. Rather, it’s because I see it as my responsibility to maintain that safety, not the responsibility of someone else (i.e., police).
It’s based in ideology, not inadequate governance.
No? Maybe one could claim it results in some sort of equilibrium, but radically changing policy on important topics such as environmental protection, corporation taxes, infrastructure, etc. every 4 years is not stability. Not to mention that every topic becomes an instant partisan issue - if one party says something is good, the other has to fight against it, regardless of merits.
The DC value of an oscillating system can be thought of as stable, but whether the dynamic behavior is stable or unstable comes down to the damping factor. Reasonable people can differ, but there certainly seems to be a tendency to underdamping recently.
It's just as bad to have all of these young people in the USA and have them not learning tech, medicine, engineering. We have to rely on immigrants to take these jobs because Americans aren't going to school for this stuff.
Forty-two percent of California's workers in science, technology, engineering and math occupations were born in a foreign nation
Digging deeper, we see that 20.7% of foreign born with bachelor's degrees are in STEM occupations compared with 11.4% for similarly educated USA born
As of 2017, over 40 percent of the U.S. doctoral-level workforce was foreign-born. In computer sciences, mathematics, and engineering, nearly 60 percent of PhD holders in the U.S. workforce are foreign-born
What happens when these people start to go home? Why don't American kids want to prepare themselves for these high-paying jobs?
I think the numbers above actually make sense if you look at the pressures that influence decisions on what to study and whether to get a PhD for national vs international students.
If you're international getting a bachelors you need to find a company willing to sponsor when you graduate so it makes a lot more sense to pursue a STEM degree that is in high demand to employers.
For graduate students their is compounding pressure because getting a PhD allows the student to stay in the USA while they obtain the degree and STEM degrees qualify for the STEM OPT extension so instead of only having 1 year of work authorization post graduation you have 3 years. If the goal is to stay in the USA permanently it really doesn't make any sense to pursue a non STEM grad degree.
I don't have any commentary on whether the way the system is set up makes sense but I don't think it's just a case of American kids don't want to study these subjects rather theirs intense immigration pressure on international students to funnel them into STEM subjects.
Foreigners go into graduate study for the green card, not because of some massive fascination with the field. Local kids have no need for academia where you are paid poverty wages unless they are truly interested (professional degrees and and MBAs being the exception) or are looking to obtain a tenureship.
They're not high paying enough to offset how unpleasant it is for most people to work in these jobs. Double the salary and you'd see kids flock to these jobs. Continue to make these jobs available to people who are citizens of lower cost of living countries and the salaries remain depressed and really attractive only to that market.
It is, but also have to weigh it against the fact that typically the workers send remittances back home, which is a big help with foreign exchange balances.
All of these people can get cheaper college education in their country of birth than in USA. So that's a plus.
They can come back with a H1B visa to pay taxes in the US. I bet a lot of them could even qualify for residency in Canada, an even better opportunity for them with more reasonable immigration policies.
No not necessarily. It works as a deterrent to people who think they can sneak in and have babies. You have to consider the long term damage of the refugee crisis.
We try to do this in the Netherlands. But it doesn't work because nobody wants to send back Western assimilated people back to the barbarian lands.
