HN user
Venezuelans voted for the party alliance led by Machado and support the removal of Maduro [1].
Iran looks more complicated. Pretty much the only insight we get is from the diaspora and cosmopolitan people from Tehran. There seems to be a very significant armed force clearly in favor of the Ayatollah, so removing him without their complicity will likely lead to turmoil.
Found a gift article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/climate/solar-south-afric...
I can’t read the article. What are the stats provided?
This comment isn’t as much of an exaggeration as it seems, at least regarding engineering. At a previous job, I was tasked with helping a product line achieve certification to a government standard. The public facing government contact I interacted with was just a middle man with the consultancy, ICF, who actually developed and maintained the standards, to government specifications. Also, those government specifications had significant input from industry.
This thread is looking at this from a political angle, but he was arrested and charged for threats of mass violence. This seems to be a case of over zealous policing regarding school shootings in a very tense environment rather than a guy arrested over offensive memes.
The cost of hiring in the US versus elsewhere is already greater than $100k for the type of tech firm that can just open an international office. I took the base salaries of Google SWEs on levels.fyi for NYC, London, Bengaluru, and Toronto, multiplied them by the standard 1.4 for overhead, and realized the US is already significantly more expensive than most developed countries, let alone the Global South. Companies clearly value employing in America despite the cost.
Immigration has always bolstered the American tech industry, but the bulk of the industry has always been American. Just look at the distinguished members of Bell Labs. Many are immigrants, but most are American. The reason why immigrants come here is that American industry is already very strong. It’s not mutually exclusive to claim that Americans build a strong tech industry and that skilled immigrants have invented many new technologies here in America.
The revisions cover March 2024 through March 2025. While his policies may deliver turmoil in the near future, I don’t understand why most of the discussion here is about Trump. Furthermore, these revisions are at the high end of estimates, so it’s not a complete shock. The Fed and financial institutions must have already had an idea that the job market could be this bad.
This data is mostly from last year, during Biden’s administration.
The highest marginal tax rate in the US was 94% in the mid 1940s, and that doesn’t even mean people were paying 94% of their income to taxes. If you look at federal revenue as a percentage of GDP in decade intervals, starting from 1944, you’ll find that the ratio hasn’t changed much since then [1]. Funny enough, it has actually crept slightly upward.
In the USSR, the state owned the means of production. That isn’t the desire here, economic nationalism is. We’re reverting back to the American School of Economics. Someone in Trump’s group of economic advisers must be a big fan of Friedrich List.
Israel clearly isn’t above letting Gazans starve, so it seems like a viable option, even if not ideal. Perhaps air drops should be the way forward to supplement whatever on ground aid is actually delivered. I think the outside world needs to stop posturing on what Israel should do and just get aid there however possible.
Paying prevailing wage doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the salary a company would have paid/are paying to American workers in the same role. Three-fifths of h-1b jobs are certified at the two lowest prevailing wage levels and the median age of an h-1b beneficiary is 33 years old.
I still consider the main report to not be substantiated. Israel claims that they know where the stockpile is and that they have been monitoring sites[1][2]. Some official even claimed it’s mostly under the rubble. Not sure why one is to believed and the other not when neither have hard evidence.
1. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858895 2. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619
Iran was objectively not in compliance though [1]. The IAEA just didn’t know they weren’t so they gave Iran a seal of approval. Israel had always claimed that Iran was hiding material, which convinced Trump to leave the JCPOA, but the IAEA could only corroborate it later.
Perhaps we should be making the argument that Trump shouldn’t have only gonna off of Israeli intel, but he ended up being correct that Iran wasn’t correctly reporting their enrichment stockpile, which was a provision of JCPOA. The reason why JCPOA wasn’t revived is actually because of Iran refusing to cooperate about what they did with the undeclared nuclear material.
1. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pd...
Iran was hiding nuclear material during the duration JCPOA was active. They were declared in violation of the NPT by the IAEA recently for actions undertaken between 2009-2018.
I find this argument hard to believe. Israel had complete air superiority for a week and was monitoring all the sites, routinely hitting the above ground nuclear facilities. I’m skeptical Iran could transfer anything significant from Fordow and not be immediately spotted by Israel.
Are people really going to pick and choose which unsubstantiated reports[1] to believe instead of just waiting for actual proof? The narrative has shifted with breakneck speed from “WW3” to “it was pointless anyways”.
1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-a...
Unfortunately, most of that will go towards developments that won’t be realized for years. More importantly, I’m not even sure the subsidies for manufacturing would help Intel’s financial situation — they’ve been exploring spinning off manufacturing for several months now.
I’d understand if these exemptions applied to companies and not industries. For comparison, Putin unilaterally nationalizes and sells off companies to benefit his inner circle. The US isn’t nationalizing AMD and selling it to Nvidia at the behest of Jensen.
The US is still the runaway leader for funding in research. American expenditure for R&D was 940 billion dollars while the EU’s was 411 billion [1]. I doubt Canada, Switzerland, the Uk, and AusNZ combined come close to matching that gap. If we get the proposed defense budget, that R&D spending will actually go up, just not in matters many people care about immediately.
With the zeitgeist shifting, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an exodus of people in the soft sciences and liberal arts though. It’s not like they’re leaving a lot on the table if they leave America.
1. https://www.reuters.com/world/scientists-us-harried-by-trump...
The prevailing school of economic thought in America, until Nixon, is actually what Trump idealizes. Protectionism from outside “threats”, on the basis of security and sufficiency, and a loosely regulated internal market. In comparison, Russia has a lot of regulatory capture and straight up corruption that stifles the internal market.
China could also use the US’ dependence on it as leverage to discourage them from intervening in Taiwan. We just saw this play out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We routinely see Turkey threaten the EU with migrants over the bloc’s reliance on Turkey. We also saw Azerbaijan make a move for Artsakh knowing the EU needed their gas following the invasion of Ukraine. I believe China would prefer being able to extort the US rather than face the possibility of fighting an unbowed US.
The opportunity cost of moving to Canada is too great for professionals in STEM, medicine, economics, or law. However, that opportunity cost seems to be less significant for professionals in the humanities. Ironically, the Project 2025 writers are probably salivating at the idea that the US sees an exodus of liberal academics in the humanities.
If one considers life to begin at conception, abortion unambiguously violates the commandment not to kill. I grew up Adventist, and contrary to OP, I didn’t know anyone pro-abortion. Ironically, literalism by evangelicals is why they opposed chattel slavery and now oppose abortion. The Bible doesn’t command Christians to own slaves and keeping other commandments literally would conflict with chattel slavery, but it does command not killing (murder).
Even then, Japan’s homogeneity allows its government to teach a certain lifestyle to kids with no backlash. That’s unworkable here in the US.
Of course a nation with a high population will have a high GDP in a mostly agrarian society. Per capita, there’s no indication India was ever the richest. They did fall behind massively due to an inability to compete during industrialization though. The attached source even mentions deindustrialization started in the waning years of the Mughals. Due to industrialization, the West’s GDP per capita simply outpaced India and China significantly, to the extent western nations even had higher nominal GDPs.
This article starts out insightful but ends up preaching to maintain the status quo. Europe tried to dangle economic cooperation as a carrot in front of an increasingly aggressive Russia, so how will that tactic work any better with China? If China goes for Taiwan, they will do so with the assurance that economic sanctions cannot harm their war machine, same as with Russia. Decoupling with China after a war starts would be pointless.
I don’t know if I can stand duplicitous neoliberals pretending like they were hawks the whole time for yet another war.
It will probably be kinder to him than to the neoliberals who thought that giving trillions to an authoritarian regime would somehow make them a liberal democracy.