I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare.

America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a year on transportation. It’s so crazy that there is a pretty long list of American cities where moving from the suburbs to the most walkable part of the metro area of that city will net you more square footage in your dwelling after removing the $750/month expense of owning a personal vehicle.

Then you can’t even really fix this problem in America because construction costs are wildly inflated. China can build a high speed rail network for the entire country for the price of a handful of miles of subway in manhattan. Projects take an insanely long time, e.g., California high speed rail. Multiple US cities have a housing cost crisis because houses aren’t being built fast enough, and that’s more money in the economy being blown on rent and financial products rather than productive endeavors.

Hangzhou metro has 12 subway lines. In 2014 they only had one.

Finally, healthcare. America just blows double the amount of money on healthcare of the next most expensive country, with worse outcomes in part because they sit in their cars all day.

I don’t even think some of the problems you’ve brought up with America like the school system are as big of problems. America has really good public schools and universities, so good that Chinese people still come to the US to get educated en masse, even at pretty standard and average state schools.

The current government doing stupid shit like discouraging research and immigration is certainly not helping though.

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cbm-vic-20 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Regarding your last point, back when my political views were "evolving", I had thought about if, instead of handing foreigners diplomas and kicking them out of the country as fast as possible, we should do the opposite: have student visas require that the recipient stay in the US at least five years after graduation, and then fast-track them through the permanent residency -> citizenship pipeline. It made no sense to me why we'd educate someone to get a degree in chemical engineering, possibly from a rival nation, and then send them back to where they came from. We should "brain drain" other countries, not the other way around.

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Longlius 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think the world would be better on the whole if such people returned home and improved their countries. The US cannot brain drain the entire world for its own benefit.

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pegasus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those foreign students usually pay for the education they receive, they might not be willing to do so (or as much) if there are strings attached. Besides, I don't think any country should aim on brain draining any other country, that kind of selfishness will be counterproductive long-term. Who knows, might be what we're seeing right now (the US self-sabotaging). Karma's a bitch.

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mcculley 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like the idea of incentivizing people to stay, but I don’t know how we could “require” it. I don’t want the U.S. to implement exit visas or egress control.

	▲	dangus an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe this could be done with a different mechanism like an incentive to stay or an escrow deposit that you get back once you’ve met the requirements. I think a streamlined path to real citizenship would be an incredible incentive for a lot of people.

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dangus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That seems like a pretty good idea that’s worth trying.

I think the current logic is that foreign students pay the full unsubsidized sticker price, so it’s basically a profitable transaction.

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soared 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Show me these magical cities where an extra $750/mo in rent lets you both move from the suburbs to downtown, and increase your sq footage!

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dangus an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Certainly! Here’s my source: https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X

The top 5 or 10 of these you’re basically getting close to equivalent square footage or better once you replace your vehicle spending with housing spend.

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irl_zebra 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

Well, the video isn't available. And it's a big ask to make way out there claims and then expect people to watch whatever that video was to fully understand whether the claims are true or not. This is basically asymmetric warfare in trolling.

"Here's my wild claim, to verify it go spend your time watching a video!"

	▲	throwaway920102 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I saw the video a few days ago. It uses some napkin math but the author does at least use a spreadsheet / toy model to arrive at their conclusions.

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senordevnyc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seriously, delusional take. I live in Manhattan and I’m considering a move to Westchester (large suburban county just north of NYC). Average cost per sq foot to buy in Manhattan is about $1500, and it’s about $400 in Westchester. That’s before you touch the other differences in cost of living (taxes, childcare, groceries, etc).

	▲	dangus an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Manhattan is not one of those areas, and is actually one of the worst on the list. Mostly this applies to a lot of smaller cities, here’s my source: https://youtu.be/kYLPUsn0X3E