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Daishiman 13 hours ago

> If being in the U.S. didn’t offer advantages they wouldn’t be here to begin with.

For companies hiring H1Bs it's about being closer to clients and colleagues and just being managerially far easier than opening an offshore office, but the benefit isn't infinite and once companies have the chops for opening new offices they'll turn down the H1B hiring.

The issue for the US is that, are you're saying, "having faith in your own country" only works if you have the process for developing unnaturally skillfull talent, which is just not going to happen once the smart people stop moving to the US as countries have uniformly distributed talent potential.

rayiner 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> only works if you have the process for developing unnaturally skillfull talent, which is just not going to happen once the smart people stop moving to the US

So how did America become a world power before H1B? The U.S. was the world’s largest industrial power by the early 20th century with almost zero skilled immigration. We had restrictionist immigration policies from 1921-1965 and skilled immigration after that was a trickle until the 1990s. Apart from one-off events like German scientists after World War II, immigration was heavily skewed towards poor but hard workers.

Daishiman 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Because unskilled work and a gigantic natural resource base was the basis for wealth of the 19th century but that doesn’t hold up anymore?

hollerith 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You seem to have interpreted "have faith in your own country" as "have faith in the people who grew up here" whereas I interpreted it is as more like "have faith that the parts of the country's institutions and culture responsible for its excellent economic performance will continue to prove difficult for other countries to replicate".

rayiner 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Those two things are strongly overlapping. People are socialized into the institutions and culture that other countries find difficult to replicate.

Daishiman 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Having seen American institutions up close I’m sorry to say that if you subtract the people who have bought into the American dream you’ll find that it’s educational institutions are unremarkable.