Interesting point and pardon my naïveté but I’m curious, by “the west began investing” do you mean public sector investments? Or are you including people like jim rodgers long time China bull? I think private sector investment wouldn’t be done for anything other than profit. It seems like trade liberalism is an ideological thing that people seem to believe in above and beyond geopolitical concerns. Those who believe in trade liberalization (globalization) are sort of religious in their belief that it leads to liberalism in all spheres, not just the economic. I’m thinking of classic liberals, economists, Ayn Rand fanboys, etc.
Both public and private. Read my first citation - I don't feel like relinking dozens of citations on 1970s-80s US-China relationship.
Tl;dr - the Carter and Reagan administrations both heavily invested in building the PRC's R&D, military, and industrial capacity through a mix of public-private investments primarily as a bulwark against the USSR along with US Army boots on the ground in Xinjiang.
I’ve read the first 4 of those links and they don’t point to financial investment per se. They do cover liberalization in the diplomatic sense, and sale (not purchase) of US military tech, all of which is obvious given their location and the time period (peak Cold War), but I am curious about specifically financial investment in China, which is what the parent was discussing. I mean we weren’t buying their planes or submarines or anything. We were cozying up to them because that’s what was demanded by the defensive realities of the Cold War. That seems like a different thing than investing in China in the sense of financial investment during the post Cold War period of the late 90s onward. Again, sorry if I’m asking stupid questions but you seem to have a lot of knowledge and I want to learn more myself.
Foreign governments running honeytrap operations on powerful perverts like bill clinton is common knowledge amongst anyone interested in knowing about such things, but some people think it is a super big secret that needs to be revealed to the masses. Thomas Massie for instance. I don’t think it’s antisemitism but I’m pretty sure it’s not because of a sudden concern for teenage prostitution, which is a big ongoing problem that could be addressed by legislators crafting policy if they weren’t so busy slinging mud at each other looking for Epstein photos with their political opponents.
In the google results, if you had bothered to google. It turns out $50B was enough to tip the investment calculus on half a dozen large projects and a dozen or so smaller ones.
So tell me: was it learned helplessness or partisan hackery that made you severely underestimate what turned out to be possible?
My opinion comes from my personal experience with CHiPs funded projects but admittedly thats merely anecdotal knowledge so I’m very glad to hear that Biden’s “biggest ever!”(tm) inflation reduction package met its goals and wasn’t just money printing and political cronyism. Imagine where we would be without all those new chip fabs and infrastructure fixes you mentioned finding in your Google search. You’re right, that was 50 billion, give or take, well spent!
H1B abuse is rampant, so the headline is what we expect. Jobs are for the foreign born, just look at HN for evidence of that. They even hire lawyers to help the outsourced labor “navigate our system.”
My understanding is that after being nearly flat since 2016 with nearly all the jobs going to foreign born people, there have been job gains of nearly half a million citizens in 2025 "for whatever reason".
As with any survey or most research really, it’s the sample the determines the finding. Homelessness is not easy to define precisely. Drug addiction, setting aside the fact that surveys are self reported, is a bit more cut and dried but from your response it’s not clear if alcohol is included, or drug history. Like if someone did some bad shrooms or had a bad acid trip and wound up homeless would that person be in the 2/3rds?
Just make the isp the gateway. Nobody under 18 needs the internet. If a parent lets their kid onto the internet, prosecute the parent. It’s pretty simple really. People just want to pretend it’s harder than it is because they have some conflict because removing under 18 from the net cuts into profits or makes it harder to parent. Boo hoo.
I’m guessing not as much as standard transmissions, which largely eliminate the need for breaking while also reducing fuel usage. Yet there are almost no new cars with standard transmission. If only people cared a bit more.
An electric car can use its engines to bring a vehicle to a complete stop. It can also use the motor to hold the car in place, even on a fairly steep incline. You can't do either with a standard transmission ICE vehicle.
There are people with electric cars that have their brakes rust out because they're never used. A standard piece of advice to EV owners is "make sure to use your brakes at least once a month".
Lurk more.