@bolded: That would have been true until 2014, but since then China tightened up their environmental policies a lot.

And it was high time for them, as the Water was both getting rare and slowly undrinkable with high amounts of cancer-causing NDMA; over 15% of the soils is strongly polluted, severely affecting farming and lending to the water problem mentioned above; overgrazing made the Gobi desert grow by about 1000 square miles per year; the air became unbreathable in certain cities during certain times (which is probably why China changed course on environment in the first place); and had the largest algae bloom ever in the Chinese sea, threatening their fisheries.

Or in short, the unchecked exploitation of their ressources started to threaten their own economy and the lives of their inhabitants. So, they had to change their ways.

Huawei is, sorry, was certainly dominant in the US, especially in rural regions, which relied very much upon them. But outside of there, their domination is much smaller. In bigger cities, it's normally either Ericcson or Nokia who are behind the carriers, not Huawei.

@underlined: Well. there is a new space race, and more exactly a new race to the moon, with the US, China and now also Russia again trying to get there first, and this time to stay there. So a push from governmental research might be exactly what is needed to push the US faster forward.

Well, there was a thread recently where many were advocating and hoping to pay for higher cost consoles, so all of those people should be elated by this news.

Totally feel the same way. But at least if you die before you retire your 401k money goes to your family, while your social security fund is lost. Plus there's no guarantee that when we retire the same plan will be in effect.

I understand it costs a lot of money to run a country, but damn, after factoring in all of the different forms of tax we pay, it seems like only half the money earned gets back to us.

Well, that's a drive-by hot take if I've ever seen one.

Pay for more power is different. Now a $399 console with hardware to match will come for $499. Or, if you prefer, the Switch and the PS4 would go back to launch prices or above.

China especially defies the idea of low pay somehow having bad effects. In more ways than I could imagine the Chinese are the most ideal employees possible. They aren't entitled to any rights, work long hours, are paid relatively low, and all this is fueled purely with nationalism ... 

What exactly do you suggest would be a better way to rein in China other than tariffs ? Do we just flat out call a sanction from the entire western world against them or what ? 

Any dictatorship or brainwashing type setup is going to defy the idea of low pay having bad effects. Low pay on China's level is bad to implement in the economies of free countries, but good to implement in the economies of places like China, or any place where people are heavily suppressed. Pointing to China and saying "see low pay works" misses the point as much as pointing to American Slavery in the south and saying "see low pay works". 

You might as well just say "getting rid of freedom works". 

That was far into the past. Today, most of the breakthroughs we see DON'T come from government funded research. The space age will likely be brought about because of some large corporation instead of NASA ... 

This ISN'T the sputnik moment anymore for America where they heavily invested in a technological race against the Soviet Union. The biggest problem with government 'managed' research is that in the case of a democracy there's no guarantee that the manager in that project would be a 'specialist'. We don't need politicians in technical projects, we need the 'specialists' and we're unlikely to get that with American leaders ... 

The reason why state subsidies for research in China work so well as it does is that the CCP are full of technocrats and if you can prove that you're a qualified 'specialist' to them in a specific field of high need then you'll automatically be granted a lot of power from the party to further pursue technical progress. This feedback process is ideal for reverse engineering and sometimes it works at the leading edge but without applying a similar model of govenrnance in America, they won't be able to see the same benefit since government funding would be a waste ... 

Republicans pretty much gutted government research funding the past few decades. It's a shadow of it's old self. That's why few new breakthroughs come from it. 

Yep. That's one of the biggest problems with American government now. Everything has been captured by corporate interests. In the same sense that we get unqualified rich idiots like Betsy Devos, or Ben (aliens built the pyramids) Carson running the education and housing departments, we would get some crony giving all the grants to his buddies who own corp X. Fixing the issue of non-specialists, and lobbyists being given key positions is something that would need to be done alongside a return to massive government research. How to non-specialists wind up in these positions? Bribes. Bribes known an campaign contributions and endorsements. 

I think the Chinese are adding these technocrats to their lineup because they all know they are behind. With any luck, once they surpass the USA by a large margin they will start to care less, and start to throw morons into the mix. Prosperity makes people care a lot less about the nation, than they do about themselves. 

ARPANET was NEVER sold to consumers so it was pretty much just a concept outside of labs! 

IMO ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile, Vodafone, etc are the true creators behind the internet because they were the ones who made the backhauls which is extremely important infrastructure and then we have hardware companies like Cisco. The 'internet' that we see today is not a government creation but it is a corporate collaboration ... 

The internet is more than just predated hardware, it's an idea that can't be solely government funded and in fact the closest predecessor to the internet was NSFNET which had tons of private funding from ISPs rather than ARPANET which ended up being a dead end since the government wasn't interested in developing the backhual or maintaining their network technology ... 

No true scotsman fallacy. Having existed in real life makes something not a concept. Whether or not it was sold to consumers is as irrelevant as what a scotsman eats for food. 

They wouldn't have made backhauls if there was nothing to connect to. Bringing a product to consumers =/= inventing that product. The internet we see today would never have existed if not for it's government creation. Yes, it has grown massively after being handed over to corporations. But that's not the same as saying corps invented it themselves. 

NSFNET was created by the National Science Foundation, which is another government program. Yes, they did transition from ARPANET to NSFNET. The government wasn't interested in expanding ARPANET because the defense department considered the project complete. 

Name me one very important technology that was created during this millennium by government funded research ... 

Pretty sure government funded research didn't give us AI, wireless communications technology, automation, or the latest medical technology so what exactly did they do so far recently that makes them so 'essential' to research like you imply ?

Like I said before, government funded research was mostly gutted decades ago. Hard to show how fast the horse can run, when it's been starved all winter.

I didn't specifically argue that a linear increase in enrollment meant a linear increase in prices as well. In the case of post-secondary schools it seems when demand increases linearly, the price increases exponentially ... 

Tuition free post-secondary school is NOT an entitlement! If it were that simple then just about every program including the likes of Art History would be a ROI but that's not so in the real world. Schools CAN'T keep running if their students aren't profitable ... (money is important to maintain the school)

No, you didn't argue that specifically, but it was heavily implied. So now you're going with there being an exponential cost relationship? Okay. In 1971 the cost of public college (room, board, tuition, fees) was $34,936 for all four years (adjusted for inflation). https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005532 That same year there were 8.94 million college students in the USA. (Statistica from before) In 1980 the cost of public college was $30,340 for all four years (adjusted for inflation). There were 12.1 million college students in the USA in 1980. If your theory about increased attendance causing tuition rates to increase exponentially held any water, we should see costs of college massively increase from 71 to 80. They don't. 

I'm not going to get into education being an entitlement. We would wind up agreeing more than we disagree on that subject. College needs to be affordable. Making it completely free could very well cause a ton of problems, like you said. 

Maybe but nearly no American politicians today understand the importance of technological leadership so there's no political will for it ... 

America needs to foster monopolies because it gives the Americans a competitive edge against other nations. Monopolies are bad for the opposing country's economy but it's good for the domestic economy since it stands to make more money. I'm not arguing that the US should hold every monopoly but just the most essential ones and yes it's hard to compete with China on just pricing alone since just about everyone would fail ... 

America indeed should be inventing things but now it is China who is starting to invent important technology as well so can you imagine a future where it is SOLELY China that invents ALL important technology in the future ? 

Can you imagine just how annoying it would be if China successfully 'colonized' the moon and claimed it for themselves just because they somehow invented superior aerospace technology ? 

Yes, exactly. Politicians today are too busy chasing down the next campaign contribution to worry about technological leadership. We need to change that. Sadly, it will probably only change once the USA is seriously getting its ass kicked by China. It took the great depression for enough political will in the past. 

Okay, so you do mean monopolies in the sense that every major player is located in the USA? I can't really disagree with that. If all three major console game companies were located in the USA, we'd have a monopoly on consoles, but there'd still be competition between the three. That's perfectly fine and healthy. 

Yes, I can imagine that future. That future is going to be very real in the next 15-25 years, and when that happens hopefully people will wake up to the importance of a mixed economy ala the 60's. Also, hopefully China gets lazy in its prosperity, the same way our politicians, businesses, etc. started to value their own personal wealth over the good of the nation in the 70's and 80's. 

To be honest, I'd just be happy mankind was finally getting off this rock. We are dangerously close to making space travel impossible thanks to all the litter in orbit around earth. But yeah, China saying "we own the moon" would be annoying. 

Thanks. You saved me from having to look into that. 

China's environmental regulations are still a far cry in comparison to the western world ... 

Huawei is extremely dominant in the European carrier business. The biggest carriers in that region such as T-mobile, Vodafone, Telenor, Telefonica, etc rely on Huawei equipment for wireless networks such as LTE and soon for 5G ... 

Low pay in China helped hundreds of millions of people get out of poverty and low pay has other benefits as well such as corporations being able to whether rainy days ... 

Low pay has it's own benefits regardless of China's system. Having unions combat against low pay is anti-consumer ... 

I couldn't care less about the partisan bickering because at the end of the day both democrats and republicans have been resounding failures. It's not just republicans that are guilty at the end of the day, you have democrats who are promoting homeopathy, anti-GMO, and anti-nuclear power so there's a deficit in scientific literacy on both sides ... 

Having a government run by corporate interests isn't so bad after all when China is a success story for it. I have unconditional respect for Ben Carson since he's was a physician so he's one of the very few people within the American federal government that has scientific credentials. Non-specialists wind up in these positions because the American people themselves don't desire it and they're too busy making ideological stand-offs against each other so you get failure regardless if nobody is willing to compromise ... 

The Chinese add technocrats because it's precisely as I outlined before in which they desire to technologically catch up. Once they surpass America, I doubt anyone can match a highly educated workforce of over a billion people ... 

The backhauls are important as it's the backbone of the internet because sadly without it a network without it is just an intranet ... 

The government may have created some hardware but without ISPs providing the backbone, we don't have the internet ... 

What was that about government funded research being "gutted decades ago" ? 

The US government has spent $50B for nearly 20 years now and they don't have any results to show for it ... 

Whatever amount the general trend seems to be is that tuition increases non-linearly ... 

It's simple to find cheaper schools in America. You just have to shop around and don't expect to go out of state either ... 

College does need to be affordable but at the same time there needs to be a ROI so it might be worth trying to waive some of the tuition fees for some programs like engineering or the life sciences ... 

A mixed economy is not important, what matters is a strong political will to invest in technology and I doubt China will ever be complacent in that regard because their citizens are more enlightened than they have ever been ... 

The farm subsidies have certainly increased given current events, but I'm still somewhat indifferent.

When I read about how companies avoid paying taxes you learn its not really as sinister as it might seem. I get the same impression with subsidies, its more like tax breaks/incentives. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems the companies that often get these big subsidies are also paying significantly more in taxes.

It makes me think of the Amazon HQ in New York situation. Some of the more pragmatic democrats were happy to give $3B in tax breaks because it was supposed to generate $27+ billion in tax revenue. Suddenly tax breaks for a big company wasn't a bad thing, it was just business. Then it fell apart, NY suddenly has a budget crisis and is partly blamed on Trump because reasons.