Why are people complaining about this? It's not even that high of an amount compared to several other developed nations. It's not a recent trend either. It's been going on for over 30 years.

No one here seems to care about the objective number (40 million) - they instead care about the relative amount (29%). If you look at the graph and track the percent, it's been at or over 25% since 1990. Having your share go from 25% to 29% in 35 years is not really that meaningful.

This isn't a new phenomenon in the US. The graph sucks because it hides the fact that the US population has been growing steadily.

Once upon a time, the "stupid hazing ritual" made sense.

Now it means company is stupid.

Yeah, such a weird comment. A 911 Turbo S is over $300k now. This car used to be low 200s for a well optioned one.

They're taking some kind of Nvidia strategy where they just charge more money for the new generation rather than making the new generation just objectively better than the previous for the same cost. The new GTS basically is a replacement for the old 911 Turbo - and at the same cost...

I was considering putting in an order for the new generation until the prices were announced. $300k is purely in exotic territory and if I am going down the exotic path, I'll gladly get something far more ridiculous. (Which is now the plan - just waiting for a carb legal one to appear on the market)

> where they just charge more money for the new generation rather than making the new generation just objectively better than the previous for the same cost.

Well, the new T-hybrid thing is really cool. But I'm not someone who spends $100k+ on a car.

T-hybrid is cool, yes. Ironically the first electric turbocharger hitting the streets just when Formula I is banning them..

Only been hearing that for twenty years and these tech giants are bigger than they’ve ever been.

I remember when people said Open Office was going to be the default because it was open source, etc etc etc. It never happened. Got forked. Still irrelevant.

I said "being it open source or by innovating" eg Google innovated and killed many, also contributed a lot to open source. Android is a Linux success, ChromeOS too. Now Google stinks and it is not innovating anymore, except for when other companies, like OpenAI, come for their lunch. Google was caught off guard but eventually catching up. Sooner or later, big tech gets eaten by next big tech. I agree if we stop innovating that would never happen, like Open Office is the worst example you could have picked

How much of this is specific to Chinese and not just part of the general visa woes and lack of federal funding for programs now?

I know that grad school is the main way for Chinese to get into the US but seems like it’s a bit sensational of a headline? Doesn’t sound Chinese specific…

I don’t think it’s this. I’ve lived in NYC recently and people there don’t have tolerance for shit behaviors either and you’re surrounded by people all the time.

It’s due to people having higher standards than before and being bifurcated on every issue. There is deep polarization and tribalism within American culture.

Everyone consumes different content and there’s very little homogeneity within our culture. Like… Americans are more diverse than ever in terms of their thoughts and behaviors. They genuinely have little in common compared to many other cultures.

I'll buy that, especially in NYC-like urban environments where frequency of exposure is definitely not the issue. Suburbs and rural may be different.

Part of the increased diversity is unavoidable due to technological changes eroding previous touchpoints. E.g. limited broadcast TV becoming cable becoming streaming.

But there does seem to be an increasing dearth of the logical tonic: discussion-facilitating diverse spaces. Places where people of different opinions can mingle, there are strong social norms around mutually productive conversation (and enforcement to discourage / weed out poison apples?), and that are open to new people.

This comment will get buried in the sea of individual responses here since I am too late. But for the dumpster divers, here is my contribution!

1. People have obscenely high standards for social interaction. If this person is not an outlier (in a good way) with their behaviors, it's just not going to happen. Most people have a very low tolerance for new people in their life. This has always existed to some degree but people today much prefer to listen to endless content from their favorite streamers, comedians, etc. and form parasocial relationships.

2. The environment for interacting with people has much higher stakes. Think about all the people who get recorded and posted on TikTok every single day. These are people doing it where you can see it - not just the Meta glasses people who remove the recording light. You can act like being a weirdo has no consequences but everyone has this extremely powerful device that can broadcast whatever you do to billions of people immediately - and you can suffer real consequences from this. Every crashout you have in any kind of crowd will be posted for eternity so that the world can see.

3. There is less and less benefit to having social networks/friends. Your friends aren't going to help you get a job, buy you a house, or meet your spouse. Meeting a spouse through friends is increasingly rare as online dating is dominating. As much as everyone complains, it is the major way people meet their spouse in major cities. People assume this is because friend networks are getting smaller but it's not due to that. It's because standards for interaction within friend groups has changed and standards for partners has changed. Unless you are prolific top 1% social maximizer, you are not going to run into anywhere near enough eligible people in your social network to meet your maximized match. We expect to completely maximize and find the best possible fit for our spouse now. Compromise of any kind is considered worse than dying alone. Cost of housing has exploded, jobs have become very hard to keep/find, and this turns everything into a transaction. Living with friends and kicking them out when they can't make rent is a tough but very real situation. People are more transactional because the economy dictates its necessities. Your family is the only thing that will bail you out - your friends can't overlook you skipping $2000/month in rent for 6 months.

There is more but anyway - loneliness epidemic is not going to get solved. It will continue to get worse until some kind of revolution which would require a complete reworking of our entire economy. I would accept this as the new normal and try to figure out how you can optimize your own individual experience in spite of all these things that are working against you. It is not worth trying to fight it on a systemic scale because there are simply too many components and the core cause is one our entire economy is based around. (A good investment is inherently counter to affordability)

It’s weird how people don’t recognize that most of these companies started with American founders who then decided to use exploitative labor policies including collusion then slowly became more and more detached - and hired other people to do the exploitation for them. Who better to do the exploitation than those who know the ins and outs of what makes the exploitees tick?

Do people really have no clue that the rise of Leetcode has come from exam culture in eastern countries? Are they that clueless?

I am one of the only Americans in my department at faang. The people I work with aren’t some special level of intelligence. It’s just not cool to work in tech and Americans know that. That’s why you see 2nd gen Asian Americans joining finance and going to nyc. They know it’s fucking lame.

What country is he from?

Yep. It also depends on types of goals you have and stage of life.

I can safely say as someone who FIRE’d in his early 30’s that it doesn’t matter how much money you have because women are very adverse to a man who isn’t working. Mind you, I am quite physically ugly and so my experience is not that of everyone’s. It might be that for men who are of average and above looks that it doesn’t matter as much but for the women I encountered it mattered a lot that I wasn’t working. It didn’t matter how much money I had made. I was spending on a lavish lifestyle in manhattan as well. I gave up on pursuing a family life due to poor genetic basis, chose to be single back in the Bay Area, and go back to work since there’s nothing else to do. All my goals were revolved around family and building a life for a family. No point in those goals if you’re alone.