I've worked overseas, and the billionaire gaslighters are wrong, I've seen firsthand

Let me be clear about something:

American education is the #1 standard in the world.

Let me state it again –

American education is the #1 standard in the world.

Our schooling at the university level is so good, that wealthy families in every country take aggressive and dedicated measures to get their children on our soil to study, even at the cost of $40k to $75k per year in tuition alone. It’s prestigious and for good reason.

In the QS World University rankings, meaning the top universities in the world, the United States alone holds 4 of the top 10 spots, including #1. We hold 7 in the top 20 and the further you get into the list, the higher the percentage we fill in the rankings. The US holds the highest percentage of schools from a single country in the top 100 of the QS rankings. A majority of these schools are publicly funded schools with need based financial aid to cover 100% of the cost of attendance. When you specialize majors, the list becomes even more prevalent in the US, especially in hard sciences.

When I lived and worked in Japan, by a wide margin, American professionals were the most desired for overseas hiring to bring into the country. They also commanded the highest compensation. If we had three or four candidates of equal qualifications and skill, but one had lived, went to school and worked in the US, we preferred them.

When we invited speakers to do technical presentations at engineering conferences, the engineers from the US, especially from large tech hubs in the US, were preferred. Even if they were internationals living in the US on H1-B’s, their talents, skills and expertise that earned them the reputation for us to desire them speaking for our conferences came from their experience working with American workers.

This isn’t unique to Japan either. In plenty of other countries, American workers with valid qualifications and experience are highly desired.

So when these entitled shithead billionaires say that they need to increase H1-B’s because we’re “falling behind”, do not let them gaslight people. Fight this misinformation online because ultimately, it’s misinformation.

China has a higher count of patents, but that is a meaningless figure. They hold 4.2 million patents, as a country with 426% of the population the US has. This means China has approximately 2/10 of 1% of a patent per capita. The US holds around 3.3 million patents in force, with a population of 331 million, meaning 1% of a patent per capita, or rather, we have 5x as many patents per capita as China does.

There are SOME studies that show that China is ahead of us in technology research and this is “true”, but again, it’s a loaded statement.

China’s leading research papers are bolstered by knowledge and education import: nearly 20% of their high impact publications are authored by researchers with post-graduate training from a “five eyes” country: US, UK, Canada, New Zealand or Australia. NOT India or China (which is where a majority of H1-B hires would be from).

Why are they gaslighting you? Because the reason China is ahead has FUCK ALL to do with “finding quality workers” and 100% everything to do with the REAL reason we are behind: China INVESTS into its technology. Joe Biden and literally every Democratic president who’s been elected since Mark Wahlberg made rap music has invested or attempted to invest into domestic scientific research. Bill Clinton created the NSTC and is credited with revamping $80 billion in science and research funding while ending his presidency with the US having a surplus and not a deficit. Barack Obama signed a $100 billion policy investing into science and technology research in his very first days in office. Joe Biden signed the IRA with extensive funding toward engineering work and he literally passed the CHIPS Act which brought $200 billion into expanding the US efforts toward semiconductor research and manufacturing. Funny enough, thousands of people who literally got jobs thanks to Biden’s policy voted against his successor last month. They’re in for a rude awakening when the next guy strikes that policy down or at best refuses to renew it.

All of the key areas we are behind China have fuck all to do with finding talent and everything to do with us pinching pennies and refusing to invest into technology employment in meaningful ways. We don’t have a talent import problem, we have a talent export problem and a knowledge export problem.

We need to STOP giving advanced degrees to Chinese citizens with potential close ties to our defense technology competitors. We need to PRIORITIZE Americans having access to advanced degrees without being straddled by crippling debt and a lack of job opportunities. We need to INVEST into our tech workers by repealing Section 174. Oh, that’s right, I forgot. ??‍♂️

What have GOP presidents “done” for technology? Well, I’ll bring up the best one. Section 174. Funny thing about large company economics: no one gives a shit about amortization. Bird in the hand, two in the bush, etc. Tech companies will ALWAYS prefer tax credits up front over amortization over 5 years. Trump signed Section 174 into law which went into effect in 2022. This means, companies can no longer deduct R&D from their taxes at 100% for the next fiscal year. Instead, they have to do amortization over 5 years. As soon as this went into effect, tech companies started laying off workers. It’s long winded to get into, but it just means R&D costs have to be “expensed” and can’t just be flat out deducted from taxes. This means it takes longer to see the taxed income benefit, it’s more complicated to deal with and ultimately, companies are just firing workers rather than dealing with it.

This was long, but I hope it was educational. When people try to back up what these idiots are saying in defense of their dictator ruler, these are your talking points.

To quote Kendrick Lamar, “don’t tell no lie about me, and I won’t tell truths about you.”