Why there’s a boom in Chinese students attending US universities

And yet they did grow past the just copying mentality to become what they are now at least to some degree or another. They did what the Roman’s did. They took the ideas of the Etruscans’ and then made there own changes for the better. That set them apart from everyone else and we can learn about the results from history.

Also note that the Japanese are going through a huge age demographics shift as well and its not good for them, they haven’t completely escaped the trappings of the past. The same can be said for the younger generation of Koreans who cannot identify with the older generation and there understanding and experience with communism which may prove to be fatal at some later date.

I will also point out that eventually the Romans lost their way, several centuries of debasing the currency(see bread and circuses) also debased the culture into the lords and subject. Its a cycle, and unfortunately that cycle usually only goes one way with the very small exception of say a thousand years or so between each one.

Where is all the innovation? Where are all the new ideas? Who will find solutions to implement these to make them reality? Right now despite the problems in the West, it is there or at least is rooted from there where those ideas and solutions come from for the most part.

I can't speak for all industries. But the USA lost electronic industry at least a whole decade ago. Today I have to beg companies like Samsung or Toshiba to send me a few samples of their memories - and they refuse! They don't even make datasheets on many their parts in English! Components that we get here cost 10x more than in Asia, to the point that we can't use them to build competitive products even if the US-based workers work for a bowl of rice per day, like their counterparts in China.

Today I can only identify a handful of leading electronic component design houses in the USA. Micron is all that we have in memories, with IDT serving a fringe market of specialty RAM. Intel and AMD (whatever of it remains) are making CPUs. Analog Devices, TI and LTC are making good parts. But that's a drop in the ocean. All LCDs are made in Asia. All crystals are made in Asia. Passives are all made in Asia. You'd be a fool to make boards here, except for prototypes - you can't beat Taiwan's prices.

At the same time ARM processors that power most of handheld devices are designed by a UK company. China has its own processor. Most of the innovation in storage tech happens in Asia; some in Europe; not much here. The USA is quickly becoming a 3rd world country where only assembled goods can be purchased, but not the parts and technology to build more. The USA still has some decent places where science is made (MIT, IBM) but that advantage is not forever. Microsoft is crumbling as we speak, beaten into irrelevance by mobile computing. Apple is battling Samsung, HTC and others - not very successfully; the android army is overwhelming. There are thousands of smaller design houses in China that make some very interesting products.

There is a natural reason for all that. When the factories moved to China the engineering talent followed. With no jobs for technologists here none were graduating. With no engineers produced, existing companies cannot replenish the old blood, and new companies cannot get started. There is very little reason today for a young person to choose technology for his career - it is virtually a dead end here. Silicon Valley still has jobs for good engineers, but that's the Valley. Step outside, and it's a wasteland out there, with no industry in sight. All the factories that should be employing US people are in China, employing Chinese people. I'm sure China is very grateful for that windfall of contracts and orders; it allowed them to become the third country in the world with manned spaceflight capability. (Well, and a little creative borrowing of ideas, but who is counting.) At the same time NASA has nothing to fly to space on - in part that's the same problem; the country that flew to the Moon cannot fly a man 300 miles upward anymore.

To be blunt, we are going the way Rome did when she no longer had the moral strength. The way we go down is not necessarily the same way they went nor in the same time frame, ours will be much shorter than theirs unless something drastically changes.

Also, I remember when the PCB manufactures where packing up and leaving during the mid to late 90’s. I have seen the spec manuals for various components that you are talking about. But to be clear, they where able to take some one else’s idea(s) and use it for there own enrichment(we did do the same at the beginning our founding but we also had unprecedented levels of freedom) and to some extent they have added there own innovations but that has also been a mix of engineers here and abroad. But they also have a stale culture, more rooted in authoritarianism and corruption than freedom but ours has become more stale and in some respects is less free and more corrupt than theirs, which is why they are doing better in some areas but its still restrictive compared to where we use to be. Given that, they will only go so far since they do not posses the freedom need to be innovative to the point where it will be helpful for the long term gain of their society or anyone else for that matter.

But Why has this happened? Growing bureaucracy here at home(Europe had similar problems at the time of our founding), tax disadvantages, a poor educational system, a belief that cheap manufacturing would last forever and not see the rising costs with a more modern society (China, India, etc) as it is starting to happen now, not to mention the price slashing that the Chinese would use and then find away to make up for it with either inferior material, less material, come back to you with increased costs and you now have no place to go else where (they have you over the barrel) or sell counterfeit items to other countries where you haven't established licensing and would be to costly for you to take legal means to do so. We can talk about other issues as well such as the manipulation of the dollar by our politicians and ones abroad, currency pegs, etc. But lets face it, our problems stem from something more basic and foundational in nature, it is the break down in our Judeo-Christian values, ethics, and morals across our entire society. Drip by Drip which has over time turned into a torrent water fall like the one you can see in the Niagara river.

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