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One thing that is ignored in this debate is the petrodollar. The US prints money like crazy but keeps the dollar high by pretty much forcing the world to buy American dollars. Don't participate in the American racket and end up like Iran. This means that there are too many dollars and the prices in the US have shot through the moon. The US has become an excessively expensive country with an economy based on finance, insurance and real estate.
This kind of worked when the US was technologically vastly superior to the rest of the world and could force people in other countries to trade bananas and oil for Ford cars. As the rest of the world has been catching up in terms of tech, it is harder for the US to compete when housing prices are multiple times higher in Seattle compared to China or Poland.
American engineers with 100k of student debt, living in mediocre million dollar Seattle homes with 2000 dollar a month medical insurance for their family and who need two cars for their house hold simply can't compete on a global market. There aren't that many technologies that the US is that far ahead that the American company can charge an absurd premium.
The US doesn't seem to want to give up on the empire business so the result is to not lower costs but to press living standards down. Silicon valley real estate has to keep being at an inflated price but US companies can't pay 150 dollars an hour for mediocre web developers for their website when companies in other parts of the world pay 20.
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