Stidmatt

There is a tendency in technology nowadays to require x years of experience in some technology in order to get a job when you start out. I am fortunately past that stage myself, and have observed why the current conventional wisdom is foolish, and we need to move to a different hiring paradigm.

Let’s say you are interviewing several candidates for one job.

1. Candidate A is fresh out of school. Could be a boot camp, could be college. It doesn’t really matter (when I did my boot camp some of the PhDs in the class were remarking how difficult it was). They have an extensive portfolio of using various technologies which are relevant to the role in the target language. They have learned their stuff and have over 10 projects demonstrating fluency in their language. They built all 10 projects over the course of 12 months.
2. Candidate B is in the middle of their career. They have only been doing the target language for a short amount of time, their work in the target language is extremely limited, and their portfolio is extremely sparse when it comes to the skills you are hiring for. They have evidence of deep expertise in other languages stretching over a decade, but not in the target language.
3. This candidate is fresh out of school, but they don’t have a portfolio. They say they know the target language. You have no access to anything to prove their claims.

 

Candidate A is ready for the role. They could use some coaching on how to lint their code properly, but that can be taught. Candidate B might not be ready, their depth is in another area of expertise. Candidate C needs to build a portfolio to prove their skills.

 

The problem with the modern hiring paradigm is that it will usually ignore candidates A and C, give candidate B a major lead role in an area they have no expertise in.

What should happen is that they should find a candidate with experience in the target skill set, who can prove they know the language with code which works and passes a simple linting test. That person should be the new manager. The more impressive the project, the better. Candidate A should be hired to a junior role with real responsibilities. Candidate B should either be a non-management role (because being a master web developer does not make you a data scientist, obviously) in the target team or moved to a team where they actually have expertise where they can be a manager. Candidate C should be given a polite letter asking them to construct a portfolio before they apply again. Give them direction on where to go.

This is the problem with most modern hiring practices. They don’t use tools to accurately assess the expertise in the target job, quickly discount candidates who should be hired to a junior role, and often people with years of expertise can be promoted to roles where they are out of their depth. This creates failure.

We need to rethink the entire hiring paradigm. If somebody is able to earn a college degree or pass a bootcamp, they have a good work ethic, full stop. It might make sense to hire all new employees on as temps and then promote them to full time salary in 3-6 months if they prove they are valuable members of the team, but to simply tell people starting in any field that they don’t have “experience” for a role which is labeled as entry level is absolutely absurd.

A college degree is proof of a good work ethic. That’s all you need.

Then you need to see if the person is a good fit for the company. Hire people on for 3-6 months as an hourly employee, and if they work out, give them a salary and full benefits. If they don’t, then it didn’t work.

Put people in places which match their expertise in the skills they demonstrate in their portfolio. If someone has an extensive data science portfolio where they use machine learning to answer questions, don’t put them in a sysadmin position (even if they are capable) place them in a position where they will use as many skills they have demonstrated as possible.

Years of work experience is a meaningless metric, and it is long past time that companies stop using it to determine whether someone should be given an interview. I am planning on developing tools in the future to better assess whether someone has skills better than the methods I have observed in my life so far, but what I do know is that the current system is inefficient, doesn’t promote people who need to be promoted, promotes people out of their depth, and doesn’t hire people who are perfectly capable of doing the job in question.

To be continued.

The world stands on a precipice right now. The question is whether Democracy will stand or whether it will fall. Russia is massing troops on the border with Ukraine, threatening a war (it’s the only reason a state ever does this military maneuver, let’s be honest) and now its NATO’s turn to act.

There are two major schools of thought in international relations, and each of them have lessons to teach us about what will happen next. They are the liberal school of thought and the realist school of thought.

The liberal school of thought believes that democratization, trade, and dialogue help mitigate conflict. The basic idea is that countries which are engaged in trade are less likely to go to war. Also, democracies are also less likely to go to war. Research supports both theories. Non-state actors matter, and international institutions matter. Read the Wikipedia article for more detail.

But the liberal school of thought fails in the Russia case fully, because Russia trades a lot with Europe, which brings in large amounts of cash in exchange for natural gas and oil. It is useful only to a point, and isn’t enough to really understand what is happening in the world right now.

The other major school of thought in international relations is realism. TLDR, states are the only institutions which matter, the international system is anarchic, states act within their own rational self-interest, and states desire power.

Now this does explain Putin’s behavior closely.

Now we have to focus on for multiple reasons the people of Ukraine do not want to be part of Russia. They used to be occupied by Russia, and 80 years ago over 10 million Ukrainians died in a famine caused by the Soviet government (which of course was dominated by Russia). For that reason in particular, Ukrainians have a lot to lose and nothing to gain if they are invaded and annexed by Russia.

So looking deeper into realism international relations theory (the relevant school of thought in this scenario) it discusses what happens when states face a hegemon together. In the absence of American leadership, Russia is without a doubt a hegemon over Europe. With the United Kingdom trying to distance itself from Europe (a geographic impossibility) we must realize that Russia has a population as large as Germany and France combined. Germany and France are the richest and largest countries in the European Union, and they equal Russia’s power. If Russia invades Ukraine and the European Union defends, it will be a long and bloody war. If the United States joins it will be relatively short. We’ve seen this before.

If you look at a map of Europe in 1960, half of the continent was capitalist, and half was communist. Today, the map looks like this:

Dark blue: European Union/Eurozone

light green: European Union, no Euro

light blue: candidate countries

light purple: Central European Free Trade Agreement

Dark purple: Schengen Treaty

Red: Union state

Half of Europe used to be under Soviet control (de facto). Today the only satellite state Russia still controls in Europe is Belarus. Georgia wants to be a member of the European Union and NATO, as does Ukraine, and Azerbaijan is part of GUAM with Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. This leaves Russia with influence over only Armenia.

It didn’t have to be this way. If Russia had democratized and respected freedom of the press, Europe would be more than willing to have deep ties with the largest country in the peninsula. Democratization would have certainly led to economic growth, and a reduction in inequality, and Russia would be far better off than it is today. Unfortunately over the last 22 years Putin has done everything in his power to stop all political opposition, actively used his foreign diplomacy to undermine democracy abroad, and has repeatedly threatened democracies on the periphery of his empire.

It’s a real shame, I really believe that if Russia were to democratize it would prosper economically, Western Europe would happily build democratic integrations with Russia, and there would be peace in Europe where disagreements would be solved through dialogue, and frequent trade between countries would make no real economic benefit for anyone to attack each other.

But this is where the whole situation gets really confusing (at least from a liberal point of view).

Russia has three major gas pipelines which pass through Ukraine into the European Union. Even the South Stream pipeline passes through Donetsk (which probably explains why Russia wants to capture that territory in particular) Russia and Ukraine are already deeply intertwined politically, and Russia is absolutely dependent on Ukraine for its own economic survival. If you cut off the gas pipelines into Europe, Russia will fall into an economic depression overnight. Russia is absolutely reliant on good relations with the rest of Europe. While it is of course difficult for Europe to cut ties with Russia, because of their reliance on Russian natural gas this also explains another part of Russian strategy. it is the depths of January right now with Russia attacking Ukraine. The last attack on Ukraine in 2014 was in February. Russia does not attack Ukraine during the summer because at that point Western Europe can survive if the gas is cut off for a few months and Russia’s economy tanks. The timing of Russia’s military invasions into Ukraine is no accident, because it reduces Europe’s ability to retaliate through economic means.

Russia has invaded their former colonies twice before, and there is no reason to expect that they will not stop right now without significant pushback from NATO and the European Union.

The main point is it is clear that Putin is not content with just having economic ties with his neighbors, he wants political control. He believes Eastern European countries have a choice, be in Russia’s sphere of influence, or Germany’s sphere of influence. He is stuck in a Cold War mindset, unable to see past his KGB training, and that is what makes him such a dangerous person.

It’s also important to understand that Germany has a new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who is also the first SPD chancellor in 17 years. Both Scholz and Biden have never had to deal with Putin invading a NATO candidate before. Putin is testing both politicians in a very dangerous game. On top of this, America’s surrender in Afghanistan has made Putin wonder whether Biden will defend his allies at all. Since we know Biden let Afghanistan go back to the situation it was in back in 2001 when the twin towers attacked, how will Biden respond when a country in Europe is attacked by the largest country in Europe? With the United Kingdom out of the European Union as well, Putin has divided the west. There is a lot of evidence pointing to Putin wanting to separate Britain from the rest of Europe. On top of this, we know that Putin supports internal opponents of European Union integration. By sowing discord among people in Europe, supporting candidates like Trump, la Pen, Alternativ fur Deutschland, and possibly Johnson, Putin has been attacking the foundations of democracy in every major NATO member.

A quick search on Google shows there have been mixed messages from Ottawa and Washington, and the only major leader in the West giving a strong line on support for Ukraine is Macron. If the rest of the Western Alliance of democracies (NATO) gave a similar strong message that Putin should not mess with Ukraine, Putin would probably back down. Almost a billion people live in the member states of NATO today, Russia would be crushed if they were to go into a direct conflict with NATO, and China does not want to cut its ties with the United States. Russia knows this. But, with an American President who surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban, a British prime minister who detests Europe, along with mixed messages from Berlin and Ottawa, what might be perceived as a desire for peace by major world leaders might give Putin a free pass. But despite how much Boris Johnson hates Europe he is saying he will send troops to Ukraine. We will see if that actually happens.

But it doesn’t much looking at history to understand it has nothing to do with a general desire for peace.

In order to understand Biden’s actions we need to look at this screenshot.

This picture is a snippet of the vote to invade Iraq in 2002.

This vote tells me a lot about the current situation and Biden’s unwillingness to use military force to fight terrorism or hold back Russia from invading and conquering Europe, which is what the Cold War was all about really. When the United States has not had access to a country’s natural resources, they have been more than willing to invade and start a conflict. When anti-democratic forces have invaded countries with little oil, the President of the United States doesn’t care.

Which brings us to the only reasonable conclusion.

Biden doesn’t care about world peace. Biden doesn’t care if other democracies fall. He just doesn’t want to use our military for anything besides acquiring oil reserves.

That’s the theme of Joe Biden’s half century long career. Its a pursuit for economic benefits for the richest Americans (see his history on student loans) and making America less dependent on trade. Joe Biden is a mercantilist. He always has been. He doesn’t care about democracy (hence the lack of interest in the voting rights act, which could easily cost him congress in November), and that leaves Europe on its own. The German chancellor has only been in office for three months. The first week of this crisis saw Biden downplay it. But we have seen a shift in the last couple of days, probably with pressure from European allies.

At least that’s how it looks until a couple days ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/politics/us-russia-ukraine-invasion-warning/index.html

The first few news reports I saw of this showed Biden skeptical of whether Russia would take this seriously and several scathing criticisms from European allies towards our President. Looks like peer pressure from our closest allies in the world has helped President Biden change his 50 year old song and we will defend our partner democracies around the world with sufficient pressure from our allies.

After all, the motto of the United States is e pluribus unum. Out of many, one. A rallying call of the Revolutionary war was united we stand, divided we fall. The United States was founded on the principle of democracy, and is the oldest standing democracy in the world. The United States is one of the only countries which turned into a democracy from armed conflict, and we should always remember that democracy sometimes comes with a cost. With NATO troops in Ukraine, this will hopefully be enough for Russia to back down and not invade Ukraine.

If it isn’t enough, Putin will likely pay with his life.

When you go through bankruptcy, most of your loans can be discharged. This comes at a big cost to you of course, in the form of a significantly reduced credit score, making it near impossible to borrow at a reasonable interest rate for the next 7 years, but they can be discharged and give you a blank financial slate to build yourself anew. Donald Trump knows all about this.

Mortgages, car loans, medical debt, credit cards, lines of credit, all of these can be wiped clean through bankruptcy, except for public student loans.

That’s the first big difference.

The other difference is that there really is no alternative for many Americans except for going to college. College opens the door to many of the most profitable careers you can do, plus liberal arts gives you the flexibility to be able to move to other adjacent fields because you have a general education. Nothing else can provide such flexibility in such a short amount of time.

For many Americans, the only way to gain such freedom is to take out student loans.

 

The hardest part for a mortgage is to be able to make the downpayment, and if you can’t pay off your mortgage, you can sell your house. Same with a car loan. With a credit card you can sell what you bought with your credit card. You can’t sell your education and get a large sum of money to cover your student loans in a short period of time.

Medical debt should also not be a thing, but since its private debt the solution is universal health care. A story for another time, when we have the votes in congress to deal with it.

 

Also, if one American doesn’t go to college or delays their college because they can’t get a student loan or pay for college in any other way, than the economy will pay dearly.

It’s also because like most Americans, I believe college should not be a luxury, and like most economists, I know that education is critical to the development of our economy. As more and more Americans go to college, our economy will benefit far beyond the additional cost to the Federal government. College should have no financial burden, and anyone who is willing and able to do the work should be able to go.

Student loans don’t just put college graduates in debt, it makes it impossible for many Americans to go to school at all. They widen inequality, harm economic growth, and reduce social mobility.

Student loans are a parasite on our society.

Making college affordable or free again will take congressional action. That’s unlikely to happen for a while. But the President has the power to pardon student loans up to $50,000 every single year. This will increase access to opportunity, improve our economy, and make America a better place to live.

And President Biden can do it without Joe Manchin’s permission.

Restore the social contract. Rebuild the American Dream.

Pardon student loans.

It is becoming more and more popular in international relations and international political economy circles to say “wither Europe”, “Europe is dying” and the like.

Let’s look at this in detail.

Human rights

Using the Press Freedom Index as our metric of freedom, and looking at the countries which have a good or satisfactory ranking:

• 6 African countries (11%)
• 2 Asian countries (4%)
• 27 European Countries (51%)
• 5 North American/Caribbean countries (22%)
• 5 Oceania countries (36%)
• 2 South American countries (16%)

Over half of these countries are located in Europe.

If we look at corruption, we find a similar trend, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Bhutan, United States, Seychelles, Taiwan, Barbados, Bahamas, Qatar, South Korea, Botswana, Brunei, Israel, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Dominica, Oman, Rwanda, Grenada, Mauritius, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Namibia have scores above 50. Out of these 59 countries, 30 of them are in Europe.

A similar trend.

Out of 53 countries which are arguably in Europe (including Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey) half of them score as some of the freest countries in the world by both metrics. It is the only “continent” in the world where over half of its countries are ranked as among the world’s most free.

When it comes to Democratization, there are many countries classified as flaeed democracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit in Latin America, but when it comes to Full Democracies, Western Europe is one of only two regions with an average score over 8, the other one is North America consisting of only the United States and Canada.

Population

Is this because of having a large number of small countries?

There are X countries with a population under 1 million people, and 10 of them are in Europe. Europe’s population is the 3rd largest “continent” with 750 million people, behind only Africa and Asia. Europe is larger than North America in terms of both population and GDP. No one is seriously projecting that the United States is going to stop being an important player in the world, see the GDP plot above.

It is clear Europe will be a critical region in the world because of the large population for as far as anyone can reasonably predict.

Economics

Keeping in mind that Europe has 53 countries, out of the top ten countries by GDP (PPP), 4 of them are in Europe, 4 are in Asia, and 2 are in the Americas.

Out of the top 10 countries in the world by GDP per capita (PPP), 6 of them are in Europe, 4 are in Asia, and one is the United States. The next 5 countries are also in Europe. So out of the top 15 countries by GDP per capita, 3/4 of them are European.

The 75th percentile for the world’s countries by GDP per capita is around $15,000. 21 of these countries are in Europe, 9 are in Asia, 4 are in the Americas, 2 are in Oceania, and 1 is in Africa.

If we get the average GDP per capita for Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania, Europe has a GDP per capita of $30000, and Oceania has a GDP per capita of $37,000.

Europe hits that sweet spot between having a large population, a large economy, and a high average quality of life which is unique in the world today.

Asia might someday catch up to Europe though. China has a GDP per capita 1/4 that of Europe, and 1/5 that of Western Europe.

If China manages to grow their GDP per capita at an average of 6% per year, and Western Europe grows their GDP per capita at a rate of 2% per year it will take them 43 years to have a GDP per capita the same size as that of Western or Eastern Europe. This is of course assuming constant growth rates. If China’s growth rate slows to a more normal average for developing economies, it might not happen for another 80+ years, long after I expect to be dead. Only people who are children today might be able to see the day where China’s average quality of life is on par with that of Europe.

Europe’s quality of life is going to be better than that of most of the world for a long time to come.

Of the 15 largest military expenditures in the world, 5 of them are in Europe, comprising 13% of global military expenditures. This is one place where Europe pulls just about where you would expect, with roughly 10% of the world’s population, they comprise over 13% of the world’s military expenditures.

We can also look at political power rankings as calculated by US News, and we see the US at number 1, then China at number 2, followed by Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. No country in Africa, South America, or Oceania make the list, 5 countries in Asia, 1 country in North America, and 3 in Europe.

It doesn’t matter how you look at, if you take GDP, GDP per capita, military expenditures, quality of life, or just cut to the chase and use US News’ political power rankings, several European countries still rank as some of the most powerful countries in the world, and the rest of the peninsula is comprised of countries with strong economies which when unified as a single bloc are a force to be reckoned with.

China Supreme?

In 1900, the largest country in the world by population was China, like most of human history. Europe dominated the world however, with most of Africa colonized, and the European continent held 8 of the world’s 20 largest countries by population. Over 1 in 5 people were subjects of the British empire, and Europe dominated the world economically and politically.

The 20th century saw a rapid decolonization across the planet, and the majority of countries which were decolonized were extremely poor, and many were dictatorships for the rest of the 20th century. With a few notable exceptions, while colonization was obviously bad for many reasons, local government did not mean that the quality of life for the people in such countries improved, corruption and poverty were the norm in the wake of decolonization.

But now things are starting to change. Several countries are solidly middle income, most countries in the Americas are classified as flawed democracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit. China is seeing rapid economic growth year after year, and several petrostates in the Middle East have became incredibly wealthy.

The world is a different place than it was 50 years ago, and while many countries have developed, and many countries have seen an expansion in liberty, if we look across multiple metrics of not just pure power but also freedom, because what good for a business is a giant population if most of them are in poverty? If we filter for low corruption (top 25% only), high democracy score (over 7) and a high GDP per capita (top 25% only), we find the following map:

There are 9 countries outside Europe which fit this description, and 22 countries which are European which fit this description.

However, what if I don’t care about human rights, I just want to see countries which have the largest economies and the highest average quality of life (using GDP per capita)?

Again we see a familiar pattern. North America, most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Korea are the only ones which are in the top 25th percentile for both population and GDP per capita.

We are seeing that for countries which have the most flexibility, Western Europe still dominates, without any filters for human rights. The top ten power rankings from US News match this, with adding in China and Russia because of their large populations, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of their vast oil reserves. But Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are heavily reliant on oil exports, an embargo on either one would destroy their economy quickly. Russia is a petrostate as well, and if Western Europeans managed to move off of natural gas to heat their homes, Russia would lose a large amount of its economic base. China is starting to diversify, but most of their technological growth is not from new inventions but by copying inventions done by the United States in flagrant copyright violation. The rest of the powerful countries are heavily diversified knowledge based economies where the inventions occur, with large domestic consumer markets. If China, Russia, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia were to alienate the world they would quickly find that their economies would quickly dry up.

Europe is the world’s largest consumer market of consumers who have lots of money to spend. We live longer lives, have better health care, and are happier overall.

China is able to flex their muscles because they are large. Russia is able to flex its muscles because of how the world’s oil infrastructure is built gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of selling petroleum based products to Europe.

But both of these countries honestly punch below their weight. The European Union is the largest trading partner of the United States, with 18.7% of exports, and 18.9% of imports. China does produce 21.4% of imports to the United States, but this is relatively proportional to the percent of the world’s population in China. The EU however is punching above their weight, with 6% of the world’s population they trade with the United States with a percentage of our trade 3 times larger than their population would predict. If the European Union or some other country had a population on par with China, they would absolutely dominate imports and exports with the United States.

The same story for  the European Union, China again is the source of about 22% of imports to the EU, on par for their percent of the world’s population. The United States on the other hand with about 4% of the world’s population is the destination for 18% of exports from the European Union, and the source of 11.8% of imports send to the EU, far above our weight based on our population alone. Even Russia has imports and exports of 4-5% of European imports and exports, despite having only 2% of the world’s population. That is also while sharing a border with the European Union. This seems impressive on the surface…

What happens when two strong developed economies share a long developed border in terms of imports and exports? We don’t have to wonder because that is the case of the United States and Canada. Canada has 0.4% of the world’s population, yet is the destination of 18% of exports from the United States, and the source of 12% of American imports.  Canadian imports to the United States pull weight 30 times their size! China having imports and  exports on par with their population doesn’t seem so impressive when you take their size into account.

Despite having the world’s largest economy, China’s government consistently fails year after year to leverage this in the global economy to really achieve their true potential. China should be able to amass a massive economy of scale to absolutely dominate imports and exports with other large economic blocs around the world, but they can’t seem to do it. Given that they have 1/4 of the world’s population they are far smaller than they really should be. India may be the world’s second largest country, but they don’t even appear on the brief summaries of imports and exports to the United States or Europe because they are underdeveloped.

Despite having a population around 1/3 the size of China, the European Union consistently is able to trade with the United States on par with China. Despite having a population only 2% of that of China, Canada is able to have 25x the trade with the United States one would expect based on their size alone.

China is significantly under performing compared to where they should be.

Now, even though I know that Economists have successfully predicted 5 of the last 2 recessions, I’m going to take a stab at what is likely to happen in the future.

There are two paths. If China continues to lag in corruption perceptions index, they will likely continue to see their gini coefficient rise. It is already higher than that of the United States. Corruption increases inequality and poverty, which needs to be dealt with soon. If China is to really pull their true weight in the global economy they need to deal with internal problems like income inequality and poverty. Corruption has a negative impact on growth as well according to Transparency International.

Challenges to Chinese economic growth going forward are numerous. As China’s economy grows it will need its currency to appreciate in value. As more Chinese families start to have middle class lifestyles, they will want to import expensive goods from abroad. China’s currency policy makes these imports more expensive, and this will eventually slow growth. At a GDP per capita of only $10,000 China has already seen its working age population peak, which means more of its money is going to need to go to take care of elders than has been in the past. Chinese productivity is behind that of highly developed nations. There is also evidence that Chinese economic growth over the last decade was actually around 4% APY.

Source: Challenges to China’s economy

If Chinese economic growth is indeed already at 4% APY, and Western Europe grows at 2% APY, then it will take China 85 years to catch up with Europe’s economy.

It becomes clear that while China will continue to be the world’s largest economy, they continue to punch below what their weight would imply compared to how highly developed nations perform in terms of exports.

Towards a multipolar world

I do not foresee a future where China is the world’s dominant super power. The US and EU, despite having fewer people than China will continue to have significantly more economic and foreign power, particularly when we work together.

But one thing which is definitely shifting is that Eastern Europe is becoming more democratic, joining the European Union, and developing economically. The shift of Eastern Europe from being members of the Warsaw Pact to being members of NATO and the European Union has created a massive shift in terms of the balance of power for the world. When the United States and European Union work together on international economic aims, we are far more powerful than China, despite our smaller population.

During the Cold War, Eastern Europe was part of the Warsaw Pact, they were poor, and had little real power beyond themselves. The Soviet Union had a large population, and a stronger economy than China which was still recovering from the Great Leap Forward until the 80s and 90s, but as soon as the Soviet Union broke up and lost Eastern Europe, Russia by itself didn’t have enough clout to be a major world player beyond being the main source of natural gas for Europe. Western Europe’s population by themselves wasn’t large enough to be a major power without Eastern Europe joining, and given that Spain was recovering from Franco, Europe was still reassessing its place in the post-colonization world from the 1960s to 1990s.

But times have changed. There are three main powers in the world today:

• The United States, the world’s largest advanced democracy by a long shot
• The European Union, the largest trading bloc in the world
• China, The world’s largest population, but a relatively poor economy considering its population

What we are going to see is the world forming where multilateral international relations are going to be more important. Combined, the European Union is a force to be reckoned with, and China has power just through sheer population.

But the United States is by far the most powerful individual country in the world. We have the world’s most powerful economy, semiconductors, the hardware behind most of today’s modern innovations, are all based here in the United States. The United States publishes more scholarly articles than any other country except China, at 4 times China’s rate per capita. There are three main operating systems people use today, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows. All three are American. Of the 10 largest companies by market capitalization, 8 of them are American. 4 of them are headquartered in Santa Clara county, California. America’s GDP per capita and HDI are extremely high. Out of highly developed democracies, the United States is an outlier. Despite all of this we have some problems we need to deal with, racism, inequality, and relative lack of opportunity for low income Americans exemplified by the student loan crisis.

But it is obvious that if there is any one country which has the population, economy, and global influence to be the major player of the 21st century, there is one obvious answer.

The United States of America.