2024 was when employers started implementing return to office across the entire economy. They also started pushing AI everywhere. And, they continued layoffs that started in 2023. Of course this made employees worse off.

The only objective measure of student performance that can't easily be cheated are standardized tests. Universities need to bring back the SAT or ACT. Schools need to limit admissions to those students with the top grades. Right now, it's far too easy to cheat the system and bring in students who can't do the work while denying good students who can do the work and refuse to cheat.

Colleges can collect ACT/SAT scores, high school grades, recommendations, and essays. We've seen grade inflation over the past few decades where students can all easily get A's regardless of whether they actually deserve them or not. Students can easily cheat on recommendations and essays. The only objective measure of a student that's not easily cheated are the ACT or SAT. Removing those requirements means that universities have exposed themselves to students interested in cheating their way into college. The result are universities accepting a group of mediocre students who can't do the work and denying good students who can do the work and refuse to cheat.

You would call a simple cup of coffee "ultra-caffeinated, supercharged, mega-boosted, hyper-energizing, turbo java" that promises to launch you into orbit!

You do not know what "ultra" does to the meaning of words. Take your bipolar meds yet?

A PC is for doing work. not games. I don't want your malware game infecting my computer which has to be locked down by your invasive software to prevent cheating online etc. Consoles can be your domain and limit freedom and be a closed off walled garden. I'm totally ok with that to limiting cheating and make security risks a joke since nothing important is on my console.

This sound like phones? moving gaming to phones sounds like exactly what they want and it has a wealth of personal information far beyond most users' PCs.

Nintendo is the only one who gets it. The rest are just greedy corps trying to steal as much as possible: from the workers, from the customers (TIME and money,) and from Nintendo (speaking of Sony's breach of contract which founded their console business; but also their emulators.)

The COSTS are reasonable except for their subsidized bloated PC consoles... adjusted for inflation, Nintendo is just fine. The problem is the money is all going to the top and people in the 1st world are really starting to feel it as they finally realize their income hasn't risen at the rate of wallstreet.

One solution to hide the lost wealth, is to merge with the PC market which can lower costs to some degree while promoting more consumption at the same time. The real savings will end up going to industry and not to the consumers; at first it will placate the users for a while. Next it'll migrate to phones while the PC dies off for most people who can only afford a good phone (with an upgrade being connecting the phone to a TV or controller.) Many people today have already eliminated the PC from their life and just have a phone... the printers are talking to the phones now because of this trend.

Remember, the NSA got Apple's cooperation after Jobs stepped down. -snowden leak

A robot is a mechanical slave that doesn't ever revolt.
Humans compete with robots by being cheaper than robots. This means degrading the workers until eventually conditions simply can't get any worse. If you demand a fair minimum treatment, you just raise the transition point for robots. Nothing will advance robots faster than forcing jobs to be in the USA and it'll also likely have a downward impact on job quality given how much undue power corporations have.

There is also no way profits going to the 1% will be allowed to go down, prices will have to go up and the economy will shrink. At some point the 1% will have to loose money, as they can't steal any more when there isn't anymore to take... this will create pressure for internationalization which has already been going on for generations so the 1% gets smaller and globally concentrated. Likely war will happen as result of infighting within the ruling class; they won't directly fight each other.

Americans are much poorer today is the reality that people haven't realized because food, clothing, electronics and have come down in relative price by many methods to mask the decline and wage theft by wall-street. If you even bring up the class war that has been raging for decades you get dismissed as a socialist or whatever slur the suckers buy into.

A car 75 years ago... but then we have much safer cars (seat belts for starters) that use much less gas... Cheap resources are not abundant anymore either. We've not yet hit peak copper and look at those prices. Well, I did the math and an average car today would have to be about $18k. You can get cheap cars in that range but not average. Those old cars had no extras like today -- people wouldn't pay so much extra for silly things we demand now; remove power locks, power doors, key fobs, power steering...

CANADA supplies a lot of parts already... but Trump is putting a stop to that...

The death isn't Barr killing Epstein, it's Trump vaguely telling Barr to kill Epstein. It is probably not appropriate to name a mind virus that mobsters used for generations after a recent example.

Lack of planning? All private companies, departments, and individual teams plan for the projects that they implement. All public city, county, and state organizations plan for the projects in their area. Decentralized planning may look like no planning to someone from China. But, that's certainly far from true. There's lots of planning going on. It's not controlled from some central location. One of the benefits of this model is that it tends not to overbuild and overspend when the need isn't necessary, such as what happens with central planning. Local municipalities and businesses tend to build what they need and are economically punished when they overbuild.

Rocky 4 was banned in Russia so they didn't realize...

China has abject poverty in most of the country next to places that are wildly rich that are used for propaganda videos. In comparison, the US has done a much better job spreading the wealth from coast to coast.

Saudi doesn’t have its own supply of good tech labor. China does. China doesn’t have the same incentive to create these enclaves as Saudi.