Posted on 04/11/2005 11:48:09 PM PDT by Gengis Khan
Trouble on Horizon: Complacency threatens U.S. economic power 12:04 AM CDT on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 Chinese premier Wen Jiabao recently spoke in Bangalore, capital of India's booming high-tech industry, and made a modest proposal that ought to be seen by Americans as the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union launching Sputnik. He proposed that the emerging economic superpowers, longtime rivals, cooperate on high-tech ventures. Indian software and Chinese hardware would be a formidable pairing, he said – surely the understatement of the year. Whether China and India do the tech tango or not, there's no doubt they will be the United States' chief competitors this century. What are we doing about it? Not much. As New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues in his new book, The World Is Flat, America "still looks great on paper, especially if you look backward, or compare it to India and China today and not tomorrow." But tomorrow is just a day away. America's dearth of math, science and engineering graduates has sparked what Mr. Friedman, who addressed hundreds at the World Affairs Council in Dallas yesterday, calls "a quiet crisis involv[ing] the steady erosion of America's scientific and engineering base, which has always been the source of American innovation and our rising standard of living." Americans are, in many ways, lazier and more complacent than overseas competitors, especially when it comes to an academic work ethic. Our educational system is increasingly mediocre, in part due to underfunding, and in part due to parents' unwillingness to uphold high academic and behavioral standards for their children. We are going to get our clocks cleaned by China and India if we don't rise to the challenge.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
I can appreciate the warnings, but this is getting tiresome, especially the quoting and re-quoting of the likes of Friedman, who are constantly fellating China (and, increasingly, India), spending so much time focusing on them that one wonders how he has time to ponder all the negatives of what America isn't doing.
The biggest threat to america's economic power is excess taxation, regulation, and litigation.
Hey, try replacing 'threat' with 'threats' and 'is' with 'are', moron!
Education is a problem, but public education as it is currently taught within the US is fairly irrelevant to the vast majority of small business entrepeneurs who create the most new jobs in a free market economy.
Good engineers on the other hand are definitly needed to develop defense systems. In the long run that could cause problems, but China needs to settle its dispute with Taiwan and get up to speed with the US militarily before lack of innovative engineering becomes a serious threat.
However, if Hillary the Great conquers the US, accelerating events will most likely occur.
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