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Don't Panic: because American innovation will save the economy
NY Post ^ | January 17, 2010 | Kyle Smith

Posted on 01/17/2010 3:17:07 AM PST by Scanian

Before you write off the American economy, consider this remark from Nathan Myhrvold, the ex-Microsoft genius who now runs an idea factory called Intellectual Ventures: “For the last few decades I’ve bought Japanese or German cars but no Japanese or German software. Only the United States can handle the thinking speed of the software field.”

We live in a country where makers of high-value-added software are hounded as antitrust outlaws, while the smoke-belching industry of making money-losing cars is lavished with government bailouts, but never mind that. US business ingenuity is so robust that not even the government can kill it.

As Gregg Easterbrook demonstrates in his engaging new book, “Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed” (Random House), the big challenge today is to accept challenge — perpetual, stressful, constant upheaval. The chances that someone in your family will suffer economic trauma — pay cut, loss of job — in a given year are up to 26%. Like the treadmill, the world economy punishes as it delivers benefits.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: globalization; innovation; taxes; technology
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1 posted on 01/17/2010 3:17:10 AM PST by Scanian
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To: Scanian

American innovation can only help the economy if it’s allowed to do so...something the Senate and Congress seem determined to obstruct. Until the time when the government stops obstructing the economy American innovation will be used for other purposes.


2 posted on 01/17/2010 3:21:56 AM PST by highlander_UW (There's a storm coming - little kid at a Mexican gas station in The Terminator)
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To: Scanian

One thing that I know: If the socialist health care bill is passed, American innovation in the field is finished. Take a picture of the current state of the art in health and tell me it won’t be about the same in fifty years.


3 posted on 01/17/2010 3:25:21 AM PST by thesharkboy (<-- Looking for the silver lining in every cloud, since 1998)
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To: highlander_UW
Help (I hope) is on the way.
4 posted on 01/17/2010 3:33:11 AM PST by Recon Dad ( USMC SSgt Patrick O - 3rd Afghanistan Deployment - Day 89)
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To: thesharkboy
American innovation in the field is finished

As long as you can innovate for a nickel and sell it for a dime, it will continue. And Americans will find a way to do that.

5 posted on 01/17/2010 3:36:51 AM PST by Glenn (iamtheresistance.org)
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To: Scanian
The American economy is a physical manifestation of the American spirit and there's not a darn thing wrong with it.

That said, all free economies roll forward in fits and starts, ups and downs. Economies have seasons as they digest innovation.

THE ONLY PROBLEM with the American economy at the present time is sitting in the Oval Office.

6 posted on 01/17/2010 3:46:14 AM PST by SonOfDarkSkies (Obama: "Always doing the opposite of what needs to be done!")
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To: Recon Dad
Help (I hope) is on the way.

I certainly hope so, but it's not just the democrats that is the problem...it's all big government advocates (which is a core tenant of the democrat party in particular). I just hope the help isn't too little too late.

7 posted on 01/17/2010 3:53:10 AM PST by highlander_UW (There's a storm coming - little kid at a Mexican gas station in The Terminator)
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To: Glenn

That’s just the thing—an omnipotent and omnipresent government is looking to take away the profit incentive in the field. No profit=no innovation.


8 posted on 01/17/2010 3:58:14 AM PST by thesharkboy (<-- Looking for the silver lining in every cloud, since 1998)
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To: thesharkboy
No profit=no innovation.

There will always be profit. I know this because I work in this field.

9 posted on 01/17/2010 4:00:11 AM PST by Glenn (iamtheresistance.org)
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To: Scanian

This snake oil salesman fails to explain how we will a overcome the debt wall that we just hit that has been growing for 35 years and recently gone exponential.


10 posted on 01/17/2010 4:00:53 AM PST by Vet_6780 ("I see debt people")
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To: Vet_6780

Yup. The accumulated US debt is approaching forty trillion. The interest on that alone is a hole simply too deep to climb out of.


11 posted on 01/17/2010 4:16:11 AM PST by SpaceBar
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To: Scanian
US business ingenuity is so robust that not even the government can kill it.

In spite of tremendous effort.

12 posted on 01/17/2010 4:18:18 AM PST by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: highlander_UW
You’re right, there are layers of government to be removed. Bush was less than usless and allowed the 5th column to remain in place and undermine every step he made. He was all about getting along with the Kennedy’s and Clinton’s. They laughed at him and stabbed him every chance they could.

Clean house and I mean at every level of government.

13 posted on 01/17/2010 4:18:50 AM PST by Recon Dad ( USMC SSgt Patrick O - 3rd Afghanistan Deployment - Day 89)
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To: Scanian
Don't Panic: because American innovation will save the economy “

Not while a communist Kenyan sits in the White House and continues to take over large swaths of the economy. America didn't get where it was by practicing communism
Russians are very innovative and creative yet the country continued to wallow in backwardness for decades, because of communism

14 posted on 01/17/2010 4:29:24 AM PST by SmokingJoe
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To: SmokingJoe
Agreed. It takes a particularly brutal form of tyranny to stifle a people who consider chess a spectator sport for ninety years, but communism managed to do just that.
15 posted on 01/17/2010 4:44:17 AM PST by SpaceBar
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To: Scanian
Got your innovation cap on?


16 posted on 01/17/2010 4:50:49 AM PST by raybbr
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To: highlander_UW

I wonder how many voters work in Microsoft’s supply chain compared to General Motors? This might explain why government policies tend to favor the latter.


17 posted on 01/17/2010 5:33:10 AM PST by Tallguy ("The sh- t's chess, it ain't checkers!" -- Alonzo (Denzel Washington) in "Training Day")
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To: Scanian
That sure has to work. Instead of thriving off of free enterprise and unlimited opportunity, we will all find a way to get rich off the government and what the government tells us to produce and how much we can earn.
18 posted on 01/17/2010 5:39:28 AM PST by PSYCHO-FREEP
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To: Scanian

Some day soon, the military industrial complex will have been outsourced piece by piece to the point that China can turn it off and on at their pleasure.

When that happens, all of the software in the world ain’t gonna matter.


19 posted on 01/17/2010 5:46:03 AM PST by dangerdoc
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To: Scanian
Don't Panic: because American innovation will save the economy

I thought a service ecomomy was going to save us?

American innovation? The same innovation that produced the likes of US Steel, GM, Weyerhouser et al? The same innovation that actually won a war? The same innovation that put people on the moon? The same innovation and people that actually produced safe neighborhoods, an overwhelmingly Christian focus and work ethnic second to none. A people that valued accomplishment and rewarding the best and brightest but that by and large offered everyone a chance. Who were those people? Do they still exist? Do we still exist? The US today is in transition to a completely different people and country. Does that matter? Will the hordes of Hispanics immigrants lead us to huge technological advances and savings? Will massive invasions work to unite us as a people and a nation? How about millions of Muslims and hundreds of thousand of Somalians and Haitians? What advances will be pushed along abut these new people?

20 posted on 01/17/2010 5:48:52 AM PST by Altura Ct.
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