I don’t believe that the government should just fund the research and then let the market figure out the sales, marketing and manufacture.
That worked in the past, but it’s different today.
China has an advantage. We are their market.
If American companies don’t have markets, the technology will get produced in China and shipped to us.
We can’t just concentrate on high-end research jobs because the average American is not high-end. What will the average American do?
I don’t really have an easy answer, but doing nothing is not the solution.
But if the average Americans are content to do nothing; then, well, they can eat cake.[/quote]
Brian: Said it before, will say it again: We (America) are fighting the last war, economically speaking.
The GOP is tied too closely to Big Money and the Dems are tied too closely to Big Labor. Big Labor wants a return to the Golden Age of American Manufacturing, when they could bankrupt companies like GM and US Steel through suicidal and unsupportable labor agreements and Big Money wants unfettered, unregulated short-term, bonus-driven, over-leveraged capital that doesn’t support American industry or innovation.
The Dems want to protect teacher’s unions that aren’t driven by results and don’t appear to care that American students lag the rest of the industrialized world by a large margin, thus destroying America’s ability to provide the necessary well-educated, well-prepared workforce that can compete on a global footing.
The GOP wants to feed an ever-larger Military/Industrial Complex and National Security State that doesn’t provide meaningful long-term work, or meaningful long-term security. Nor are they interested in crafting a US Industrial Policy that brings back those jobs that America does better than anyone else in the world: Skilled manufacturing.
Neither party is willing to take on entrenched interests like the AARP, or the SEIU, or the defense lobby. We are facing huge structural imbalances that will take years to correct, but all we do is blame the “other guy”. Short-sighted and short-term and ultimately destructive.
