Quote:
Originally Posted by a_Username
Are you implying we should become more like China?
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No, perhaps the opposite, they are becoming more like us and maybe "doing it" better?
The purpose of showing the statistics is to illustrate they don't have to be "better", they can beat us by the shear numbers.
I share many of the views and concerns expressed in the OP and subsequent post. IMO, our country is in decline or at best, not improving at the rate it should/could.
The reference to the flat world is drawing from Thomas Freidman's book by that name. He was one of the first to write about this decline and put forth the how's and why's of the global economy we are now in.
Freidman identified what he called 10 "flattners" one of which was "Outsourcing" and he wrote a lot about China , (some of his writing on China):
China’s real long-term strategy is to outrace American and the E.U. countries to the top, and the Chinese are off to a good start. China’s leaders are much more focused than many of their Western counterparts on how to train their young people in the math, science, and computer skills required for success in the flat worlds, how to build a physical and telecom infrastructure that will allow Chinese people to plug and play faster and easier than others, and how to create incentives that will attract global investors. What China’s leaders really want is the next generation of underwear or airplane wings to
be designed in China as well. That is where things are heading in another decade. So in thirty years we will have gone from “sold in China” to “made in China” to “designed in China” to “dreamed up in China” – or from China as collaborator with the worldwide manufactured on nothing to China as a low cost, high quality, hyper efficient collaborator with worldwide manufacturers on everything. This should allow China to maintain its role as a major flattening force, provided that political instability does not disrupt the
process.
The OP mentioned the one area that we may still lead in, Medical Equipment Technology. My last manufacturing job was with the world's largest medical equipment manufacture. One of my last projects was moving several product line's manufacturing operation to Juarez and Brazil. We could have automated much of the manufacturing operation and kept some of the jobs in the states but, we couldn't cost justify the capital money. When you compare the cost of the capital to automate to the cost of labor (~$2.00 hr) in these locations, it was cheaper to move it there and leave it manual.
"NASA nominally there" ya, very sad, it will be below nominal in a year when the shuttle program ends later this year.
Education of our young people is critical for our future and unfortunately the picture doesn't look to good there either. I now work in higher education and one of the items that hit the news in the last week or two was about incoming freshman's readiness for college. In summary ~40% of these students entering a 4 year university need remedial education in English and Math. The numbers get even worse, ~70%, for community colleges. Clearly our public education system is failing. The question is where is the leadership to fix it?
OK, long post and perhaps like the original OP, I should apologize for my rant.