source: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/government-non-profit/government-services/GOV_GSR/254664-11932467?trk=obamaq2
Q: What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead? In a recent speech, I proposed a new competiveness agenda centered around education and energy, innovation and infrastructure, fair trade and reform. You can watch it, and read the full-text, here: http://my.barackobama.com/competitiveness What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?
Most of the Answers sounded something like:
Very much in keeping with the points in your recent speech, I say: Education, Industrial Strategy, and Infrastructure. 1) Education: Despite having the finest higher-education system in the world, our educational system as a whole shows signs of trouble. Between the inequity of opportunity resulting from economic standing and the fact that our students rank middle of the road in math, science and reading on international evaluations— these are clear signs that, as a country, we are struggling with issues of both *access* and *quality* in our public school systems. As to the higher-ed system, as state budgets have been slashed (likely increasingly so as states now face epic fiscal crises), funding to public universities has dropped at alarming rates over the past decade. And large increases in tuition are coupled with decreases in aid money. Given the role of education as the foundation of a nation's competitive advantage, we need to disproportionately invest. China for example is increasing funding for education from 2.8% of GDP in 2006 to an estimated 4% in 2010 (even as their GDP grows quickly). Competition atop the value chain will be fiercer than ever before. 2) Industrial Strategy: Increasingly, most high-tech devices, including ones that were invented here (night-vision, storage playback, etc) are not made, researched, or designed in America anymore. As more and more production naturally moved overseas to find the lowest cost manufacturer, the iterative cycle of development soon followed and much of the R&D began to follow overseas as well. In order to continue to thrive as a nation, these well-paying, and high-value engineering jobs must have a natural home in America. To do this, as a nation we must be thinking about which strategic industries and areas that we wish to have their epicenter here, and invest accordingly. China, South Korea, etc have over the last 20+ years done this with excellence. We must think long-term, and think about the “linkages” between R&D and manufacturing. Alternative energy is obviously what most nations are gravitating towards as they think of this question today. 3) Infrastructure: America’s national infrastructure receives poor grades from our own governmental evaluations. The results of this degradation in quality rears its head when a bridge collapses, or we have a weather-related event. Our superior infrastructure relative to the rest of the world was a key enabler of our growth over the past century, yet in areas from our highways, bridges, subways. levies, to even such things as broadband Internet capacity and speed, America is falling behind as other nations build or re-build their systems. Aside from being a public necessity, spending in infrastructure renewal will be an immediate stimulus to the economy. As important, much of these dollars will go in the form of wages to the working middle-class, a group that has seen their real income decrease steadily in recent years, and has been one of the hardest hit economic groups. This group is also the most likely to immediately put the money to work in the American economy providing a true stimulus. All of these are true investments in America’s future, and though they require sacrifice and spending, they will increase confidence in our nation’s economy (and the dollar) and provide the nation’s citizens the bright future they deserve.
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How would you answer the question: What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?
What the hell's Linkedin?
But typical answers, college students (who I assume is the target audience of this Web 2.0 gizmo) want more spending on higher education, jobs when they get out of school and infrastructure because it apparently ties these two together even though it is an enabler of Global Warming.
It all makes me think back to the wonderful days of the late 80's and early 90's when there was no good outlook on the horizon for college graduates and the future looked just as bleak. The slacker generation or as the marketdroids preferred to call us,GenX. Or those of us coming out of the SF Bay Area, the lost generation...victims of the California public education system.
What do they call you folks, Generation Whine or something like that? GenY maybe? Hard to keep up with the marketing machine.
They do make some good points though, we have outsourced our production and research abilities in a lot of cases and expect to be able to keep out position as 'marketing middleman' due to our superior knowledge of the US marketplace. Well, that's all falling apart because these people are starting to realize that not only don't they need us to market their products in the States but they can establish other markets for these goods that don't revolve around the Mighty U. S of A.
There was a Daily Article a while back talking about this but I have to go work to pay my debt to Uncle Sam and am a slacker after all so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find it.
LinkedIn is like a MySpace or Facebook for professionals.
I once was of those college educated "liberal" who was a victim of the California public educaiton system.:) Now I am a victim* of the Mises Institute. Most responses had to do with reforming the government with the soup du jour ideas, rather than reducing/abolishing it.
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