"And given that outsourcing is shifting technology and R&D to India and China is it not more likely that this supposed "new technology" will appear there than here ?"
What has been invented in the last 20 years in either China or India? What do you think that they will ever invent first before the U.S.?
You see, if you are right that real R&D is moving away from the U.S. over to China and India, then China and India should be coming out with revolutionary new products at a feverish clip.
On the other hand, if I am right that only mundane grunt jobs (often mislabeled as "high tech" by people who just don't know any better) are moving to India and China, then all new inventions will continue to come from the U.S. and Japan.
So there's your test. Show me where China and India are doing something more advanced than the U.S., and I'll concede that you are right and that I'm dead wrong. Pretty easy, eh?!
Of course, the reality is that for the next 30 to 60 years this thread will remain void of any such "evidence" from you. Not that you will admit that you are wrong and that you can't find some new Chinese or Indian super-invention...no, it will just be that no such new technology ever gets posted here.
You see, you'll fail the above test, but you'll do so quietly in the end...with a whimper...neither managing to show the "might" of Chinese and Indian R&D nor being honest enough to admit that you've never once had a clue about what you are talking about.
But hey, it is a simple test. Show me the new Chinese and Indian super-tech. Prove me wrong.
I dare you.
I challenge you.
And yes, I'm calling you to the carpet.
"And given that outsourcing is shifting technology and R&D to India and China is it not more likely that this supposed "new technology" will appear there than here ?"
What has been invented in the last 20 years in either China or India? What do you think that they will ever invent first before the U.S.?
Who made the DVD player you are using now ? Where did the computer you are using now come from ? China needed a few years to catch up technologically to the United States, but to insist as you do that the people who gave the world paper, the printing press, gunpowder, rocketry, spectacles, etc are somehow so dumb that they will never surpass American technology, especially when we are giving it to them at such a rate that American college students are leaving engineering and IT programs because they see no career stability in them, is complacent racist idiocy. Russia has yet to produce manufactured goods competitive in world markets. China has succeeded in doing so in barely a generation.
It could easily have gone the other way at several points in history. Around 1100 China stood on the brink of an industrial revolution before the mandarin elite, threatened by the merchant class, smashed it. Around 1450 as Portuguese ships were making their way into the Indian Ocean from the west, Chinese naval expeditions were doing so from the east. The junk was every bit as seaworthy as Columbus's caravels. The mandarin elite decided that these voyages of discovery were a waste of money and discontinued them. Two bad calls and they have paid for them since the Opium War. Well, they won't make the same mistake a third time.
You see, if you are right that real R&D is moving away from the U.S. over to China and India, then China and India should be coming out with revolutionary new products at a feverish clip.
Obviously they are patiently laying the groundwork for doing precisely that over the next ten years. Already we have lost our technological edge. Intel just recently pulled out of China. They realized that the Chinese intend to pick Intel's brains about chip design, then produce tons of cheaper chips. Enough to corner the market in chip technology and put Intel out of business down the road. Even now, we purchase from them advanced industrial goods and export to them soybeans and wheat. Hardly cutting edge technological innovation on our part, is it ?
The core of your idiocy is your determination that "free trade at all costs" will work out well for America because it just darn hasta. Says who ? What earthly reason is there to believe that you can transfer all you R&D to another country (and a very smart and ambitious one that comprises one fifth of humanity at that) and still remain a technological superpower ten or 20 years from now unless you have a stupidly complacent faith in your innate superiority ? In one generation China has pulled technologically abreast of the United States. One generation. As things stand now, the great advances in nanotechnology will be in China.