Asian tigers' dynamism threatens American eagle(Interesting,but not news)

Grand Forks ^ | Fri, Apr. 23, 2004 | Thomas Friedman

[TigerTrails]

NEW YORK - I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-à-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation.

Several executives explained to me that they were opening new plants in Asia - not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component now in an automated high-tech manufacturing plant. It is because governments in these countries are so eager for employment and the transfer of technology to their young populations that they are offering huge tax holidays for U.S. manufacturers who will set up shop. Because most of these countries also offer some form of national health insurance, U.S. companies shed that huge open liability as well.

Other executives complained bitterly that the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and other Western European nations, and even China. This is leading to a twofold disaster.

First, one of America's greatest assets - its ability to skim the cream off the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world and bring them to our shores to innovate - will be diminished, and that in turn will shrink our talent pool. And second, we could lose a whole generation of foreigners who normally would come here to study, and then would take American ideas and American relationships back home. In a decade we will feel that loss in America's standing around the world.

Still others pointed out that the percentage of Americans graduating with bachelor's degrees in science and engineering is less than half the comparable percentage in China and Japan, and that U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering. Anyone who thinks that all the Indian and Chinese techies are doing is answering call-center phones or solving tech problems for Dell customers is sadly mistaken. U.S. firms are moving serious research and development to India and China.

The bottom line: We actually are in the middle of two struggles right now. One is against the Islamist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, and the other is a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle against India, China, Japan and their neighbors. And while we are all fixated on the former (I've been no exception), we are completely ignoring the latter. We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget. We can't wage war on income taxes and terrorism and a war for innovation at the same time.

Craig Barrett, the CEO of Intel, noted that Intel sponsors an international science competition every year. This year it attracted some 50,000 American high school kids. "I was in China 10 days ago," Barrett said, "and I asked them how many kids in China participated in the local science fairs that feed into the national fair (and ultimately the Intel finals). They told me six million kids."

For now, the United States still excels at teaching science and engineering at the graduate level, and also in university research. But as the Chinese get more feeder stock coming up through their high schools and colleges, "they will get to the same level as us after a decade," Barrett said. "We are not graduating the volume, we do not have a lock on the infrastructure, we do not have a lock on the new ideas, and we are either flat-lining, or in real dollars cutting back, our investments in physical science."

And what is the Bush strategy? Let's go to Mars. Hello? Right now we should have a Manhattan Project to develop a hydrogen-based energy economy - it's within reach and would serve our economy, our environment and our foreign policy by diminishing our dependence on foreign oil. Instead, the Bush team says let's go to Mars. Where is Congress? Out to lunch - or, worse, obsessed with trying to keep Susie Smith's job at the local pillow factory that is moving to the Caribbean - without thinking about a national competitiveness strategy. And where is Wall Street? So many of the plutocrats there know that the Bush fiscal policy is a long-term disaster. They know it - but they won't say a word because they are too greedy or too gutless.

The only crisis the United States thinks it's in today is the war on terrorism, Barrett said. "It's not."

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[CasearianDaoist]

Barret wants it both ways. He moves jobs overseas and then bemoans the fact that people are not going into the field.

[Last Dakotan]

Keep your heads in the sand here. Move along, nothing to see here. /sarc Nothing but the underminding of our way of life.

[Fee]

GWB is not deaf and dumb. He deliberately gave tax breaks only to the taxpayers and small businesses in the last tax law proposal. Very little was given to corporation, in order to reduce Democrat opposition. If Silicon Valley wants tax breaks to stimulate high tech business, they need to talk to their Democrat politicians whom many give money to. They are the ones who are destroying the political cover needed to give high tech corporations tax breaks to innovate and expand.

[chilepepper]

...lets go to Mars, hello...

friedmann doesn't get it -- going to Mars could be just the thing we need to break out of our lethargy and the loser syndrome we've been in the last 30 years or so, thanks in large part to the feminists, jimmuh, jesse jackson, and others who have tried to keep our spirits from soaring into the cosmos as is our destiny (excuse me while i wax poetic like)

[kingu]

Ahh, yes, the Asian Tigers. Countries ready to leap forward, ahead of America, in the high technology world. Let's just simply ignore that all those countries are just inches away from shutting everything down at any point in time.

Revolution is a cost of business that I find shocking that high tech companies don't take into account. The wrong leader dies, and boom, every high tech plant is now owned by the military and the company is trying to figure out how to write off future compensation for the families of the victims.

The real meat of the story, of course, is the loss of the trades.. Teachers, scientists, engineers, etc. Why spend 8 years to learn to make them when you can spend 8 months learning how to switch out mother boards at ITT Tech?

But I wonder.. Where did most the scientists who operate JPL and the manned space program come from? What inspired them to enter into the engineer fields? Oh, that's right, space exploration. Obvious for that particular example, but the same can be said for many who entered the science fields. We've been to the moon; that was the first wave. The second wave came from Voyager showing us Jupiter. We need a strong third wave; it's time to get off our collective rumps and get to Mars.

We need something we can be proud about, as Americans, since the leftists deny most the pride of back to back military victories. And to do that, we need to accomplish something that no one else can or will do. Mars or Bust!

And somewhere along the way, as we develop new energy technologies to power an outpost that is six light-minutes away, perhaps we can solve that pesky hydrogen technology problem and change our economy.