It’s time for a massive, urgent American response to the global challenge. As Cisco chief John Chambers says flatly, "We are not competitive." Where to start? Venture capitalist John Doerr, one of America’s most passionate competitiveness campaigners, calls education "the largest and most screwed-up part of the American economy." He’d start there. GE chief Jeff Immelt has attacked America’s newly restrictive student visa rules. Others focus first on R&D spending or the broadband infrastructure. But the greatest challenge will be changing a culture that neither values education nor sacrifices the present for the future as much as it used to—or as much as our competitors do. And you’d better believe that American business has a role to play—after years of dot-com-bust- and scandal-driven reticence, more corporate leaders need to summon the courage to lead.
While optimism has always been the best guide to predicting the U.S. economy, today’s situation is unprecedented. Global product markets have been with us forever and continue to expand. Global capital markets are still developing—watch out, Unocal and Maytag. But global labor markets on a broad scale are a new phenomenon that could, for better or worse, transform the country. How we respond—in our businesses, our government, and our culture—will shape America in the deepest way.
Yes.
China uses slave labor and is an environmental disaster.
And they still have a billion people to feed; what is the per capita income in China?
Full Disclosure: Can you say "corruption" and "no intellectual property rights"?
Second Disclosure: Now can you say "Cisco, Microsoft, and others contribute to keeping the Chinese gulag in place by helping them censor the internet"?
Third Disclosure: Now can you say "dumping" and "artificially low currency value"?
Sure it can. Yesterday, Unocal accepted US-based Chevron's bid over the Chinese bid. Also on the same day, US-based Whirlpool entered a bid for Maytag, which made China's Haier fold its bid.
America is not just competing, but its winning.
Unfortunately for Fortune, they posted this article one day too late.
I heard the same crap in the 80's..
The brutal fact is that the interest of the big business and US of workers are very different now. The CEOs and large shareholders want to lower the wages below the minimum US level so they move jobs to poorer countries.
They expect the US taxpayers, families and communities to absorb the social costs of dislocation. Also they expect their country to protect their interests abroad as they are increasingly exposed to the dangers of overt or disgused nationalisation or technology "theft".
They also expect the government to remove the remaining protectionist barriers and secure the "free trade". They want borders to be open.
US workers would have different policies in place if they had more to say.
In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000, America’s only about 70,000.
Freemarketeers will put blame on lazy and stupid American students. But why don't they provide some free market explanations for this worrying phenomenon? Or maybe this is all for good in their universe? (See my tagline).
So the free market and private enterprise CANNOT fund the research? They need taxpayers to do it for them?
I see, being "business experts" in pricing tires is higher level than being a "coder". I guess being an HMO clerk is higher level than being a "driller" (dentist).
No suprise that young Americans do not want to study engineering.
"Education" is a bit overrated - what we need is "genius", and the early encouragement of children who show any. In today's politically correct, "Don't you dare excel because you make the other children feel bad about themselves!" public school environment, we are setting ourselves up to lose to countries like China and India who aren't affected by this national neurosis.
But U.S. policy is moving in the opposite direction. The number of available H1-B visas, which allow highly qualified foreign workers to remain in the U.S. for up to six years, has been cut from 195,000 to just 65,000 a year, based on security concerns following 9/11.
The big problem with the H1-B visa was that in too many cases companies weren't using them to hire ultra-rare, PhD-level talent that they couldn't find in America, they were using them to hire run-of-the-mill foreign programmers who were willing to work cheap. Forbes Magazine and others have been caterwauling about increasing the limit again - I say fine, increase it to a million, but make sure the people being hired under its terms are actually the best and brightest and that companies aren't violating the spirit of H1-B program by using the visas to trim payroll costs.
High productivity
Low power, water, land, taxes and other costs
Unbureaucratic compared to most (banking-environmental-legal, governmental……)
Leading in a broad range of technology and currently still with high investment
Skilled labor
Solid infrastructure
Low crime
Stable (look at Russia)
Wages are reasonable combined with a highly flexible labor force
Good work ethic compared too many
Permissive legal framework (Nuclear power etc)
Yes, the US can compete. Better yet I’d say that a lot of our trade issues are because of past blatant or subversive trade restrictions, a high valued dollar for decades, and other reasons. Internationally I think the US is not only good off today, but even has a bright future.
Fortune is a leftist publication and nothing there can be trusted.
The man writing the article just plain doesn't understand our businesses.
If you desire to read a financial magizine read Forbes.
Forbes=truth
The thing is trade has to balance. If we pay some guy in India 50k to program something for us, he then ultimately has to spend that 50k in America.
He can either buy American goods or services, or invest the money and when he gets return on that investmnet he is faced with the same issue. Or the other option is to sell his dollars to some other person which is then in the same position. This is why trade never hurts.
What I think the question really is, is can America continue to be the dominant nation in the world for innovation. And that surely is a tough question as other nations are reforming their systems to be free market oriented, and educating their people.