Tom Friedman, Wrong Again About Invention

Mon Jun 29, 2009 at 03:01:04 PM PDT

Here's Tom Friedman's latest. It's barely coherent, so forgive me if I can't select quotes that make a lot of sense in the order in which they appear:

Now what does that have to do with pulling us out of the Great Recession? A lot. Historically, recessions have been a time when new companies, like Microsoft, get born, and good companies separate themselves from their competition. It makes sense. When times are tight, people look for new, less expensive ways to do old things. Necessity breeds invention.

...

We should be taking advantage. Now is when we should be stapling a green card to the diploma of any foreign student who earns an advanced degree at any U.S. university, and we should be ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here. They would invent many more jobs than they would supplant. The world’s best brains are on sale. Let’s buy more!

...

We need to do all we can now to get more brains connected to more capital to spawn more new companies faster. As Jeff Immelt, the chief of General Electric, put it in a speech on Friday, this moment is "an opportunity to turn financial adversity into national advantage, to launch innovations of lasting value to our country."

Friedman's thesis is that what America needs is more innovation.

He's not wrong.

But the Globalization order that he has been pushing for the last decade and a half is not about innovation. It's about sending capital to pursue efficiency, not new inventions.

This is why technology jobs are going to India and China ...

And why U.S. employers are trying to attract cheaper Chinese and Indian workers to replace Americans here.

It's not about innovation.

It's not about invention.

Globalization is about efficiency.

It's about a change in business processes, but ultimately about stagnation when it comes to the development of new technologies and new ways of doing things.

It's about cheaper, Mr. Friedman.

It ain't about better.

In order to move the American economy toward innovation, government needs to put limits on the ability of capital to move overseas in pursuit of efficiency. You see, business investment is using the difference in price between domestic and foreign labor to replace innovation.

Globalization isn't going to get us better, greener, safer cars.

It's just going to get us cheaper ones.

From China.

As far as Friedman's suggestion that we simply drop immigration barriers that protect the domestic workforce:

That is just more of his regular, sadistic, anti-worker foolishness.

Good grief ...

Is this man really writing for what claims to be the best newspaper in the country?

Tom Friedman, Free Trader, wrong again ... about everything.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/29/748158/-Tom-Friedman,-Wrong-Again-About-Invention

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It followed his usual formula from the first globetrotting "I was at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, a few weeks ago..." to the last snappy "Otherwise, we’re just Russia with a printing press" closing aphorism. His interview with the former chairman of Intel, whose prescription for what this country needs to do was equally glib, was a bonus hoot. It read almost like an Onion piece.

Just a thought. The house bill (energy, whatever) as I understand
has some possible tariffs for countries like China. Until now this
has been unheard of.

Guess what one important story leading NYT. something like Obama
does not like parts (implying unacceptable) of Trade issues in the
bill.

Anything that can in any way be intrepeted that we are turning
inward and against Free Trade, sets Wall Street into a spin.

Obama appears to have to come out and assure the Free Traders he is
on their side. Krugman goes on Free Trade Sop.

Immelt admitted last week, parts of Globalization have not worked.
He said without calling it globalization, that the plan which would
make the US a Service Economy has not worked and cannot sustain
this country.

He went far enough to say that he will add new jobs here as he
sends more jobs out of the country.

Krugman goes on Free Trade tear every now and then. I find the
occurances interesting.

from a man talking out of his ass. Who has never had to actually MAKE anything or actually DO anything productive.

Tom lives in a fantasy world, where, "by golly if we just roll up our sleeves and let the free market work we will be living the good life".