A country that is morally and financially bankrupt is not "strong."

I've been posting stuff on my local newspaper's forum-- the Houston Chronicle. Among the people who frequent the site are quite a few quasi-freepers. They have drunk a lot of RW kool-aid, but they nonetheless seem to be persuadable about certain things. Sometimes they are genuinely in the dark on certain facts-- like what is allowed under FISA surveillance laws.

I encourage people to get out there on more local internet forums and trying to talk sense to nonsense and truth to fiction. Maybe it can do some good.

Here's something I just posted in the Houston chronical "politics" forum, responding to a person who questions how strong America would look if it just folded up its tents and went home from Iraq:

A country that is morally and financially bankrupt is not strong.

The trillion dollars that is being spent on this war of choice against Iraq could be spent instead on education, research and development, energy infrastructure, etc.-- things that will make America economically strong and will give us decent jobs now and in the future. Right now we are, among other foolish things, decimating our college loan programs in part to pay for the war (and for immense tax cuts favoring America's richest).

Other countries, like China, are not bogged down like we are with expensive and ultimately futile wars. China is rapidly moving from assembling Barbie dolls to making complicated electronics. They are building infrastructure and educating their children like never before. They have their "eyes on the prize" and we do not.

Terror should be fought as a criminal matter-- hunting people like Bin Laden down and maybe even killing them like dogs. And we should proactively hunt down terror cells and put them out of business before they can hurt us.

But when America start wars of aggression against countries that never attacked us-- we are only hurting ourselves. And we are only letting China laugh all the way to the bank.

of its skilled jobs like engineering.

Nor is one that underpays its people and encourages them to assume crushing debt just to make ends meet.

Nor is one that pretends democracy while violating the trust of the people in the election process, itself.

Nor is one that pretends a free press while allowing just 6 corporations to control that press and suppress any stories they find unfavorable to their own interests.

It goes on and on. I'm afraid we need a revolution to undo all the damage the radical Repuglicans have done to this country. Let's hope we can make it a peaceful one.

mind if I plagiarize?

I don't mind one bit.

I point out how we're letting China take the lead every time I get the chance. Not that I have anything against China, per se...they have an old and distinquished history of civilization (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof) and it's probably about time they gained some whole world credentials.

But America, a very youthful culture in comparison, has a lot of competition from China, and the policies of our government and corporate culture are stealing away any chance we have of keeping any kind of level playing field.

My advice to kids in school? Learn Mandarin. ;)

I'm learning it! It's the wave of the future.

It's on my list of things to do, eventually.

that said parents believed the math and science instruction their children received is "adequate" with primary reason being that they wouldn't need "math and science" all that much to get jobs. So, your points about China educating its children have a lot of resonance with me.

Wake up, America. We're getting soaked.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060119_322122.htm

JANUARY 19, 2006
Learning from China's Export Boom
By Oded Shenkar

China has replaced the U.S. as the world's top tech exporter. While no cause for panic, it's a wake-up call for the complacent

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), China has overtaken the U.S. to become the world's largest exporter of information- and communications-technology goods. Crossing the largely symbolic threshold should put to rest outdated notions of China as a manufacturer and exporter of cheap T-shirts, though the country won't give up its thriving garment exports as it steps up production of laptop computers and memory chips. Advertisement

Indeed, China's ability to hold on to the labor-intensive segments of the global marketplace as it climbs the technology ladder is one of the unique features of the country's ascent -- and a remarkable source of resilience for its economy. It's also a factor in the country's $100 billion-plus trade surplus with the rest of the world and double that figure with the U.S.

<snip>

{China is} gearing up to become a producer of indigenous technology and a global knowledge player on the scale of Sony (SNE) and Samsung. If this sounds far-fetched, think of Sony in the 1960s and Samsung in the 1970s, except that this wave is coming much faster.

BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE. To achieve its goal, China is undertaking a number of strategic measures. It's transforming its educational system, upgrading the capabilities of the 200,000-plus engineering students it graduates every year, and enlisting the help of foreign enterprises in developing a solid link between academia and production. At the same time, it's enticing Chinese students (many of whom are graduate students specializing in science and engineering) and scientists to return home with a plethora of programs and incentives (see BW Online, 1/6/06, "A Chinese Welcome for Entrepreneurs").

To make sure foreign investment translates into indigenous capabilities, the Chinese government continues to give preference to companies that are willing to transfer technology. The deeper the transfer, the higher the incentives. In a typical arrangement, the value-added tax (VAT) on integrated circuits was brought down to 11% from 17% for those willing to manufacture on Chinese soil, and 3% to 6% for those doing both the design and the manufacturing locally. And while this particular deal was shot down at the World Trade Organization, others are alive and well, often orchestrated by local authorities under the radar.


<snip-- lots of other good info and factoids in the article>

Shenkar is Ford Professor at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business and author of The Chinese Century (Wharton, 2004)


Copyright © 2006 . All rights reserved.

I was just picking out, for comparison, one of the factors cited in this Business Week article-- the fact that China is "upgrading the capabilities of the 200,000-plus engineering students it graduates every year."

If I am reading US statistics properly, we are not graduating nearly this many engineers. It looks like less than 100,000.



And their career outlook is not all that rosy once we do graduate our engineers. This is an excerpt from our official US Bureau of Labor Statistics web page on Engineers. We're putting them on the world market to compete with Chinese and Indian engineers!

But, no worries! We will still need some on-site engineers! Yay! Go USA!

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm

Job outlook for engineers:

<snip>

"There are many well-trained, often English-speaking engineers available around the world willing to work at much lower salaries than are U.S. engineers. The rise of the Internet has made it relatively easy for much of the engineering work previously done by engineers in this country to be done by engineers in other countries, a factor that will tend to hold down employment growth. Even so, the need for onsite engineers to interact with other employees and with clients will remain."