[Re: [Stimulering i.p.v. bezuiniging]]

[Martin Lentink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Mark Giebels wrote:
> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> Bert,
>
> De aanwezigheid van hoog opgeleide mensen is volgens mij belangrijker
> voor een kenniseconomie dan de loonkosten. En die twee zijn in een
> globaliserende economie als het goed is tegenstrijdig. Ook zijn
> buitenlanders eerder geneigd zich in Nederland voor een tijdje te
> vestigen als de lonen hoog zijn. Je levert immers niet graag de helft
> van je salaris in als je een tijdje in NEderland wil gaan werken.
>
<knip>
> Amerika doet het wat dat betreft veel beter dan NEderland, of
> eigenlijk
> Europa. De universiteiten zitten vol met Aziatische studenten en
> professoren. Het percentage ethnische aziaten onder de Amerikanen is
> sterk groeiende. En de mogelijkheden voor tijdelijke immigratie zijn
> veel groter.
>
Kijk in dit kader ook eens naar de column van Tom Friedman in de NYT van
gisteren:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/22FRIE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman

Hele tekst:
----------------------------------------------
Losing Our Edge?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


 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 would normally 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 of 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 are actually 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 C.E.O. 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," Mr. 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 U.S. 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," Mr. 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 U.S. thinks it's in today is the war on terrorism, Mr.
Barrett said. "It's not."

-----------------------------------------


<knip>


Martin lentink

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