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USA to Pass Science Crown to China
instantgames writes "According to a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research, rapid development of a science and technology base by populous Asian countries soon may threaten the economic position of the United States. Not only is the U.S. losing ground in high technology exports, but its very capacity to develop new technologies is declining rapidly with respect to the rest of the world. According to Richard Freeman, the paper's author, the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology." From the article: "The phenomenal growth of China's industrial base has been widely publicized, but Freeman focuses on what is perhaps the more important long-term indicator of a nation's prosperity - its re-investment in science and technology education.
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Total chicken and egg deal. If the best and brightest folks are indocterated to distain the public system, they will not participate; in turn, public school teachers become realtively dumber and dumber to private school teachers.
The fact is, however, that is that many children don't have the chance to attend private school for financial reasons, so you are really doing your fellow citizens a disservice by spreading contempt for pubic institutions. Many children WILL be educated in a public institution, and the problem isn't that its 'the government'. Attitudes that dismiss public systems destabilize its ability to aquire talented and hardworking employees. Most, if not all, of the people I know went to public school, and are doing quite well for themselves. My brother went to public school (in Canada, no less, gasp,) and is currently on a full scholarship doing his postgrad at MIT.
Unless you believe that those born into relatively poor families are not capable of great things, I don't understand the desire to undermine their access to quality teachers. A lowered expectation of public schooling is causing your country to throw out bucketloads of talent even before you can aqequately educate and evaluate it. Its sad to see people happily support the braindrain from public to private, with no regard for the quality of public institutions. Its too bad, because those who do go to public school are equally capable, and it appears you are all too happy to throw the baby(s) out with the bathwater.
I would be hopping mad if I were a US citizen; all industrialized countries create science, technology and wealth created from the spoils of public school systems. I don't understand the equation of public systems with inplicit lack of quality.
"Old man yells at systemd"
It's not that they feel Bush is going to send it to terrorists but they feel Bush is not going to deal with the issues of public safety in a reasonable fashion.
Do you really think bush is going to develop a plan to safely build and manage power plants AND safely store the waste? It can be done, but many people feels Bush is incapable of running a 7-11 let alone deal with public safety issues on this magnitude. Look at how we have managed the Iraq war and think how well he would deal with other issues of similar complexity.
I don't think Bush is all that evil he mostly incompetent with just a dash of evil. Don't forget Hitler was beloved by his country and times man of the year well before people thought of him as a raving lunatic.
And your point is? Even if you don't belive in Creation that still puts it on equal footing with Evolution as you would have to say they are both theories. I think they should both be taught.
Right, except that Japan had a culture and socio-political structure almost perfectly designed to take advantage of advances in technology, while China has... what? A large population, (virtually) state-run businesses and rampant corruption on a local level.
Not to mention the huge cultural and political resistance to change.
Anyway, so what? So what if their GDP goes higher than ours? How does this injure us? As another poster remarked, it's not a zero-sum game.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
And if trends continue in Iraq the way that they have been and it descends into civil war this will become completely irrelevant.
All we have left to do now is to help them put together enough police to let them take care of the suicide bomber problem that is killing Iraqs 10 to 1 over American troops.
If it was that easy it would have been done already.
I know that placation of Islamic Fascists is the preferred method of dealing with them by the left - but there's something to be said for makiung a stand.
Is your vision balck and white as well or do you just think that way?
If you're referring to Saddam as the "Islamic Fascist" then it's kinda dumb to play Savior of the World and try to remove him with little outside help when it drains military resources we could use against the actual terrorists that threaten us.
If you're referring to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda then I'm all for making a stand. But Iraq is just a colossal fuck-up that hurts the fight.
It's worthless pieces of shit such as yourself that frame any alternatives to your simplistic solutions as "placating" or "unpatriotic" that got us into this mess in the first place.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Bullshit!
Do you lefties ever stop and take stock of how many "hard" scientists and engineers are among your rank? You know, the people that design and build shit instead of just talking about it? It's no wonder why we are losing this race. Too many of you are working to discover "cures" and not thinking about more practical things.
Second, you all have likely seen the commercial from Some Big Drug Company(TM), where some suit gets up there and says making grannies cheap drugs is more important than rocket science? That's what we are up against.
Europe has several problems against it. One, the Euro has appreciated enormously against the Dollar, making US goods and services far cheaper. Two, the US does not have the VAT, making for less bureaucracy when moving goods between states (analogous to European countries). Which brings up another benefit, all of our states are under one strong central government with English as the de-facto offical language. That makes business far easier, efficient, and profitable to conduct. That also makes our central government far more responsive and flexible than the EU. And finally, we don't have the level of taxes that take money out of consumers' hands and choke European economies.