MA Governor Wants More New Tech

turnitover writes "Cryptically stating that Asia wants the U.S. to become 'the France of the 21st century,' Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a public call for more innovation in technology, reports eWEEK.com. He urged more investment and development and, yes, a move to OpenDocument, as reported previously on Slashdot." From the article: "Underlining the challenge, Romney said leaders of one technology firm in Massachusetts anticipated that 90 percent of its skilled labor would be in Asia in 10 years. He also pointed to statistics that show the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia."

Comments

Too little, too late?

[blastard]

Romney needed to act on this 3-4 years ago.
I've been part of the tech downturn at the time. Many of my ex-co-workers left the state because there were too few opportunities.

The state spent lots of money paying unemployment insurance, and the unemployed were effectively prevented from starting up their own companies because they would lose benefits the day they registered their company.

All these well qualified individuals could not use their skills during that time. Instead, they left for less costly pastures.

Massachusetts was the only state to lose population in 2004. And it wasn't losing those on the dole.

How many are foreign?

[CyricZ]

I have a relative in a chemical engineering program at a university in Georgia. He was saying that many of the other students studying for their masters and doctorates were not American. I think he quoted about 60% of them as being Asian, Middle Eastern or Indian. That is, people who came directly from such areas to study in America, not Americans of such descent.

Re:Educational Costs a major issue here

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I have several Doctor Friends that were trained in Israel (as an example) and then quickly left Israel (after paying next to nothing for their MD) to come to the US to collect the big almight BUCK..


This has actually been one of the traditional reasons for the vibrancy of the US economy. As a lot of academic US workers are trained abroad, the US has not had to go to the expense of educating them. Other countries have.

This is the "Brain Drain" effect, where, it is argued, the US economy is buoyed by the educational expendature of less wealthy countries. There's a certain element of truth to this.

I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?

Getting a PhD doesn't pay anymore

[geneing]

Just yesterday I read in my university newspaper that NSF did a study and found that getting a PhD in science and engineering doesn't really pay anymore. On average you do earn more if you have a doctorate degree, but you never recoop the earnings you lost while earning your degree. I think the conclusion that economists would make is that there is an oversupply of PhD's.

Many would say that you don't get a doctorate degree for the money alone. It was not the main motivation for me either.

Re:Educational Costs a major issue here

[loose_cannon_gamer]

I think you are dead on. I would add a few things.

1. It seems to be pretty much ignored thus far, but the U.S. definitely has state sponsored higher education. I claim this, because pick a state, put "University of" in front of the name, and wham, you have the name of a real university, which probably receives a lot of funding, grants tuition discounts to in-state residents, etc., etc.

2. The tax issue -- let's get this straight. If you have a Ph.D. in the maths and/or sciences area, let's just pull a number out of nowhere. You have a 'right' to command a wage near $75K, say (more or less, depending on the field, but yeah). Now, let's suppose you're Jimmy, the 'average' American citizen. Wait! You only make $45K. Why will you be excited to pay for some kid to go to college so he can make more with your money? That's going to be an exciting bill to pass... Why would you vote for someone who takes that kind of money from you?

3. The prestige factor -- let's suppose we jack up taxes so that anyone who wants to go to a PhD program can afford to. Well, that's a nice sentiment. Then what? The first response is probably that anyone without a PhD gets the shaft, both in finding jobs and in compensation, because now PhDs are a dime a dozen. Since they are a resource in greater supply, demand goes down, as does compensation. Suddenly, the average citizen has extra letters to put to their name, but their standard of living probably doesn't significantly change as a whole.

The wonder and curse of the free market system is that people will pay what a degree is worth for people who have it (compare all those jokes about engineers and liberal arts majors involving asking for wanting fries with that). If there was a huge shortage of qualified PhD holders, having a PhD would be like a ticket to big money, and there would be huge incentive to get them. I don't see that as being the case -- in our society, if you have one, you make more, but not a ton more (in fact, I remember being counseled when graduating with a BS in CS that pursuing an MS or a PhD full time was not cost effective, as you never made up the time * salary in terms of the difference in remuneration went).

If this was really an issue, it would correct itself. What we *should* be concerned about is if big tech companies bring foreign PhDs into the states to do their research, and I don't see that happening much, other than those that are in fact better and brighter than the American counterparts. Free market wins again.

Re:Just a few points...

[einhverfr]

Personally I think the MA governor is right on in his statement.

"International Terrorism" is a boogeyman in that it is most powerful in its imaginary force. Besides, if terrorism were really all that we were facing, we could all win by ignoring them. After all, they would fail in their grand plan to terrorize us, right?

What is fairly funny is that the Bush Administration is doing as much of a "terrorist" agenga as Bin Ladin by using bin Ladin's threats to inspire terror that he will protect us from, especially if we give up essential liberty. Sounds sort of like Mafia protection to me. Or at least Pat Robertson recently became an international terrorist in terms of making international threats of violence against civilian leaders of other countries to further a political position. BTW, don't assume that I don't think that Clinton would have done the same as Bush, unfortunately.

Anyway, back on topic....

The real struggle we are faced with is one with two sides. One one side we have the Secularist West, and on the other hand we have those who want to see society built on a foundation specified in holy texts (we will call them scripturists). Islam is probably has a slightly stronger tendancy to the second side because the Koran reads like a manual for building a society (though there are plenty of Christians who take the Bible in this way too). Indeed I don't blame the scripturists because it is a natural conclusion to the basic assumption of a singular Deity with a knowable will expressed in scripture.

However, the main problem with the scripturist conclusion was made evident in the 13th century when a reaction in Islam against such pursuits as classical philosophy, mathematics, science, and the like swept through the Islamic world. Had the Church in Europe not started translating a great deal of works from Arabic into Latin, it is quite possible that the writings of great Classical thinkers such as Aristotle, might have been forever lost to us. Yet, this change was what directly led to the Renaissance and inevitably the rise of secularism.

Why did this happen? It happened because context is lost with time. So a fixed text, such as the Bible, the Rig Veda, or the Koran sufferes degraded interpretation over time. In Islam, often the first parts of Sharia to be watered down are the substantial protections it offers the accused. In Christianity, we have lost the link to the Platonists that was important in the Early Church, and we have adopted stupid other trappings as well (there is *no* basis to believe that the Early Church thought that the name "Lucifer" had anything to do with Satan-- it would have been more likely associated with Christ). Similarly, Hinduism (in my opinion) exists in a fallen state based on my study of comparitive Indo-European mythology. Yet the fallen interpretations of sacred text remain strong because they fill a deep need for comfort even if they are demonstrably opposed to truth.

Soviet/Chinese Communism is a form of scripturalism IMO in that it creates a religion of the state with rituals thereof and looks to certain static texts for timeless guidance on building their society.

Politically the scripturalists point to issues where they see social injustice and use these to try to rally support for their agenda. With Al Qaeda, these include injustices relating to the treatment and human rights of Palestinians, and other issues.

So what is the answer?

Part of the answer is that we need to take issues of social injustice in areas of our influence very seriously. This means among other things that we need to attach many more strings to aid we give Israel and withhold aid sometimes (as, to their credit both Presidents Bush have done but not enough).

The second thing we need to do is help build a system that admits of less social injustice in the face of globalism. This means that we need to reach out and help the Jihadists (including, say, Iran) to participate in a global economy. Same with scripturalist governments regardless of their religion. We already to this with China and it is having a positive effect. We need to extend that policy to Cuba, Iran, etc.