America's Future Is In Software, Not Hardware

New submitter tcjr2006 writes "Obama's State of the Union focused on the return of manufacturing jobs to America. This New Yorker story makes the case that the manufacturing jobs aren't going to come back, and he should be focusing on software. Quoting: 'Yes, there are industries where manufacturing jobs can be brought back to America through proper tax incentives and training programs. But maybe he should have talked more about the things that he could do to keep software jobs here. He spoke of federal funding for university and scientific research. But a real pro-software agenda would also include reforming patent law to stop trolling (and perhaps eliminating software patents altogether); increasing H-1B visas for highly skilled coders; stopping Congress from defunding DARPA, whose research helped create Siri, the iPhone’s talking assistant; and opening up the unused, federally owned wireless spectrum. That agenda wouldn’t bring Apple’s manufacturing jobs back, but it would help to keep the company’s coding jobs here. And it would certainly help develop "an economy that’s built to last."'"

Comments

Re:Oh yes, software

[jcreus]

Heaven?

Re:Oh yes, software

[Hatta]

This is such a fantasy, we might as well base our economy on Unicorn horns.

Ya know what?

[rsilvergun]

There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery

Re:Oh yes, software

[Osgeld]

"So a movie has no value?"
apparently you dont pay much attention to the movies you DO watch, glitery vampires marries a mall cop, who turns out to be adam sandler in drag, yea thats right up there with god dammed gold in terms of value