Article 74. Forecasting America’s Future in the Global Economy
If you are focusing your attention on the Dow Jones and other American markets you may be missing the big picture. While our attention has been on 9-11 Terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, hurricanes and the oil crisis The world economy shifted heavily to what we used to call the “undeveloped world” of China and now India. Thirty seven Billion dollars of trade goods enters the port of Las Angeles each year while only three Billion dollars of raw materials leaves the port. Eighty percent of these imports come from China. Billions of dollars are being invested in Chinese factories where growth is phenomenal. Whole cities for factory workers have been built in the last ten years. The bulk of world investment is going to China rather than the west.
Third world countries all over the world are leaping ahead to install the latest broadband technologies. While we are focused on video games and down loading music the rest of the world focuses on innovation and markets. While we lose our manufacturing base to cheaper labor in China we are also outsourcing high tech jobs such as software development and technical customer service over the internet to India. While we train the brightest foreign students in our technologies we force them to leave by not allowing them to work in this country as a result of new laws passed after 9-11. These are the very same technically innovative people who are developing the third world capabilities.
The use of the internet is expanding it is allowing individuals to market their products directly to a mass worldwide market. Individuals can publish their ideas and their music directly to on the web. Search engines can find you the lowest price for almost anything you wish to buy. Clearly individuals are the winners and “gate keepers” like record companies, wall street brokers those who profit by providing individuals access to markets are the losers.
There are things that can be done but we must act quickly. In the long term education in math and science is the best way to insure the stability of our economy. The diploma mill mentality has to be replaced with real math and science education. In the short term the nation needs to set the following bold major goals:
1. We should set the goal of becoming energy independent in five years. This is not an unachievable goal Brazil has already done this shifting to ethanol and bio-diesel.
2. We need to address our runaway health care costs and develop a solution to achieve cost stability in five years.
3. Biotech research should be heavily funded by the government. California and some other states are already funding biotech research.
4. We should encourage the development of food production so we can become the world’s food source. When Japan developed a trade surplus with us in the 1980’s we were able to offset it by exporting beef. The Japanese society changed its diet from mostly rice and fish to include beef as they became more affluent. The Chinese will probably do the same.
5. We need to innovate and make a ‘C’ change in our approach to education especially in the areas of math and science. This is in response to all out economic war on a worldwide scale. We should be thinking in terms of cradle to grave educational. We should also be mindful of past failures like the New Math and the Conversion to Metrics.
Among the things that we should not do is send a manned mission to Mars. Unmanned probes are far less expensive and are more efficient than any man walking around on Mars. New technologies were the main benefit from our moon landing in the 1960’s. We have advanced far enough in science that the growth in new technologies can now be achieved without sending a man to Mars. The Mars manned mission will create many high tech jobs but will not produce products which can be sold to other nations. We should target our development of new products for sale to countries which are manufacturing our consumer goods and exacerbating our balance of payments. Sending a manned mission to Mars affects our economy in a negative way because we are in a global market it results in the churning of tax dollars with no real growth in the overall economy needed by the sale of products outside our borders.
