Don’t Just Blame Wall Street Douchebags (Or, On Why We're Fucked)
If you think the looming economic depression is a result of Wall Street douchebaggery (they certainly haven’t helped, to be sure), well, think again. Why is the U.S. fucked? It’s rather simple – because we don’t make anything anymore. From the current issue of Technology Review:

"After decades at the technological frontier, the United States now faces increasing competition from Israel, Taiwan, Finland, Ireland, and parts of the developing world. A U.S. high-tech trade surplus that reached $22.4 billion in 1990 melted into a $134.6 billion trade deficit by 2005. Meanwhile, annual U.S. productivity growth has slowed since 2000, and fewer American small businesses are being formed in every high-tech sector. These shifts are especially troubling given that economists credit new technology with half of America's economic growth from the late 1940s to 1985.

Although decreased science funding is partly to blame, the main source of the problem appears to be a drastic decline in the number of competitive American workers and entrepreneurs in scientific and technical fields. Fewer U.S. college students pursued engineering degrees in 2005 than in 1985, despite a rising undergraduate population. In 2000, more than 20 countries had higher percentages of 24-year-olds with degrees in science and engineering. The number of Americans earning PhDs in science and engineering peaked in 1997 and then declined steadily over the next five years. Although U.S. PhDs increased between 2002 and 2005, the number of new PhDs is still nearly 6 percent lower than it was in 1997. As a result, even top U.S. high-tech firms now look abroad for talent, moving R&D and production operations to countries like India, Israel, and China. As an Intel spokesperson recently put it, "We go where the smart people are." A 2006 Duke University survey of American firms that outsource such jobs abroad found that approximately 40 percent considered the U.S. supply of engineers inadequate."

That’s right folks, the nerds are our only hope. So break out the calculators and periodic tables and hit the books kids, because we don’t need any more marketing majors, we’ve got all the baristas we need.
- posted by Liebs @ 11:47 PM