Trade needs to be negotiated. It's political and hard work. If we are good at that we win. That's the way its been for thousands of years. What we have now is anarchy and we are exporting our wealth.
If by "true capitalists" you mean crony capitalism and a state directed nationalist industrial policy, you are 100% correct. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the american educational system relative to other nations. But, I guess advocates for third world America need some type of red herring to justify their viewpoint.
It is perfectly understandable that Americans will struggle with their new place in the world. It will take time for the new reality of their demotion in the global scheme of things to sink in. But Obama is right. I watched his State of the Union address and agree with him that America needs to educate and innovate in order to slow down the pace of its inevitable demise. On American education, the position is globally a very poor position. This must improve and I hope it does.
Candletrader, American education is as good as pretty much anywhere. The difference we have relative to other developed nations is our population, specifically a very low achieving/performing Black/Hispanic population. Our Asians and Europeans are doing just as well, or in many cases better, than the the students in their nation of origin. You are simply repeating a myths, that is all.
You are so wrong there if you beleive that's true-my neices and nephews are 100% asian yet they are under acheivers. Hardly can make it a B grade by end of the year. So, good work on generalizing all asians are intelligent. The school model is not working here-too many distractions, no respect for teachers, no discipline, lack of motivated teachers, teaching profession not exactly attracting the best of talent etc etc etc Compare that with countries like India and China when you goto school, that's your life. Yes you have other things to do too but if you are not disciplined student, you are made to fall in line. You can debate whether its good or not but you cannot argue the system of education that produces far intelligent students. Maybe the end justifies the means here. The University education on other hand is probably the best in world. Maybe because the weeds are rooted out and only the very motivated and/or well to to can get there.
GG, what I stated is what the facts are. Euro and Asian youth stack up quite well on international tests relative to their nations of origin. American blacks do better on tests of academic performance than blacks in Africa. Mexicans stack up well compared to Mexicans "back home". In summary: Every group in America is doing well relative to their genetic kin overseas, or nations of origin. It is the MIXING of non similar groups in the American data that obfuscates this fact. It is NOT that the American system is bad. It is that our diverse population includes more of those groups that on a global level perform relatively poorly. The article I referred to a few posts back has a slightly expanded explanation of the data. How your particular relatives are doing is not the slightest bit relevant.
Another important ingredient for innovation that no one has mentioned on this thread is CREATIVITY. Moreover, imho all the formal education in the US won't give it to you. Below is an example of what I am talking about and I expect there are many more like him, who will never get a chance to show what they can do because of the reliance of our corporations and research laboratories on formal university degrees to get a job. So wise up guys. Education ain't nearly enough to get us where we need to go. ------------------------------------------ Robert T. (Bob) Jones, (May 28, 1910 ââ¬â August 11, 1999), was an aerodynamicist and aeronautical engineer for NACA and later NASA. He was known at NASA as "one of the premier aeronautical engineers of the twentieth century",[1]. Contents [hide] * 1 Research * 2 Awards * 3 Bibliography * 4 References [edit] Research Jones was a researcher at NACA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. As a self-trained aerodynamicist and mathematician, he had built up a national, if not international, reputation through his perceptive and original work at Langley. For this work he was given the IAS Sylvanus Albert Reed Award in 1946. Jones spent much of his time at Langley working in the Stability Research Division, which pioneered many concepts that were incorporated into U.S. aircraft. In August 1946, Jones transferred to Ames. The genius of Bob Jones seemed, in part, to lie in his remarkable ability to extract the essence of a problem and express it in understandable and useful terms. His approach to problems was always of a fundamental character and often yielded results of broad significance. In addition, Jones' wife Doris, an accomplished mathematician, also joined the Ames staff.[2]. Later, still at Ames, Jones promoted the idea of an oblique wing. (The first known oblique wing design was Blohm & Voss P202, proposed by Richard Vogt in 1942.[3]) His wind tunnel studies indicated that such a wing design on a supersonic transport might achieve twice the fuel economy of an aircraft with conventional wings. The concept was flight tested successfully on the NASA AD-1. This unique plane had a wing which pivoted about the fuselage, remaining perpendicular to it during slow flight and rotating to angles of up to 60 degrees as aircraft speed increased. Analytical and wind tunnel studies that Jones conducted at Ames indicated that a transport-sized oblique-wing aircraft flying at speeds of up to Mach 1.4 (1.4 times the speed of sound) would have substantially better aerodynamic performance than aircraft with conventional wings. [4] A current DARPA project that has been awarded to Northrop Grumman, called the Switchblade is being developed to provide a more efficient UAV for the Air Force. [edit] Awards * 1946 Sylvanus Albert Reed Award (Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences) * 1955 Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics * 1971 Honorary Ph.D.-Science, University of Colorado * 1973 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences * 1973 Member, National Academy of Engineering * 1975 W. Rupert Turnbull Lecture, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute * 1978 Prandtl Ring Award, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Luft- und Raumfahrt * 1979 Honorary Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics * 1981 Langley Award, Smithsonian Institution * 1998 NASA Superstars of Modern Aeronautics [edit] Bibliography * The Minimum Drag of Thin Wings in Frictionless Flow, Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Feb. 1951 * Theoretical Determination of the Minimum Drag of Airfoils at Supersonic Speeds, Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Dec. 1952 * Possibilities of Efficient High Speed Transport Airplanes, Proceedings of the Conference on High-Speed Aeronautics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Jan. 1955 * Aerodynamic Design for Supersonic Speed, Advances in Aeronautical Sciences, Vol.1, Pergammon Press, 1959 * With Cohen, D., High Speed Wing Theory, Princeton University Press, 1960 * New Design Goals and a New Shape for the SST, Astronautics and Aeronautics, Dec. 1972 * With Graham, A., and Boltz, F., An Experimental Investigation of an Oblique Wing and Body Combination at Mach Numbers Between .6 and 1.4, NASA TM X-62207, Dec. 1972 * With Graham, A., and Boltz, F., An Experimental Investigation of Three Oblique Wing and Body Combinations at Mach Numbers Between .6 and 1.4, NASA TM X-62256, April 1973 * With Graham, A., and Summers, J., Wind Tunnel Test of an F-8 Airplane Model Equipped with an Oblique Wing, NASA TM X-62273, June 1973 * With Nisbet, J., Transonic Transport Wings -- Oblique or Swept? Astronautics and Aeronautics, Jan. 1974 * With Smith, R., and Summers, J., Transonic Wind Tunnel Tests of an F-8 Airplane Model Equipped with 12 and 14-percent Thick Oblique Wings, NASA TM X-62478, Oct. 1975 * With Smith, R., and Summers, J., Transonic Longitudinal and Lateral Control Characteristics of an F-8 Airplane Model Equipped with an Oblique Wing, NASA TM X-73103, March 1976 * The Oblique Wing - Aircraft Design for Transonic and Low Supersonic Speeds, Acta Astronautica, Vol. 4, Pergammon Press, 1977 * With Nisbet, J., Aeroelastic Stability and Control of an Oblique Wing, The Aeronautical Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Aug. 1986 * The Flying Wing Supersonic Transport, Aeronautical Journal, March 1991. * Wing Theory, Princeton University Press, 1990.
Prometheus, I have no doubt that both China and India are as corrupt as any country can get.. but that's by the way. However defective the economic system, these countries still manage to produce people who can beat the US at their own game. The educational system of either continent is irrelevant - both the US and Chindia have both good and bad practitioners in any profession. The outsourcing argument focuses on whether a US practitioner can be replaced by a (cheaper) third world one *of equal ability*. If the replacement is less capable, it's deskilling, not outsourcing.
Because they're OUR jobs, Dummy. Wealth can be created. And destroyed. America built the vast preponderance of jobs (read: wealth), that was later exported overseas. These third-world countries are impoverished hellholes for a reason. The reason is they haven't oriented their Government, legal and monetary system in such a way as to allow free market capitalism to flourish. Instead, they've erected permanent obstacles to entrepreneurship and private investment like autocratic dictators, systemic corruption and confetti-like money. Nobody will invest in a climate like that. Let alone, accumulate meaningful savings in a climate like that. And the kicker is most of these third world shitholes know what they're doing. It's economic warfare. But the game is about power over their fiefdoms. Not becoming a world power. And since we're telling truth, the US is a big supporter of dictatorships for that very reason - it imbues proxies that will never threaten the United States by virtue of their failed design. And I don't support that. It's up to Americans to clean political house and end neocolonial warfare. But it's up to thirdworlders to overthrow their own despots, implement true market reforms, and build their own wealth. It's not up to us. It's their responsibility.
Creative aptitude and the ability to execute on an idea is more valuable today than formal education.