Amy, RE: We are one year behind in our lower grade schools.
Do you have any evidence of this? Because it is contrary to my understanding. In fact, I am pretty sure that there isn't any education available at all for the poor in India and China.
We see a pretty small subset of the Indian and Chinese education systems here in the US. We see the smartest kids from the best schools. Although I don't have any concrete evidence, I would imagine that if you compared our smartest kids from the best schools here to the smartest kids from the best schools there, they'd be comparable.
Which industry recently had 4 out of 5 recent companies go public?
It sure wasn't a law firm, not a hospital, not retail store, not an insurance company, not an auto company, not a financial firm, not even biotech.
It was hightech.
I think you've got a highly biased sample there. The main exit strategy for venture cap of most high tech firms is the public markets. That is not the case for law firms or hospitals or insurance companies or financial firms. Even biotech industry's primary exit strategy is not the public markets.
As an example, just about every single innovation in financial services happened here, in the United States.
Look at biotech or pharmaceuticals. The innovation is happening here, not elsewhere. There are a bunch of smart entrepreneurs in the US. Not all of them are at work in high tech.
Look at the horrible condition vaccines are with respect to this Avian Flu? When was the last decent vaccine created? Polio vaccine? When was that - the 1950s! I see biotech vaccine entrepreneurs, who should be hooked up with all the tools a proper university's RND center offers! Not putting wacko stuff in their freezers. Egads.
The chicken pox vaccine was licensed by the FDA in 1995. Human clinical trials for a SARS vaccine just recently began.
A two-tier society develops if you do not fund RND for new innovations. And if you don't continue the pipeline supply of PhDs.
The poor have a heck of a lot better opportunities here than in India or China. |
