If the number of engineers and scientists produced by a country was relevant to its living standards, a lot of countries should have been way ahead of the US by now. Like the Soviet Union, China, and India. Intellectual capital is far more than the number of engineers and scientists in a country.
"The number of full-time-equivalent scientists and engineers employed in R&D in the Soviet Union surpassed the analogous figure for the U.S. in 1969-70 and stood well above the U.S. total in 1976 (755,000 versus 566,000) The number of kandidat nauk degrees (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Ph.D.) conferred in the Soviet Union reached a record level in 1976, while awards of Ph.D. degrees in the U.S., though exceeding the Soviet figure (about 33,000 versus 31,000), were on the decline from a peak in 1973. In the field of engineering, the comparisons are striking. In 1972 the Soviet Union employed 2,820,000 diploma engineers, while the U.S. employed only 1,243,000. This gap will probably widen, given relative numbers of first-level degrees being awarded in this field (275,500 in the U.S.S.R. versus 39,100 in the U.S. in .1976)."
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