There are some bright spots. Health science and electronic technology are areas where we have innovation leads and manufacturing plants located in this country. We outsource old technology, but not the new stuff. Weapons, nobody touches us, and we mfr. them here. Campbell's Soup makes the stuff here, as do most packaged food cos. We actually grow the food here and are very efficient at it. We refine oil here, especially where I live. Despite the longterm slide, our auto industry is still huge. We outsource some mfr., but have a lot here. And the foreign cos. are building here, though they prefer Canada for its less insane educational and health care infrastructure.
Education itself is a major industry. What smart foreign kid doesn't want to go to Oxford, Cambridge, The Sorbonne or The Little Eleven (The 8 Ivy League schools plus Stanford, MIT and Chicago? I suppose you would have to put Duke in there, too, now.) Many of these foreign grads want to stay here. So, even if we have lousy elementary and high schools, we are still getting the world's best college graduates. |
