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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (3866)	1/5/2009 10:43:11 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

I'm just quoting from the text of the government report, which says that our competitors in other countries are spending more on hard science research. So if you want to dispute the report, you'll have to talk to the government agency that prepared it. But assuming that you are willing to take our government's word on it, then that's a pretty dire report, considering that our pre-eminence is predicated on our dominance in the science and technology fields. Anecdotal evidence that other countries are indeed spending more on science and technology is the fact that countries like India and China graduate 10 or more times as many science and tech engineers than we do here in the US every year. And that is far more than the relative populations of those countries. That's a little scary. What's worse is that many of my tech clients are in Silicon Valley and I often hear the complaint that we educate the engineers from China and India, here in the US, and then when their student visas expire, we send them home, because we limit the H-1 visas so much. Therefore, we don't even get to benefit from their expertise or get them to spend their money here in the US. How stupid can the US be when it comes to science and tech workers and investment? Then additionally, several of my clients are universities and they too are complaining of the lack of gov't funding into key research areas, which trickles down to the business I get. When our gov't shifts science and tech research to development of weapons, we are essentially shifting long term investment into short term war-making. That has a tremendous long term effect on our economy, as we dry up the engine that brings in future revenue streams. And btw, the Internet was a long term research project that ultimately resulted in a system that we could privatize. That would be categorized as research, whereas tactical nukes would be categorized as development. So your example of the Internet simply proves my point that if we continue to shortchange research in favor or military development, then we're up shit creek without a paddle as far as our economy goes. We're watching our science edge disappear before our eyes and with that edge, goes our economic and military superiority. You can dispute it, but I'm telling you that I'm in this business and I see the evidence of it every day.