Thomas Friedman's column in today's New York Times is critically important reading for anyone who is interested in deciding the November 4 election on issues, rather than an artificially manufactured culture-war. A link is provided at the end of this post.
Friedman writes, "I don't know how much steel is in Obama's belly, but I do know the issues he is focusing on in this campaign -- improving education and healthcare, dealing with the deficit and forging a real energy policy based on building a whole new energy infrastructure -- are the only way we can put steel back into America's spine.
"Who cares how much steel John McCain has in his gut when the steel that today holds up our bridges, railroads, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is rusting? McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin ‘reform’ Washington -- as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first hundred names in the D.C. phonebook?
“Sorry, but there is no sustainable political/military power without economic power, and talking about one without the other is nonsense. Unless we make America the country most able to innovate, compete and win in the age of globalization, our leverage in the world will continue to slowly erode. Those are the issues this election needs to be about, because that is what the next four years need to be about.”
Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html?ref=opinion.
People are questioning whether NASA’s current agenda is capable of producing the bountiful economic spinoffs reaped from the early space program. Personal computers, software, GPS, weather satellites, solar panels, digital cameras...all are a horn of plenty set in motion by President Kennedy in 1961. NASA is adrift from the economic challenges of the 21st century. The key lesson learned is that humans are very expensive space workers owing to their complex life support systems. By comparison, robots easily adapt to outer space and only lack one attribute – the intelligence to deal with unexpected problems. What if NASA were to forget about sending people to the moon and Mars, and instead adopt an ambitious goal to colonize the moon robotically? Two worthwhile projects would be astronomy outposts on the moon, and a particle beam gun to deflect killer asteroids away from hitting the earth. Unlike Apollo, which was a difficult act to follow, a robotic space program is sustainable because mission costs are much lower.
But the bigger payoff will take place back here on earth. Intelligent robotics will transform manufacturing, construction, transportation, hospitality, health care, landscaping and housework. If a parallel effort is devoted to robo-ethics and economics, smart robotics will usher in an era of unprecedented human prosperity.
NASA should play a leading role in spearheading the computer science leading to this outcome. A major shift in priorities needs to take place. Sen McCain has endorsed men-on-Mars, which should be vigorously debated as out-of-touch with what we've learned in our first 50 years in space. It's a strategic blunder that could surrender the smart robotics revolution to our global competitors.
Sen. Obama hopefully will have the most well-informed scientists helping him shape the issues in time for the fall debates.
Hi, everyone! I just looked at Barack Obama's page on competitiveness of the US in the global marketplace and had some ideas regarding education to make our students more competitive.
Teachers have a tough job, and they should be rewarded for it better than they have been in the past. They should also be given incentives to deepen their knowledge in their subject areas. Many high school teachers have degrees in education, but not in their chosen fields. I think this area of our education system could be strengthened by offering incentives for high school teachers to obtain degrees in their chosen fields. This way, the teachers will become better educated in the subject matter and will become better teachers of the material, and the students will benefit from the higher standard that is set in the classroom. The best teacher is the one who has a passion for learning and can communicate that passion. And it starts with stoking the passion for learning that the teacher already has burning within.
Also, increased incentives for an educator to get a master's degree in their chosen field, and to stay in the classroom, could also help this movement towards better educating our students. Too many teachers end up moving up into administrative positions once they obtain advanced degrees. This is only natural, because the system is set up so that there is a financial incentive to move up into administrative positions, but more rewards for better educated high school teachers will go a long way towards closing the achievement gap between ourselves and the other industrialized nations.
On Tuesday, Barack proposed a new competitiveness agenda centered around education and energy, innovation and infrastructure, fair trade and reform. Today, on LinkedIn.com he is asking for your input.
What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?
Submit your ideas here or in the comments section below.
In my work as a change consultant, the biggest obstacle I have identified to change is 'indifference'.
Few of us want to do bad things (except sociopaths and narcisists who do exist). Most of us would want to alleviate suffering if we knew it existed or knew how to. But, most of us really only know about our own little worlds. Suffering for my crowd is usually of the psychological nature. We talk about how miserable we are and go see our shrinks. Why would we know what about how other people are suffering? Are we 'suffering hunters'? Not by nature.
So, I thought of a great idea the other day while listening to Barack at the Meadowlands. The only way to address the indifference of Congress to the suffering of the American people concerning healthcare, is to wipe out the budget line item that pays for the Congressional Health Plan!
Barack can stand before Congress and the American people and pledge that together, they will all construct a health plan that is equitable and addresses the changing needs of the American people. Only when the Congressmen and women, who are all millionnaires anyway, are denied coverage for pre-existing conditions for themselves and presumably their beloved family members, will they finally get it, and move beyond their indifference.
This is the Symbolic gesture that is needed to unite this nation on this divisive point.
They will all be truly incentivised to create a plan to solve all of our problems together. In change consulting, we call this 'alignment'.
Justice in health care is no longer simply a dream for liberals and bleeding hearts. We may have long-held cultural views about 'self-determination' and ' government involvement in private lives' , but the issue of our health status as a nation is starting to show up in the data that describes our competitiveness as a nation.
I for one cannot listen to any more of these outmoded arguments harking back to some mythic time in our history. The truth is we are dropping in global rankings of health and fitness of our human capital, the very thing we claim is our strength, and that will somehow manage to pay off our enormous public debts (more on that in another post) owed to our trading partners.
We are no longer enjoying monopoly power as a nation with the only post-war industrial complex still in place to rebuild Europe and develop the rest of the world. These were the conditions enjoyed by most of the Billionnaires on our Fortune lists during their lifetimes when they started out in business. For us, for me, my children and nephews and nieces, we have to compete with nations that are rising in the ranks of health and education, and beat us with sheer numbers of university graduates in engineering and other important fields.
We've got to adapt our ways of thinking for the new world we live in. And, fixing health care in the US is the first step. That is what Chairman Mao did for the Chinese, during his reign after the wars in the 1940s that threw off the Emperors. He improved their health and fitness as a nation. Now, look where they are.
Check this out. It is very enlightening about beliefs and long-held assumptions, new tools and ways of thinking that can advance us, and also hard facts about what we have become.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
Like blind men with an elephant in the room, we talk about globalism as if it were only about corporations building in developing countries for markets in developed ones, or about intricately intertwined financial markets. Globalism refers to decoupling of economy from the nation state. It is each year less meaningful to refer to a national economy: although the geopolitical boundaries remain, business and even business law transcends those borders. The owners of Google are as globally dispersed as are its markets. Is a company American because it has an address here and participates in our tax system? Jobs, capital, and capital equipment flow to wherever the requisite people exist and the overall costs of business are lowest for the necessary level of quality. Jobs flow to America when that’s where the requisite people exist and the costs of business are lowest for the necessary level of quality. That’s it. That’s the new rule. Our job is to make sure that those conditions apply, if not always for us, then at least for our children. If we spend our energy protecting the jobs we are no longer competitive at, we won’t be spending it on learning and creating the jobs we can be competitive at. There is always a new market, that is the nature of economic change. We can’t chase the markets of the past, we have to create and develop the markets of the future.
