Bush "Silly Ideological Jag" Weakens America

Opinion: Bush "Silly Ideological Jag" Weakens America
By Thomas Friedman (excerpt)
New York Times
10/16/05

...Many U.S. manufacturers are moving abroad - not just to find lower wages, but to find smarter workers, better infrastructure and cheaper health care. [In] Germany, 36 percent of undergrads receive degrees in science and engineering; in China, 59 percent; in Japan, 66 percent; and in America, only 32 percent....Japanese on bullet trains can get access to the Internet with cellphones, and Americans get their cellphone service interrupted five minutes from home. U.S. 12th graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries in math and science....In recent years, U.S. industry appears to have spent more on lawsuits than on R.&D....The world is racing us to the top, not the bottom, and...we are quietly falling behind.

Because of globalization, [a senator-requested bipartisan study group] report [with proposals] begins, U.S. "workers in virtually every sector must now face competitors who live just a mouse-click away in Ireland, Finland, India or dozens of other nations whose economies are growing. ... Having reviewed the trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned that the scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength. ... We are worried about the future prosperity of the United States. ... We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost - if indeed it can be regained at all."...

These proposals are the new New Deal urgently called for by our times. This is where President Bush should have focused his second term, instead of squandering it on a silly, ideological jag called Social Security privatization. Because, as this report concludes, "Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position."