The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses.
Often it's just access to natural resources or the ability to get access by force. (otherwise I would have to assume that neolithic societies like those we find in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would have one of the best educated populations out there)
As long as the US is able to sustain its military apparatus and educate the top 1% well enough so they can innovate on technology they'll do fine.
It's not as if no one knew that US education for the masses is average at best, but it didn't matter in the last decades, and it probably wont matter in the future.
You realize that the majority of Engineering Phds in the US are foreign born ? - the US heavily relies on being able to attract international talent to maintain its advantage.
"Its advantage". You (not ig1) can get away with this if you're a typical HN reader but ignoring the rules of grammar is not advised for those alluded to in the article. Mistakes like that are likely to merely compound your problems.
Sadly the rather smart folk who evidently inhabit these columns (and are meticulous when instructing their computers) sometimes don't set good examples for you. They really should, should they not?
This doesn't contradict my statements, because I never denied that the US has one of the worlds best education for the top 1% which in turn makes it more desirable for foreign born students to study at MIT or Stanford.
Edit: And yes, you'll have more innovation if you can attract the brightest students, no matter in which country they happen to be born in.
First of all, you won't just need a well-educated top 1% (I presume you mean top 1% in terms of innovation ability, not income). You also generally need a skilled workforce in order to implement what you've invented.
Second, it is arguable that the rising inequality in the US is incompatible with long-term economic growth. The economic growth in past decades has been powered not just by innovation: A lot has been due to families going from single to dual income households, working two jobs, and more recently, Americans using their homes as ATM machines.
America, at least for now, has a consumption-driven economy and for that you need consumers to be able to buy things. In order for that, they need sufficient income, and for that income, they have to be able to compete on the labor market. 99% of the labor force doing minimum wage jobs cannot drive an economy.
Worse, increasing technological innovation has eliminated low skill, minimum wage job, and driven a lot of them overseas. Technological innovation needs to be paired with skilled labor if you don't want to face a collapsing labor market down the road.
The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses.
I specifically disagree, on the basis of trans-national comparisons. The newly independent former colonies that became independent during my childhood and the formerly backward surviving countries after World War II that became developed countries during my lifetime followed various development paths. All over the world, in a lot of pairings of countries with different cultural backgrounds and differing supplies of natural resources, by far the most successful national development strategy was broad education for the masses. Countries that invested education spending in well designed K-12 education for the whole national population had much higher sustained levels of economic growth (and much more success in democratization) than countries that invested equal spending per capita in subsidized national university education for a tiny elite minority. This contrast in national policies is one of the biggest differences between Africa (which had several countries as rich as any east Asian country other than Japan at the time of independence) and east Asia (which has left most parts of Africa far behind in economic growth and democratization since the early 1960s). You really should look up more facts about the rest of the world before giving general policy advice. A good source of information on this subject, even though it is now somewhat old, is the book How the Other Half Dies,
a free download of a book published in the 1970s, when these trends were becoming apparent.
"Japanese and Dutch adults who were ages 25 to 34 and only completed high school easily outperformed Italian or Spanish university graduates of the same age."
This observation from the article is not a surprise.
As long as the prosperity is based on top 10% performers (whether educated workforce or economy sector) the system is inherently unstable.The price of natural resources can drop, highly educated people can easily migrate. Consider how much time it took for Detroit to degrade once auto industry shrunk and it became 'uncool' place to live.
Comments
The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses.
Often it's just access to natural resources or the ability to get access by force. (otherwise I would have to assume that neolithic societies like those we find in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would have one of the best educated populations out there)
As long as the US is able to sustain its military apparatus and educate the top 1% well enough so they can innovate on technology they'll do fine.
It's not as if no one knew that US education for the masses is average at best, but it didn't matter in the last decades, and it probably wont matter in the future.
You realize that the majority of Engineering Phds in the US are foreign born ? - the US heavily relies on being able to attract international talent to maintain its advantage.
"Its advantage". You (not ig1) can get away with this if you're a typical HN reader but ignoring the rules of grammar is not advised for those alluded to in the article. Mistakes like that are likely to merely compound your problems.
Sadly the rather smart folk who evidently inhabit these columns (and are meticulous when instructing their computers) sometimes don't set good examples for you. They really should, should they not?
This doesn't contradict my statements, because I never denied that the US has one of the worlds best education for the top 1% which in turn makes it more desirable for foreign born students to study at MIT or Stanford.
Edit: And yes, you'll have more innovation if you can attract the brightest students, no matter in which country they happen to be born in.
It is unfortunately not that simple.
First of all, you won't just need a well-educated top 1% (I presume you mean top 1% in terms of innovation ability, not income). You also generally need a skilled workforce in order to implement what you've invented.
Second, it is arguable that the rising inequality in the US is incompatible with long-term economic growth. The economic growth in past decades has been powered not just by innovation: A lot has been due to families going from single to dual income households, working two jobs, and more recently, Americans using their homes as ATM machines.
America, at least for now, has a consumption-driven economy and for that you need consumers to be able to buy things. In order for that, they need sufficient income, and for that income, they have to be able to compete on the labor market. 99% of the labor force doing minimum wage jobs cannot drive an economy.
Worse, increasing technological innovation has eliminated low skill, minimum wage job, and driven a lot of them overseas. Technological innovation needs to be paired with skilled labor if you don't want to face a collapsing labor market down the road.
The strength of an economy rarely depends on the education or knowledge of the masses.
I specifically disagree, on the basis of trans-national comparisons. The newly independent former colonies that became independent during my childhood and the formerly backward surviving countries after World War II that became developed countries during my lifetime followed various development paths. All over the world, in a lot of pairings of countries with different cultural backgrounds and differing supplies of natural resources, by far the most successful national development strategy was broad education for the masses. Countries that invested education spending in well designed K-12 education for the whole national population had much higher sustained levels of economic growth (and much more success in democratization) than countries that invested equal spending per capita in subsidized national university education for a tiny elite minority. This contrast in national policies is one of the biggest differences between Africa (which had several countries as rich as any east Asian country other than Japan at the time of independence) and east Asia (which has left most parts of Africa far behind in economic growth and democratization since the early 1960s). You really should look up more facts about the rest of the world before giving general policy advice. A good source of information on this subject, even though it is now somewhat old, is the book How the Other Half Dies,
http://www.tni.org/tnibook/how-other-half-dies-0
a free download of a book published in the 1970s, when these trends were becoming apparent.
"Japanese and Dutch adults who were ages 25 to 34 and only completed high school easily outperformed Italian or Spanish university graduates of the same age."
This observation from the article is not a surprise.
Strength does not equal resilience.
As long as the prosperity is based on top 10% performers (whether educated workforce or economy sector) the system is inherently unstable.The price of natural resources can drop, highly educated people can easily migrate. Consider how much time it took for Detroit to degrade once auto industry shrunk and it became 'uncool' place to live.