Competitiveness: Late But Not Too Late

Abstract

Global leadership has come to be accepted by many Americans as our country's birthright. That's particularly true for science and technology. However, we would be wise to keep in mind that in the 16th century it was Spain that was the dominant nation; in the 17th century it was France; in the 19th century it was England; and in the 20th century it was America. In the 21st century, the book hasn't been written yet, but it's clear that no nation has an entitlement to the future or to future leadership. That is particularly true in a field as fast moving as science and technology. The United States is entering a global era in which Americans will have to compete for jobs in a global marketplace--not only with their neighbors down the street, but with highly motivated, highly capable, increasingly well-educated individuals from around the world. This is a change that was viewed as being of tectonic proportions by the National Academies committee that wrote The Gathering Storm. Much as the change from an agricultural society to an industrial society, it could have an enormous impact on America and Americans. This change, largely brought about by science and technology, has been described by some as the death of distance. Having learned to move knowledge and ideas literally at the speed of light, we are reaching the point where the processing, transmission and storage of information and knowledge is almost without cost. In short, there is no longer a there, there--there is now here. What does it mean for the average American that jobs throughout the food chain of employment will be just a mouse-click from candidates around the world? What does it mean--to cite one of many examples--that if you have a CT scan in a U.S. hospital it's likely to be read by a radiologist in either Bangalore or in Australia? As the Red Queen told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. If you want to go somewhere else, you must run twice as fast as that. And indeed that's where we find ourselves. The Gathering Storm It was this death of distance notion that underlaid our National Academies study, conducted in the summer of 2005. The thrust of our findings was fairly straightforward. First, it was that the prosperity of an individual depends very heavily on having the opportunity to hold a quality job. Similarly, our collective prosperity depends upon individuals holding quality jobs because if a populace does not have jobs there's no tax money to support government services. Our second conclusion was that the provision of quality jobs depends disproportionately on a nation's prowess in science and engineering. There have been eight different studies of the societal return on investment from federal investments in research and development. Those eight studies provide a rate of return that spans from 20 to 67 percent depending on the particular assumptions. Other studies have revealed that between 50 and 85 percent of the growth in America's GDP per capita over the last half-century is attributable to science and technology, much of it having its roots in basic research performed either by the government's funding or by the government itself. The Federal Reserve Board recently pointed out that nearly two-thirds of the increase in U.S. labor productivity in the last decade is attributable to the government's investment in basic research. Be assured that the leaders of other nations have not missed this point. For example, eight of the nine leading figures in China's government are engineers and one is a geologist. In a speech that could have been right out of our Gathering Storm report, President Hu referred to China as an innovation-driven nation. How Are We Doing? How is the U.S. doing in this new world underpinned by a citizenry's ability to compete for jobs, particularly jobs that are dependent upon science and technology? …