Obama's Misdirections

One way to influence the political discourse is to frame the issues by not mentioning issues that are uncomfortable fits for your ideological commitments. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/01/michael-lind-v-sputnik-moment.html I do not agree that our education system is ideal. It ought to be privatized by means of vouchers and the students who are not college-bound ought to be steered into vocational training programs to suit their interests and abilities. This will not solve the black-hispanic low performance issue. That appears to be caused by a nexus of lower IQ and anti-education cultural bias, with a small contribution from poverty. The idea that we lag on innovation is a joke: America and Israel far surpass any competitors in that realm. The problem is the Chinese and others a quite adept at stealing or otherwise acquiring our inventions and robbing us of much of the benefit the patent system is intended to secure. In China IP is a joke. Even the Europeans refuse to pay the innovation premium built into the price Americans pay for new drugs. And American companies give away patents and trade secrets for the privilege of doing business in China. Our government handles these matters most weakly and lets the Chinese hold sway. The great risk of mishandling trade with China arises from our loss of strategic industries to them. There are two types of strategic industries. First, industries presently at the core of the economy or vital to military superiority need to be kept onshore by whatever means--and they're not hard to identify. Second, and of more conjectural identity, those industries with the greatest potential for future growth and innovation must be sparked and succoured. We have attended to the military needs so far as government can apply competence to anything. On present time economic vitality, we've lost a considerable portion of the infotech industry, which is large and growing. Future industries face pressure to move to nations with more strategic emphasis on their development, China in particular. Cleantech continues a rapid exodus that way and holds enormous growth potential. Perhaps the worst part of this is that if we do not have a solar industry or a microchip industry, we will ineluctably lose our capacity to innovate in those areas. Most innovation occurs incrementally, accomplished by those with the most intimate familiarity with the technology and the business paradigm. This kind of loss we cannot afford to take. In select industries, we must implement an industrial policy aimed at sustaining their presence onshore and augmenting their innovation-engendered competitiveness. That this program will slip into corruption and incompetence is foreknown, and worth suffering for the stakes involved. Perhaps it would be best to structure it as an independent, apolitical agency like the Federal Reserve.