Sharpe's Opinion
Thursday, 15th Jan, 2009
As if [cref 1986 on cue] I’ve just come across this Thomas Friedman op-ed in the New York Times advocating using the financial stimulus to provide skills training:
The financial crisis just made the [skills] hole deeper, which is why our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating. It needs to be able to produce not only more shovel-ready jobs and shovel-ready workers, but more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready and knowledge-ready workers.
If we spend $1 trillion on a stimulus and just get better highways and bridges — and not a new Google, Apple, Intel or Microsoft — your kids will thank you for making it so much easier for them to commute to the unemployment office or mediocre jobs.
Barack Obama gets it, but I’m not sure Congress does. “Yes,” Mr. Obama said on Thursday, “we’ll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges and schools by eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we’ll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy.” Sure that means more smart grids and broadband highways, he added, but it also “means investing in the science, research and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and entire new industries.
Comments
Blue Eyes I’m not sure I agree. US investment in NASA and the Space program led to funding in Silicon Valley which has revolutionised technology. Fairchild Semiconductor used NASA funding to advance silicon technology, hired and trained people who went on to create Intel, AMD and other tech companies, and take up important positions at HP, Xerox (who invented the Graphical User Interface), Microsoft, Sun, Apple… Those companies have gone on to do the research and training which has brought about another wave of internet-based private enterprises – Amazon, Google, Facebook…
You could say that Kennedy’s investment in technology and research at the state level to achieve his ‘man on the moon’ dream played a fairly significant role in kick-starting the technological revolution in Silicon Valley. By setting a target and investing in the training and research required to achieve it, the state created private sector demand which has fed itself ever since.
You know me – I’m a free-market advocate and no fan of state overspend, but that kind of targeted investment aimed at breeding research in attractive markets is exactly the sort of thing we could be doing. But we’re British, and cynical, so we’re stuffed.
I think you need to read a book called “Sex, Science and Profits”. You have to wonder how much more successful silicon valley would be if it wasn’t for state spending and taxation holding it back.
Sounds wonderful, but the state (in any country) has rarely produced scientific or technological advances. The best way to “spend” is to lay the foundations for private, competitive enterprises to prosper.
Blue Eyes
January 15, 2009 at 2:04 pm