Can we make the U.S. more competitive?

[Deja Q]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593-5841670.html

Commentary--Technology companies have been warning for years that the U.S. is falling behind other nations in crucial areas like math and science education.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made a rare visit to Washington to talk about "competiveness"--that is, the lack of it--and called for reduced barriers to foreigners working in the United States. Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett showed up to call for more tax dollars to be spent on basic research.

Politicians being politicians, nothing much happened. But now a serious effort is underway to tackle the so-called "competitiveness" problem head-on.

Wow, some of responses are stounding... ly BAD. Others good...

And working with ANY politician who is pro-corporate will get them all NOWHERE, sorry. Too much reputation has been built to prove pro-corporate, anti-worker/anti-leadership/anti-superiority politicians and corporate leaders to be anti-American. The balance was lost long ago and too many people still don't see the civil war THEY are losing.

[NorCalDem]

1. If Bill Gates is worried about

America falling behind in technology, he should convince all of his technology CEO friends (as well as himself) to stop outsourcing those jobs to China and India.

Children might want to go into those fields if they believed there would be jobs waiting for them after school, but since there aren't, I'm not surprised that the kids are becoming complacent. Hey, I know that I would not have worked my ass off in school had I come out in the job marketplace and found that only service jobs are available.

The problem isn't competitiveness, it's corporations selling out!

[Deja Q]

4. Gates is power- and money-mad. Nothing more. He has 30 years of repute

to prove how much of a soulless leach he is.

Gates can go enlist himself. And I'm sorry if people thinks he's great because of the money he donates. Considering how he got it (his latest scheme is "software as a service", aka "Software assurance", and when you look into when he started that promotion and how no new versions of ANYTHING have come out since then, this is his latest innovation at doing an end-run around ethics and morals just to make more bucks. The guy is a filthy thief and his company's history is chock full of incidents (the 1994 slap-on-the-wrist regarding a particularly vile licensing agreement he effectively got his vendors to sign is another high profile incident people don't seem to remember or care for because "it's so long ago" (yet people still hate Hitler, how odd...). To me, corporate imperialism IS AS BAD as militaristic conquest.)

Hell, if I donated 4 PENNIES to the 2004 tsunami (for example) I should be given the same exact level of praise people blindly gave Gates (or, rather his Foundation tax shelter; what he gave was based on his net worth... My net worth is considerably less... As is the same for most of us, let's be real here.

Back to the topic, you are 100% correct. If Gates gave a damn, he WOULD stop offshoring as well as convincing his corporate buddies to do the same. But he isn't. So he's added more to his repertoire of repute...

[Dave Reynolds]

2. The only way we become competitive again

is if the "American" corporations are willing to pay American citizens more than the pennies a day they are paying the Indian and Chinese citizens.

Or, if American citizens are accepting of working for pennies a day.

[idlisambar]

3. those are bad suggestions

This one in particular...

• A simplified tax system, perhaps even a flat tax. It's ironic that former Soviet republics have embraced the idea, but the world's greatest democracy hasn't. Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Georgia and Romania have all moved in this direction--and their economies have prospered. Give them a few years, and they'll be fierce competitors.

There are certain people who seem to think that a simplified tax system is the solution to every economic problem out there.

[Deja Q]

5. They don't think. They parrot. They can't afford to think.

And if they can't think, don't bother getting them to think outside the box either!