Competitiveness and high-tech jobs

Quote:
With China’s successful launch into orbit of its second manned spaceship, claims and worries that America is losing its edge in many high-tech industries will no doubt increase. Democrats just love to hit the airwaves proclaiming the myth we are becoming a nation of hamburger flippers, as our best jobs get outsourced to Asia.

For the past thirty years, the American people have been treated to warning after warning of our impending mass servitude behind the McDonald’s counter. In the 1980’s it was Japan and the Asian Tigers that were stealing our good jobs. Then came Ross Perot talking about that giant sucking sound from Mexico.

Today, everyone seems worried about China and India.......

But in recent months, evidence coming out the Middle Kingdom continues to paint a slightly different picture. While it is undeniably true that China’s rise creates a major challenge for the Western economies, it is important for us to keep this major power shift in perspective.

While it is true many labor-intensive industries elsewhere have been hit hard by growing Chinese exports (with textiles as a prime example), the reality is quite different from what many on the mainstream media would like readers to believe.

Brian Schwarz at American Thinker.com

More on the "engineering crisis"

As I noted here last week, a new study from Duke University suggests the so-called engineering gap between America and its Asian rivals China and India is a myth. Now BusinessWeek has uncovered some possible reasons behind this “propaganda” and the detrimental effect it is having America’s current high-tech workers.

After discussing the sensitive issue with the author of the Duke study Dr. Vivek Wadhwa, Mr. Pete Engardio writes:

The bottom line is that America’s engineering crisis is a myth, Wadhwa argues. Both sides in the globalization debate are “spreading propaganda,” he contends. India and China are using inflated engineering numbers because they want to draw more foreign investment, while fearmongers in the U.S. use dubious data either to support their case for protectionism, to lobby for greater government spending on higher education and research, or to justify their offshore investments.

Brian Schwarz again