America's Future...isn't in America
It’s funny what you can learn from your kids. My latest lessons have to do with the gnashing of teeth over America’s threatened future and the flattening of the world that is destroying our competitive advantage. In a funny way, recent events involving our youngest and oldest child might point to a way out of the crisis.With America’s trade deficit ballooning, immigration and border controls a hot topic, and explosive economies in both India and China making it patently clear that the nexus of worldwide commercial activity has moved to Asia, the Grumpy Gus’s of the status quo are feeling particularly curmudgeonly these days. Not only are these upstart nations sending us cheap goods and manning thousands of call centers the doomsayers wail, but they are minting five times as many engineers each year. This is the end of civilization as we know it.The problem so far is that while lots of smart folks can see the looming storm, precious few have any prescriptions for dealing with it. The latest example was a recent op-ed by Michael Schrage in the Financial Times. The author does us all a service by pointing out the obvious: Trying to somehow shore up America science education is like having the Little Dutch Boy stick his finger in the dyke. In the face of a giant wage differential (we live in splendor, the rest of the world somewhat less comfortably), and a tiny educational differential (trained engineers are good at math no matter where they live), this trend isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Bemoaning it does no good whatsoever. Schrage has some fuzzy ideas about how to use the talent in elite western universities to equip grads with some kind of weapons to succeed, but it makes little sense to me, or the incisive Nicholas Carr on his blog where he decries the lack of proffered solutions.Luckily there is an answer. There is something that we can export to the rest of the world in vast quantities to redress the balance of trade. The answer is ourselves and our entrepreneurial spirit. Some people say there is no place left to explore on this earth. I say what about every underdeveloped village in the world? Exporting our can-do and get it done version of grassroots capitalism all over the world is a uniquely American opportunity. However, it is an opportunity that will mean our entrepreneurial kids need to learn about the rest of the world and leave the cozy suburbs for a while. Can we change enough to stop being Ugly Americans and become World Citizens and in the process unleash another gigantic wave of capitalist frenzy?
