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Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

nytimes.com

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Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#21

Post by xentronium »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #18
hristov wrote: post #15

I have to say Brooks' ability of denial is quite impressive. He is so good at not seeing the elephant in the room, it is no wonder he has a prestigious job with the NYT. He wrote an entire article about how Americans are "abandoning" manufacturing without ever mentioning offshoring. If you read his article you would think that the American decline in manufacturing has something to do with some weird pretentiousness o…

The "American decline in manufacturing" is a myth. American manufacturing output has been on a continued uptick, the peak of output for the US was... 2006, and will likely exceed that shortly as the economy recovers. The US contributes fully 1/5th of the world's entire manufacturing output. What has changed is that US manufacturing has grown much more efficient, so there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there us…

I'm sorry, but you're so very wrong. US haven't ever grown any richer since ~1980s. They just borrowed more with each month. You should see US trade deficit and annual budget for proofs.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#22

Post by amh »

lionheart wrote: post #12
illumin8 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a country without a solid manufacturing base cannot stay dominant in the world forever. Manufacturing is not low tech; it is high tech, and requires extreme amounts of innovation in technologies like robotics, chemistry, automation, etc. You can say everything will be digital and that's fine, but until we have nano machines replicating material goods, who's going to make the things we use every day, or the things…

This is slightly toungue-in-cheek but why can't all of the actual manufacturing be outsourced? Why not? Corporations do it successfully, why can't countries specialize in design just like they used to specialize in certain crops?

Designs are easily copied, physical widgets are not (until we get nano-replicators anyway).

Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other. Doing both under one roof reaps more of a benefit from that dynamic.

There is also a historical argument. The most prosperous, successful countries have had a large industrial base. That doesn't necessarily mean one requires the other, but it does suggest a strong linkage.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#23

Post by varjag »

secret wrote: post #2

Upvoted because its a good starting point for discussion, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. Why should anyone go into a productive industry (by which it sounds like he means anything in which there is an end product) as we move into a service economy and production continues to be off-shored? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding/missing the point. It seems like people at all levels should go where th…

When it's finally explained how service economy can be sustainable long-term, I suspect many people would have no problem with outsourcing production whatsoever.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#24

Post by InclinedPlane »

xentronium wrote: post #21
InclinedPlane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "American decline in manufacturing" is a myth. American manufacturing output has been on a continued uptick, the peak of output for the US was... 2006, and will likely exceed that shortly as the economy recovers. The US contributes fully 1/5th of the world's entire manufacturing output. What has changed is that US manufacturing has grown much more efficient, so there are far fewer manufacturing jobs than there us…

I'm sorry, but you're so very wrong. US haven't ever grown any richer since ~1980s. They just borrowed more with each month. You should see US trade deficit and annual budget for proofs.

The US has gotten richer, and has also borrowed more.

Since the 80s median family income has increased by about 1/3, adjusted for inflation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#25

Post by mechanician »

This topic seems to come up quite often. I personally don't know whether an investment banker contributes more to society than a motor engineer. However the expected income for the i-banker seems to be higher. I.e. this is an incentive problem. People can talk all they want about the intrinsic satisfaction in producing actual goods, but at the end of the day we all need to pay rent, eat, pay back student loans, and spring for the occasional round of drinks.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#26

Post by _pius »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #24
xentronium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're so very wrong. US haven't ever grown any richer since ~1980s. They just borrowed more with each month. You should see US trade deficit and annual budget for proofs.

The US has gotten richer, and has also borrowed more. Since the 80s median family income has increased by about 1/3, adjusted for inflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...

I think the parent meant that the U.S. Government has borrowed more and more. It seems to me that you're talking about citizens being richer while parent is talking about the government being poorer.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#27

Post by xentronium »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #24
xentronium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're so very wrong. US haven't ever grown any richer since ~1980s. They just borrowed more with each month. You should see US trade deficit and annual budget for proofs.

The US has gotten richer, and has also borrowed more. Since the 80s median family income has increased by about 1/3, adjusted for inflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...

http://globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/214/44197....

Build a graph from that data and you'll be very surprised, I guess.

1980 -- $1.3 trillion

2006 -- $12.8 trillion

[edit]: Oh, there's a graph actually: http://globalpolicy.org/images/charts/SocialEconomicPolicy/t...

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#28

Post by InclinedPlane »

xentronium wrote: post #27
InclinedPlane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has gotten richer, and has also borrowed more. Since the 80s median family income has increased by about 1/3, adjusted for inflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr...

http://globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/214/44197.... Build a graph from that data and you'll be very surprised, I guess. 1980 -- $1.3 trillion 2006 -- $12.8 trillion [edit]: Oh, there's a graph actually: http://globalpolicy.org/images/charts/SocialEconomicPolicy/t...

How does this contradict my point? The US has gotten richer, and it has also borrowed more. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#29

Post by anonquant »

I work in quantitative finance, and I think that Brooks is working with slightly out-of-date statistics. The financial crisis has been very rough on the headcount and morale of most financial institutions, and has impacted quant funds particularly roughly.

It was fairly easy to view finance as a safe and socially acceptable career in 2007, and that was reflected in the recruiting numbers at the time. The past 3 years have disabused many of us of that impression, and the effects are being seen right now in the career decisions top students and people already in finance are making.

20% of the people in my little corner of quant finance have left for tech jobs or startups in the last 4 months, and I'm hoping to follow them as soon as I get enough traction on my side project. I hope for their sake that current students have also figured out that the game has changed and are directing their ambitions toward tech.

Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise

#30

Post by cal5k »

knowtheory wrote: post #16

The answer to this is pretty clear. You can make billions of dollars in the business (particularly in finance), screw people over with little or no consequence, and you can't do that as easily as an engineer. But i disagree that our best and brightest aren't trying. There are still engineers, and there are still people going out and becoming doctors, regardless of the difficulties in their fields. The problem is that…

That's silly. The vast majority of technological innovations still come out of the US. So whatever it is you're doing poorly, the rest of the world is clearly doing that much worse.
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