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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

#71

Post by eru »

varjag wrote: post #23
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.

You sell investment banking advice, software and self-help books to the Chinese, the Chinese sell you cars and dish washers. What's not self-sustaining about this?

(Of course, the USA still produces lots of stuff you can kick. Don't worry.)

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

#72

Post by eru »

illumin8 wrote: post #19
todayiamme wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we are in a period of flux and I am willing to bet that 20 years down the lines. You will have USA based automated manufacturers that do just this. Right now, due to misalignment of interests manufacturing has shifted to other countries, but the world can't be a sweat shop too long. So, the reverse trend will start kicking in sooner or later to equilibrium. Moreover, unilateral hegemony is something that no…

I hope you are right. Ross Perot once said something like "globalization will equalize all countries at the same wages, about $6/hr." I think he might have been right. I'm not really looking forward to a world where high tech workers can only make $6 an hour, but I guess it really depends on what you can buy with $6.

The Chinese are getting massively richer without the rest of the world getting poorer. So why should we arrive at 6$/hr?

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo wrote: post #34
matrix wrote: post #4

Pure link bait; the actual article does not say anything of the sort. The article is, in fact making the point Americans as a whole no longer "make things", and are avoiding getting their hands dirty.I'm not sure if the premise is true - it would be nice to see some hard data to back it up.

It's a direct quote from the article, "America’s brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism." Btw, he should have added "pundit" to the list of non-productive fields. ;)

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by philwelch »

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…

Did you read the same article I did? He was talking about a lot more than manufacturing--the skilled trades and even engineering fit his argument pretty well.

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

#76

Post by ancornwell »

blackguardx wrote: post #63
ancornwell wrote: post #61

Jesus you can't make a buck in this market, the country's goin' to hell faster than when that son of a bitch Roosevelt was in charge. Too much cheap money sloshing around the world. The worst mistake we ever made was letting Nixon get off the gold standard.

What? Is this a "Watchmen" quote?

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

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

#77

Post by melling »

imp wrote: post #11
jedwhite wrote: post #5

The Founding Fathers were aware of this. In fact John Adams saw it as an aspiration: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,…

I love that quote because his son went on to study politics and war anyways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams

Not to pick on you because 90% of the time people say anyways. Anyway, my point is don't say anyways.

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/anyway-or-anyways.aspx

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

#78

Post by mechanical_fish »

hugh3 wrote: post #53
tlb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of your possessions are manufactured in the US? Not many of mine are. No electronics I can think of, and not my cars or my furniture or 95% of my clothes. When economic measures seem out of whack with observed reality, one should question what the numbers really mean.

It means that the US is producing a lot of valuable stuff, but not much of it is durable consumer products like clothes or electronics. The US is, for instance, the world's number one aircraft producer by a significant margin, and one Boeing 747 is worth a lot of cheap Chinese t-shirts.

I used to work in US manufacturing. We built chips. The way it worked is that major fab operations, especially the ones that benefited from the close proximity of Ph.D.-educated senior engineers, were done in the USA. Then the parts would be shipped in wafer form to be diced and packaged in Asia because dicing, packaging, wire bonding and inspecting are human-intensive jobs that are hard to fully automate.

Hands-on work like sewing and hand assembly gets done in Asia where there is a good supply of cheap labor, but that doesn't mean that plenty of stuff doesn't get built in the USA, often with extensive help from robots and computers.

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

#79

Post by saulhoward »

dillydally wrote: post #14
hyperbovine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, that sounds like a recipe for the sort of social structure they were trying to break free of in colonial England. Just goes to show how 200 years of politicking and beatification has distorted the images of the founding fathers.

No, in England you'd study whatever your father studied. If he was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith. If he was an aristocrat, you were an aristocrat. What Adams is talking about is quite different.

> in England you'd study whatever your father studied. If he was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith

The idea that England had (and has) no social mobility is quite wrong. People have been climbing the social ladder since long before the Industrial Revolution.

It may help you in some ways to think of the new America as opposed to everything Britain stood for, but I think that is mostly incorrect. The philosophies and values of the Age of Enlightenment came from a long history of European thought. America was far closer to a young son continuing and realising the father's long held hopes and ideas with fresh blood and the chance to start on its own feet.

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

#80

Post by cstross »

dillydally wrote: post #14
hyperbovine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, that sounds like a recipe for the sort of social structure they were trying to break free of in colonial England. Just goes to show how 200 years of politicking and beatification has distorted the images of the founding fathers.

No, in England you'd study whatever your father studied. If he was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith. If he was an aristocrat, you were an aristocrat. What Adams is talking about is quite different.

Nonsense.

The UK had plenty of social mobility from the late 18th century onwards -- it's just that if you made it good, you did your damndest to copy the social manners and graces of your peers and make it look as if your family had always been well-off. And part of that process entailed hiding your humble roots. Hence the illusion of class immobility.

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