Fareed Zakaria: Is American Innovation A Thing Of The Past?

Newsweek:

Americans like to think there is something about their culture that's especially conducive to innovation--the open geography and frontier spirit; a flexible economy with limited interference by government; the Protestant work ethic; an immigrant workforce, constantly renewed by the next generation of talent from around the world. Other countries can perhaps emulate some of these traits, but none can replicate the creative cocktail that is America.

That might be true today. But could it be that American achievements reflect the past more than predicting the future?

Read the whole story: Newsweek

Comments

[delta7777]

US is the unquestionable world leader in innovation
(when it comes to exotic derivatives).

[JBS]

I'd say the problem is that certain recent American "banking innovations" have taken the steam out of others.

How you going to invent products, create jobs and produce goods & services with the Wall Street Vampires sucking out all of your blood?

[dmsdzinr]

For what is SUPPOSED to be the most Innovative Country in the world , the USA is sorely lagging behind other countries. We keep saying how creative, imaginative, inventive & innovative America is and yet we are way behind other countries. Why is that? Because when other countries come up with new ideas they get them into the world right away. When America comes up with something new it either takes years/decades to get them into the world or they are dribbled out in small increments. Adding 2-5 mpg to fuel economy in today's world is a huge snore. America better wake up or we will end up as a second level economy nation. The manufacturing jobs that went overseas will NOT be returning to America, so we better build around a new work ethic and paradigm or see our country fall into obscurity.

[swisskabab]

This article has very little to do about innovation.

The real reason for this article is to generate support for what IBM/Google­/HP/Micros­oft/Oracle have
been asking for ...

+ More H1B visas
+ Tax credits for doing "research", even if that "research" is done in India not US.
+ Subsidies to foreign students at US universities
+ Continued protection of sheltering incomes in offshore locations like Aruba, Bahamas.

[tbonehead]

The important challenges in the world can no longer be solved by one country, US, or any other; Americans have been bathed in this myth of American exceptionalism; no one can be the best at everything; If Americans can't LEAD, they make d-a-m-n-e-d poor followers. Do we need innovation as much as we need cooperation to solve the world's problems.

[Mondayboy]

Zakaria is a thing of the past, not American innovation.

[Skeetshooter]

You can't be innovative unless you acknowledge that things change. America used to be a place where things changed fast and people weren't afraid of that fact. Many of us, however, have been smug and complacent since the fifties. We found a lofty perch we liked, and decided things were going to settle down and stay the same from now on.
Only they didn't.
Anyone who's been to a class reunion has see the former football star, now a middle aged, desperate to hold onto the glory days in high school; hold onto that self righteous attitude even as the circumstances that warranted it have changed.

America, wake up: High school is over.
If corporate pump and dumps, winning in the cash flow business, and new improved ways for banks to screw their customers are the sum total of modern American innovation, then we deserve to lose our place of privilege. Our bonds will become junk the way our way of living and thinking have become junk. The rest of the world will have learned to take the best of American innovation, mixed in a bit of their own, and left the trash behind.

[swisskabab]

@SkeetShooter --- looks like you've given up on the American spirit already.

It is stupid to assume a few large corporations, corrupted Congress/W­hitehouse, greedy banks
can defeat the human spirit. Pick up any history book, from any culture, any period of time and you'll see imbalances get corrected, sometimes ingeneously, sometimes violently.

Besides this article is simply a thinly veiled propaganda for more H1B visas for foreign tech workers, tax subsidies to US IT corporations doing "research", etc., The CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, HP, IBM have been recycling this propaganda since the dotcom days.

[hey0there]

i am not in favor of relaxing US immigration laws just to import more upper-caste indians from India who when entering a management position will exclusively hire only more upper-caste indians from India.

[TJCole]

We still have Innovative Swindlers running the country...bleeding it dry....isn't that enough..?

[delta7777]

The current US federal and state policies of slashing both emphasis and funding of primary education will certainly be reflected in a generation that lacks innovative prowess.
The growing unaffordability of university education exacerbates the situation.
Fareed's observations on the innovative vitality resulting from successive waves of immigrants reflects the legacy that primary familial emphasis placed on education of their children that particular cultures have characteristally maintained.
I do not see such degree of emphasis on education as being characteristic of US society.
Until and unless the US wakes up to the importance of education, we will certainly lose our standing as innovators.

[deltalady]

As Americans, we're made to believe that any criticism of our country makes us "anti-American". Everyone knows that in the real world, real friends will tell you the truth. I remember being against the Iraq war from the very beginning and I was made to feel that my voice wasn't what "real" Americans believed. It's a hard truth to recognize but the rest of the world is moving along quite nicely without us and as long as our own government shows so little care for us, no one else will either. You just want to sit in the middle of the floor and cry most of the time. If this planet survives much longer, the history books will record the decline of America and blame it on ignorance, greed, and arrogance.

[Tiredoldliberal]

United States leadership in general is just about a thing of the past.

We are so culturally, intellectually, scientifically, economically, militarily and ethically degenerate that we don't even know enough to realize we're in free fall.

American corporations, neocons, and religious fundamentalists fractured our future. American moderates mooed contentment as they were milked dry. American liberals were too liberal to exercise their Second Amendment opportunities.

Now, it's too late for all of us, but at least we can aspire to become graceful losers.

[Stop Wall Street]

Yay Stocks surging. Real unemployment (including those who 'stopped looking' lol) is at 20%. once again ,this proves that the government is in the tank for Wall Street or else there would be more jobs even if the jobs arn't considered efficient by economist standards.

good articles: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

The only beneficiaries of this 'v shaped' recovery are the bankers, fund managers, and rest of the top 1%

[blueken]

In economics there is a theory called "rational expectations". It says that at the end of the day, people act in their won self interest. When we deregulated the financial sector we allowed it to swallow the economy. The best and brightest Americans went to Wall Street. Why? Like Dillenger said "That's where the money is." Instead of struggling to produce the next innovative product, our best and brightest took to the task of building smoke and mirrors, magic beans and castles made of sand. They called them "financial innovations." Today health insurance, drug manufacturing and finance are eating our economy whole. This is the much vaunted "service economy." If we continue down this path, many, many people will suffer. When oil, steel and telecommunications got too big to fail, the government stepped in, and a new more competitive economy was born. Our government nneds to step in again, or we face the dire consequences of monopoly.

[schatsie]

anybody who picked up The Reckoning by Halberstam could see the writing on the wall.... The workers that Ford paid well enough to purchase their own products are now long gone... The Masters of the Universe have rewarded themselves and now with 95%of the wealth in this country concentrated in the 1% at the top. nobody else is getting a chance to have a decent wage, let alone raise a family and retire with financial security...heck we are just trying to hang onto our jobs for the healthcare benefits because god knows you will not get rewarded with anything else....You know it all has to go to the bottom line so that the CEO can double his salary and pension every two years....

[FreedomCorpse]

Can't innovate if a country doesn't want a strong manufacturing base in it? It costs more for healthcare premiums for a family than a mortgage for a reasonably priced house...that's f'd up.

[anothervoice2]

So true.

[schatsie]

Health care costs in this country are INSANE....$103,000 for a 3 day hospital stay...Nurses get paid $25 per hour, days evenings nights holidays and weekends and they are coming out of the woodwork because their spouses have lost their jobs..... and $25 per hour means that Nurses are getting $2000 of that 103.000 charge.......let us say 80 hours total times $25 per hour gives $2000..... and that is if they are only taking care of that one person and we know that they are taking care of multiple patients.....

INSANITY,,,I would give my right arm to compare this with the Canadian or NHS services....and they do not even have to pay deductibles or coinsurance......