Article: The Race for Talent: Securing Long Term Prosperity
Article written by wiggin.
I have previously written to dispel the notion that US dominance in geopolitics in waning for the simple fact that the world needs US logistics power to get things done. This is a compelling argument, but it fails to address the underlying claims of declinists; expensive projection power will wane without enduring economic dominance to pay for it. The Economist had a spectacular article last month discussing one reason for America’s continuing success: competition for immigrants.
In a way, the state of California serves as a troubling microcosm of the United States. Saddled with overwhelming debt, growing entitlement programs, and an ineffective legislature, it appears as if the Golden State is headed to an inevitable decline. It once embodied the best of America – ingenuity, industry, entrepreneurship and diversity. Yet now it is facing unprecedented problems. It has been hit hard in the recession, and the state’s tattered finances have started to unravel. Restrictive laws in place prevent the legislature from raising revenues or cutting expenditures significantly without a referendum, which is unlikely to be approved. The deadlock on Capitol Hill and bulging federal deficits start to look awfully familiar.
Nevertheless, California’s position is hardly new. It has had to reinvent itself several times, most recently during the collapse of the tech bubble a decade ago. What underlying process drove this reinvention, and how can it be consistently applied to the United States as a whole?
While undoubtedly the answer is multifaceted, one can argue that an ability to attract the most intelligent and creative innovators in the world is a critical engine for California’s economic growth. Whether the aerospace industry in the 80s, Silicon Valley in the 90s, or perhaps green technologies today, they have led not in raw industrial output but in the marketplace of ideas and technologies. The Economist piece linked above explicates this in more detail on a national level: a significant portion of US research, innovation, and entrepreneurship is spearheaded by clever and hardworking immigrants who come to these shores. The combination of a comfortable lifestyle, a wild variety of different communities to choose from, and the company of other smart and creative people combines to provide an irresistible lure for immigrant entrepreneurs.
This has more benefits than just the obvious ones of stimulating new technological advances. America’s population is younger and growing faster than most of her developed peers, almost exclusively due to continuing immigration. This will help forestall some of the problems in economies like Japan, which face a crushing burden of old populations that cannot be supported by their workers. While some other Western European countries have also benefited from immigration, their immigrant populations tend to be more homogeneous and poorly integrated into both the workforce and society.
Even more so, the long-term growth prospects of the much-ballyhooed BRIC countries and the rest of the developing world are to a large extent predicated on continuing population growth and improvements in productivity. Neither is going to continue indefinitely; world population growth will level off in a few decades, and the gap in productivity between the developed and developing world will rapidly close. In such a world, where can economic growth and leverage come from? I would argue it will come from innovation, which will be driven by competition among countries to host the brightest and most creative thinkers in the world.
The United States has a significant head start in the race for talent, but it cannot rest on its laurels. As the gap in living conditions narrows, America will be hard-pressed to maintain its drawing power. It will have to rely on less tangible differences – economic and political freedoms, tolerance of differences, culture, and government policy towards immigrants. There is no doubt that the US has a commanding position in the first three, but immigration policy continues to be shortsighted. Policies that actively recruit talent from overseas and view a continuing influx of young workers as an asset may help to encourage economic dominance for the coming century.
You can view the page at http://www.theworldforgotten.com/con...erm-Prosperity
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Originally Posted by agamemnus
