The keys to prosperity and competitiveness in the 21st century are innovation, entrepreneurship and brain power that’s why I think we need to be doing things now that foster those and as well I think we need to be choosing policies now that don’t just bring some relief in the short term but help us create jobs here at home and grow our economy over the longer term as well.
If you assume as I do that innovation is the cornerstone of 21st century competitiveness, then I think at macro level, as a nation, we need to plan to lead in those industries that will foster the most innovation. For example, those industries include energy, health care, space technology, information technology. And if we’re going to lead in those industries, government can certainly play a role by investing its federally funded RND into those areas. The private sector can play a role and government can encourage more private sector RND through its tax policies or tax credits and we need to make sure that when we retrain workers that we are giving them the skills so that they can compete for jobs in the energy sector, for example green technology or nuclear technology. And we need to be giving children tools like mathematics, science, the ability to be entrepreneurial and innovative as they grow into their adult years.
We should be retraining workers so that they can move for example from the automotive industry into the energy industry. We know that we must achieve a higher degree of energy independence. We know that that will mean nuclear power, clean green technologies, battery operated cars. We should be making sure that we are retraining workers so that they can go from for example a production line at General Motors that’s building the gas guzzler that probably won’t be sold very much in the future to perhaps working on new technologies and potentially in new industries.
Well, I think America has to first embrace the changing realities of the 21st century. It is a global economy. We can try and hide from that but we cannot stop the globalization process. We can absolutely continue to compete and lead and in order to continue to compete and lead, we must focus very much on the things that have always made us strong. We have always been the most innovative country in the world, we must continue to be. We have always been the place in the world where entrepreneurial new ideas bring. We must continue to be. We have always been the nation with the hardest working, most productive employees in the world. We must continue to be and we must always be the nation with the smartest people and the best educated people in the world. And that’s why we need to invest in innovation and entrepreneurship and job creation and in education and training.
It is worthwhile for the new administration to spend some time with capital hill coming up with broad agreements about what are our priorities, what are our goals, what are our agendas before we dive right into specific policies.
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