Ghost Towns: from sea to shining sea
Mayor of Braddock PA in a gutted old steel mill
Is the United States ready to compete for the world’s best jobs? In a study comparing the US to the world’s top 40 industrialized nations, the US ranked 40th or dead last in “rate of change in innovation capacity” over the last decade. In other words, we’re far behind the power curve when it comes to investing in our country’s future. While we were playing withreal estate bubbles and propping up our lifestyles with trillions borrowed from China, our competitors we’re quietly innovating their human capital infrastructure.
In the news this week, Intel, the chip maker recently decided to build its newest manufacturing plant in China. Intel’s CEO said that the Chinese government sweetened the deal with big tax savings, a deal the U.S. government couldn’t afford to compete with because we’re too burdened with bailing out our investment banks (with money literally borrowed from China). Intel ’saved’ $1 billion to set up their new $4.5 billion shop there. How’s that for a slap in our great country’s face? Our dour economy must not be dour enough, the rest of the industrialized world is eating our lunch and we don’t seem to care.
