Making Business Succeed

[FreakinDJ]

Making Business Succeed

Last spring, a congressional staffer introduced me to a new expression. She said, "Our job is to make business succeed."

My message to her had been that careers in science and technology were threatened as our economy de-industrialized. As manufacturing work goes to low-wage countries, the engineering and R&D jobs will go, too. American engineers and technical workers will have fewer opportunities for career growth. Already, engineering and science graduates compete with hundreds of thousands of foreign temporary high-tech workers for entry-level high-tech jobs. About half of all engineering and science students find work outside of engineering and science, when they graduate from college. Our policies are undermining high-tech workers in America.



Our free trade policy is a clear failure, running up 6 trillion dollars in trade deficits and de-industrializing our economy. Well, more precisely, free trade is a failure for communities and workers. It's been terrific for investors and executives of multinational companies.



For the last few decades, the role of civil society has dimmed proportionately. Unions are in eclipse. Environmentalists are forced to defend their principles with a business case, as if the earth were a market commodity. Social safety nets are dismantled, and families pick up more risk and cost. Science and scientists are brushed aside as politically inconvenient. Universities are chronically under-funded. We give teachers fewer resources and then blame them for our failure to compete globally.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-sorscher/making-business-succeed_b_812684.html