China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.

[scentopine]

Source: New York Times

NatCore Technology of Red Bank, N.J., recently discovered a way to make solar panels much thinner, reducing the energy and toxic materials required to manufacture them. American companies did not even come look at the technology, so NatCore reached an agreement with a consortium of Chinese companies to finish developing its invention and mass-produce it in Changsha, China.

“These other countries — China, Taiwan, Brazil — were all over us,” said Chuck Provini, the company’s chief executive.

President Obama has often spoken about creating clean-energy jobs in the United States. But China has shown the political will to do so, said Mr. Pinto, 49, who is also Applied Materials’ executive vice president for solar systems and flat-panel displays.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/global/18research.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268885706-/W6+WoQWZVcdDBMKqWI1nw

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I've been warning for some time that eventually Wall Street will figure out how to outsource the very last things Americans can do with a good education: core research and development.

This leaves only designing ways to kill huge numbers of people with advanced weapons systems as our final competitive advantage in the USA. No matter how much Obama scolds us and blames teachers, we cannot educate ourselves to minimum wage.

Its a death spiral - college costs go up 2X the rate of inflation, our testing requirements go up, our outsourcing is increasing 10% or more year over year, and our real earnings are going down for working class, year over year.

Until we make it illegal for US companies to train low wage and unregulated labor markets we will continue to be a nation of insurance sales people and burger flippers. Most companies are outspending municipal school systems training workers overseas. You can think of this as selling our intellectual property to Asia for pennies on the dollar. You WILL pay higher taxes so your child in kindergarten can learn how to use the latest microsoft products. Meanwhile companies like microsoft and AT&T are training 24 yr olds in Bangalore and elsewhere who are using a computer for the first time in their lives.

It is a disgrace.

[Proletariatprincess]

1. It IS a disgrace...

It is hard not to think that corporations don't want US workers. We are expendable it seems. Unemployment is a desirable result of their actions. When all the jobs are gone and this is a poverty stricken 3rd world country, they will move on to exploit somewhere else. They want consumers, not productive workers. Technology and self service has already eliminated millions of jobs. Work has been dumbed down and contracted out.
Remember Jeremy Rifkin's book, 'The End of Work'? I think he saw this coming, but no one thought that it was by design. Maybe it actually is part of their evil plan all along. Just eliminate the working classes altogether.

[jody]

6. The BuzzFlash Mailbag, August 7, 2003 "They kept taking"

They kept taking

First they took our steel mill jobs, and the people ignored the cries of steel mill workers.

Then they took our textile jobs, and the people ignored the cries of textile workers.

Then they took our automotive jobs, and the people ignored the cries of automotive workers.

Then they took our high-tech jobs, and the people ignored the cries of high-tech workers.

Then they bribed the people's representatives in Washington and the people ignored their loss.

And the only jobs left were in the U.S. Foreign Legion, defending the worldwide assets of those who had taken the people's jobs and stolen the people's government.

The people shouted, "We the people are dead, long live the corporation."

And the high priests of Mammon laughed about how easy it was to destroy the world's longest running, most successful experiment in democracy.

And the thirsty and hungry and sick and imprisoned and naked prayed to Mammon to have mercy on their wretched. miserable bodies because the people had lost the very soul of democracy,

"And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." (Genesis 6:6)

[marginlized]

2. The Future was Fresno

if you flip through the yellow pages in Fresno, what you see is 60 pages of insurance sales people. And lots of lawyers. Oh, and an annual unemployment rate that exceeds 15% because most people pick grapes.

[marginlized]

3. Solution?

Everyone in America has sold themselves out. Even our best Universities have become contract whores to the Corporations. So how do you fix this?

If Universities are involved in research, do you track what they're doing? Put restrictions on who they contract with? Keep professors from cashing in on their research? That's anti entrepreneurial.

You regulate Corporate behavior to require local content - work must be performed in America? You regulate access to American markets?

In 2003 Warren Buffet suggested a pseudo market be created in Balance of Trade credits, similar to the Carbon Market people are trying to create now. Exporting companies would be granted BOT credits, and Importing companies would be required to buy or trade for them. But even Buffet admitted that his scheme would amount to an import tax and raise consumer prices. So nothing new there.

[AdHocSolver]

8. Forget complex schemes. Just impose import duties and quotas to take profit out of offshoring.

All of the so-called "free trade" agreements like NAFTA, the WTO, MFN status for China, and its ilk are merely schemes to prevent protection of American workers from having to compete with slave wage labor in foreign countries.

American consumers have NOT benefited from cheap imports as corporations have kept the lower costs of manufacture as increased profits rather than give the consumer a real break.

Moreover, the increased debt incurred by the U.S. has resulted in devaluation of the dollar and hidden creeping inflation.

Even more problematic is the heavy loss of jobs. Fewer jobs means Americans suffer economically, and governments collect less taxes as people who don't earn income don't pay taxes.

There are many more subtle ways in which America is hurt by the offshoring of jobs through such mechanisms as "free trade".

Free trade is a scam, and requires direct intervention to rein it in, or the U.S. economy is going to experience a severe and permanent shrinkage.

The time for clever solutions has long since passed.

[scentopine]

10. Agree - derivative solutions will fail as they always do - it just takes time

and those that stand to profit early on, take their cut for handling the transaction and get out. Those left are screwed. We give our technology away to the most restrictive and protective markets in the world - ASIA.

Their restrictive markets are help their own nations and hurting ours. We need to be more restrictive and protective. The other way is killing us.

You know its bad when even the H1Bs are complaining about losing their jobs to outsourcing.

[starroute]

4. It isn't just a problem with the r&d

As I recall, Americans invented the transistor -- but it took the Japanese to start making cheap transistor radios. And a lot of the electronics industry wound up in East Asia because Americans firms wouldn't invest in something new and untried when they had a comfortable niche doing what they'd been doing for 30 years.

Basically, we need more hungry young start-ups -- and that means we need to fix both the deregulation that encourages monopolies which can squeeze out the start-ups and also things like health care which make it harder and harder for new businesses to get off the ground.

[jody]

5. Not to worry, the stimulus package will provide jobs for displaced workers in the service sector.

"Can I supersize your order for you?"

[FarCenter]

7. Process invented by a Brit prof at Rice University licensed to NatCore gets commercialized in China

Just great!

Note also that the President of NatCore is a US Naval Academy graduate. The company's legal address is his residence.

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. If only the USA had "stayed home"

.
.
.

It would have been a slower growth, but it would also be more "solid".

Exporting the military all over the globe necessitated exporting their goods and technology,

and an obvious off-shoot of that was that other countries would pick up the skills and capabilities . .

Number ONE example of that is the proliferation of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles around the globe.

If only the USA had stayed home . . .

(sigh)