Complacency Amidst Despair

I have to admit, I’ve never seen any time quite like what we are living through; I’m sure most of us haven’t. But at least during The Great Depression, everyone was in the same boat, and no other nation was accelerating in the background, destined to pass us. That was then, but today, not only is our economy is disarray – needing years to find significant restoration – but we are so concerned with cost-cutting that what is being cut the most is whatever global competitive advantage we may have had. The numbers aren’t pretty. We start with the announcement that China’s new supercomputer – the Tianhe-1A (“Milky Way” – pictured above), capable of 2,507 trillion calculations, or 2.507 petaflops, per second – is now the fastest computer on earth. But that’s just the symptom; the disease of complacency is vastly worse.

New York Times writer, Thomas Friedman, examined a series of studies that say it all: “In 2005 our National Academies responded to a call from a bipartisan group of senators to recommend 10 actions the federal government could take to enhance science and technology so America could successfully compete in the 21st century. Their response was published in a study, spearheaded by the industrialist Norman Augustine, titled ‘Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.’

“Charles M. Vest, the former M.I.T. president, worked on the study [and a follow-up report released on September 23^rd] … ‘Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,’ says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.” NY Times (October 26^th).

Does this sound like a country that is going to “recover” and then “prosper”? So many Americans are obsessed with implementing tax cuts and fostering deregulation (wasn’t the lack of regulation part of our economic fall?) that they are willing to accept a very substantial dismantling of our primary, secondary and college/university programs to save money. Save money for what? To live in a polarized society where the haves have more than ever, where the middle class is insufficiently educated to perform work that pays enough to sustain that middle class status? What exactly are we saving for? And how exactly are Americans going to earn enough money to pay back the very deficit that a deregulated Wall Street (the entire financial sector) foisted upon us?

Many Americans assume “greatness” and feel a sense of global entitlement. China isn’t the United States, and neither is India. Our standard of living will still endure to a higher level long after China’s gross economic numbers pass our own (around 2030?) simply based on per capital earnings. But that’s not the point! The statistic cited about show the one harsh fact that we seem not to care about: we’re falling in almost every standard of national achievement! It’s the direction we’re headed in that should concern us all. Greatness is not sustained by complacency!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the yellow alert has just turned red.