Summary # 3

In "Are We Losing Our Edge?" Michael D. Lemonick talks about how America is starting to slack when it comes things like science, technology and research and development while the rest of the world is improving. He discusses how more and more often people are coming to the United States to receive their degree and then leaving back to other countries to use them. He states that "America is starting to lose ground to other nations."(464). This means that after being on top for so long other countries are starting to catch up to America in terms of science and technology. This has very harmful consequences as Stanford University president John Hennessy states in Lemonick's essay " 'Imagine that the next round of innovations in networking is done in India or China. How many years is it before either Cisco relocates to India or China and grows most of its new jobs there or the next Cisco is actually created there?' "(468). That statement means that if we keep being sluggish about these issues we are going to lose jobs and corporations to other nations. Lemonick accounts for the pause in America to three things: the federal government cutting back funding for research and development, the short term product goals for corporations and the drop in quality of education in math and science at the elementary and high school levels. (465). He describes how these three forces contributed to 9/11. Lemonick then describes how the competition between democrats and republicans to address the issue of how bad our situation had become after not really being involved. He argues that the United States used to be ahead of the game but is now slacking. There is an upside, according to Lemonick, people in America are now starting to see our problem and make changes. Let's just hope we keep up our enthusiasm.