Peter Cooper — Not Investing in Infrastructure, Culture and Knowledge IS the Burden We Place on Future Generations

If we were to believe most politicians, we’d be under the mistaken impression that government not investing today does future generations a favor. Leaving communications systems underdeveloped, road and transport networks crumbling, education and public health systems deteriorating, our cultural institutions eroding, developments in science and technology stagnating, and so on, will supposedly free future generations of any burden that might otherwise be imposed upon them.
If we set aside the politicians’ Orwellian Newspeak, it is obvious that investing in infrastructure today helps future generations, and not investing in it leaves future generations in a worse state. It is also clear that this investment for the benefit of future generations requires no reduction in our own current levels of consumption when, as now, many unemployed and part-time workers want full-time jobs and there are plant, machines and other equipment being left unused....

heteconomist
Not Investing in Infrastructure, Culture and Knowledge IS the Burden We Place on Future Generations
Peter Cooper

Xinhua — The rise of China's innovation

China has long been seen as the "world's factory," churning out vast mountains of low-quality goods, but it is also considered a nation incapable of producing innovative products and ideas.

Now, this is beginning to change -- China is closing the innovation gap. From drones to artificial intelligence, the Internet to genetic engineering, innovative Chinese companies are leading global innovation and reshaping the country's technology and business landscape.…

"To make China an innovative country and a leader in science and technology is what China must do now in pursuing development," President Xi Jinping said at the opening of the B20 summit in September.

High research and development spending, large numbers of engineering and science graduates and a wave of new businesses all signal that China has the potential to occupy the forefront of global innovation.

According to a global survey by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization, China is now of the world's 25 most innovative economies.

China moved up four places from the 2015 survey to 25th overall, making it the first middle-income economy to break into the top 25, an area traditionally dominated by highly developed economies.…

Despite embracing innovation, China still lags behind on some issues.

Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, said China must do more to protect intellectual property.

"Only if it protects intellectual property will China see more inventions. Ensuring originality is respected will attract more people into this field and help original ideas grow into industries," Ren said.

Dai Xiang believes the Chinese government needs further reform to cut red tape.
Calling it a painful process, Dai said it took him about eight months to register a joint venture with the Institute of Tsinghua University, Hebei Province.

"The administrative procedure should be simplified," he said.

Ecns
The rise of China's innovation

Xinhua, Editor: Wang Fan

John V. Walsh — China Closes the Innovation Gap

The headline reads, “The Rapid Rise of a Research Nation: China’s economic boom is mirrored by its similarly meteoric rise in high quality science.” This was not a headline in People’s Daily or China Daily but in the most prestigious of Western scientific publications, Nature.

The 38 pages, which follow that headline in a special Supplement to the journal Nature, tell us that China is now second in the world in high quality science publications and growing fast. This certainly contradicts the Western, dare I say racist, stereotype of the hardworking, but unimaginative, Asian drudge, dutifully churning out mounds of low-quality work.…

Back in the day, this was also said about Japan.

Consortium News
China Closes the Innovation Gap
John V. Walsh | former Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Medical School

Dimitri Papadimitriou — Is an R&D-Led Export Strategy Our Best Shot?

Dimitri Papadimitriou, in Reuters’ “Great Debate” series:

The U.S. needs an export strategy led by research and development, and it needs it now. A serious federal commitment to R&D would help arrest the long-term decline in manufacturing, and return America to its preeminent and competitive positions in high tech. At the same time, increasing sales of these once-key exports abroad would improve our also-declining balance of trade.It’s the best shot the U.S. has to energize its weak economic recovery. R&D investment in products sold in foreign markets would yield a greater contribution to economic growth than any other feasible approach today. It would raise GDP, lower unemployment, and rehabilitate production operations in ways that would reverberate worldwide.…For our R&D/export model, we posited a modest infusion of $160 billion per year — about 1 percent of GDP — until 2016. We saw unemployment fall to less than 5 percent by 2016, compared with CBO forecasts that unemployment will remain over 7 percent. Real GDP growth — instead of hovering around 3.5 percent, by CBO estimates, on the current path — gradually rose to near 5.5 percent by the end of the period.

The Multiplier Effect

Is an R&D-Led Export Strategy Our Best Shot?
Michael Stephens

Ethan Siegal — This is why we must invest in ourselves!

The saga of Curiosity.

Read it at Science Blogs
This is why we must invest in ourselves! 
Ethan Siegal
(h/t jeg3 in the comments)

WaPo — U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there

This report should be setting off alarm bells.

Haas, the former drug company chemist, has even harsher words. She plans to “get out of Jersey and get out of science” when her daughter graduates from high school in two years. “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.”

Read it at The Washintgon Post
U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren’t there
by Brian Vastag

How universities helped transform the medieval world

Policy choices made by the ‘states’ of the time – both in the education sector per se, and in the labour market – were thus crucial to the success of the first universities, and the investments made in the new form of human capital that they produced. This pattern was repeated in the public support for many of America’s research universities in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it bears remembering in the 21st century

Read it at Vox.eu
How universities helped transform the medieval world
by Davide Cantoni, Chair of Economic History at the University of Munich and  Noam Yuchtman, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, UC-Berkeley
(h/t Mark Thoma)

Lessons learned, lessons forgotten.