"The U.S. currently does a pretty good job of identifying top STEM talent — which was a big focus of the original NDEA — but it lacks the broad-based mid-level engineering competence required to compete with China in high-tech industries. This is a rationale for cheaper college and free community college (Republicans might be appeased by pairing this with incentives for students to learn STEM subjects). "
Working internationally and with Europeans, I've actually thought a lot about this.
The problem with the United States is we have become a heavily service and financial oriented economy.
At the very top of engineering and science level, we do relatively well.
The issue is as Noah say, we lack the mid-level engineering (and technical) competence to compete with China and India.
The issue is the same people who would be good at this level, don't go into technical/engineering fields. They have better opportunities going into non-stem fields, make more money, more prestige, etc....
I see a lot of discourse about we need to just more training to get the less technically skilled trained for these positions, but I'm skeptical.
Yes there is certainly some untapped talent available, but I honestly think a bigger problem is the allocation of talent.
I attribute this to two issues.
1. demand. so much of this level of work has been off-shored, that there currently aren't enough jobs in this area. Therefore the salaries for this skilled technical/field engineering work just aren't high enough or in demand enough to entice talented people into this area.
2. culture. Because of the above, the perception of this productive technical work with involves a combination of manual and intellectual skills isn't as prestigious as it should be.
I think the United States is going to need a pretty serious reboot of culture and the economy to fix the issue.
The easiest bet is as Noah says to increased skilled immigration, but it would take massive amounts of immigration that won't fly politically to transform our economy, and there is something unsettling about the idea that the United States can't provide their own internal expertise as well.
To top it off, this mid-level engineering/technician education is best provided by big State Schools and Technical Colleges, and already I am reading that the Four-year college industry is about to kill Biden's free community college program because they fear competition.
The simple fact our country graduates way to many Bachelor of Arts degrees and not enough Associate of Science degrees.
We produced top level engineers to design new high-tech products. But instead of producing the type of highly competent factory supervisors and technicians to build these products, we instead pump out marketing and business majors who handle the paperwork to off-shore our production, import the products and then sell the products.
I am optimistic that Elon Musk might be starting a renaissance of American industrial power. It will be interesting to watch trends around the areas he locates his Tesla and other manufacturing facilities.
Do other manufacturing industries pop up? Do the local schools start popping out more techs and engineers?
I agree with this. It's close to impossible to find junior (or experienced) technical managers. As a result we have to hire new grad lawyers (I kid you not) for anything where you have contracts or some kind of agreements involved and teach them the technical aspects. For other fields we have to hire whoever has a heartbeat and can possibly manage to figure out how VLOOKUP works.
In my line of business we hire a bunch of "uneducated", or educated but behaving as if they are uneducated. A lot of these are trump voters.
We have to pay them well considering their educational level and effort they put in. $90k and up for someone with ~4 years experience, i.e. someone who should be able to take care of themselves work wise.
What do we get?
People who work the bare minimum, who will not take responsibility and move work forward. They will happily blame someone else for not doing something even though they never informed them. People who will fake Covid sickness to get two free weeks off.
The US work force is atrocious. Not because of education but because of attitude.
I think it is a bit unreasonable to define these people as "Trump voters". They may be, but that is likely because of where you are located. I have worked from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles to North Carolina in the Semiconductor industry. We have no shortage of educated-but-need-managerial-babysitting employees. I do not find that they particularly correlate with political party.
(Unless we are just using "Trump Voters" as a general purpose slur in which case I am on board.)
I'm not sure I'm that unreasonable, most of them are trump voters. I'm in the Bay area. The reason I get to deal with them is that part of the work we do is construction (some of that highly technical). And that draws in the people who self identify as "working class" with trucks and all.
I'm not talking about people lacking experience and therefore needing management. That's just natural.
I'm talking about people who just want money and are not willing to put in the effort and they're not ashamed of not doing their job properly or with bad quality. A lot of them are subcontracting for us and are costing their companies a fortune in wasted time redoing and delaying work. Of course there are good people as well but overall it's pretty bad.
There's a lot of work to be done and we need them.
I compare this with how it was when I lived and worked in Asia and Europe.
The best work ethic was Japan but that might be a special case.
Yeah... his comment seems overly politically biased. I wish he would add more.
I am not a fan of Trump, and really do not agree with Trump voters, but I work in the Energy Industry with a lot of Trump Voters (skilled blue collar workers), and they all work hard. I honestly don't see a difference between effort within an industry related to political leanings.
I know the UK data on this but not the US, but I'd be surprised if it were dramatically different. In the UK there the only STEM students who go into STEM fields are people who do medicine and allied subjects. Engineering is next highest at 26%, natural sciences, maths and compsci are all about 10%. So the case has to be that there's some big postive externality or public good created when people go into STEM careers that aren't research for the claim that we're not training enough STEM people to make sense.
I gotta say, as a leftist, this is pretty convincing stuff. Not that I'm for increased *military* spending (nor am I American) but it does sound pretty disappointing that America can only do public goods under the guise of national security. And it's nice that you agree that the culture of natsec-public goods has to change but aren't there a lot of collateral damages when it comes to framing everything as a natsec question? Like increased militaristic culture, xenophobia?, increased nationalism?
But given the current circumstances in the US right now, Biden really should've taken a leaf out of Eisenhower's book and instead bank on the natsec part of his BBB bill (tech capability vis-a-vis China)
Every time one of my colleagues makes a crack about our defense budget, I have to point out that it paid for me to go to grad school in our field (the purest of basic research, nothing to do with war). Of course, the fraction of defense funding that goes to our field is tiny, but thoughtless cracks deserve thoughtless comebacks.
DARPA is one of the best research organizations on the planet and I really don’t think Americans know enough about it or give it enough credit. Obviously the internet as stated above was one of their inventions, but they also created GPS, the graphical user interface and mouse for your computers, Siri, drones, and tons of lesser known improvements to various items that we use everyday. If we can’t increase NSF funding, we should double DARPA. Heck we probably should regardless.
The massive expenditure on healthcare is a clue. We spend a lot and have worse outcomes relative to other countries and that spending doesn't necessarily drive innovation either (side note anecdotal digression: my cardiologist who also founded a tech company could only sell into single payer markets after getting rejected out of just about everywhere in the US).
It's not clear to me that whatever money we put into the defense sector will drive another internet type discovery. All the examples you site are from WW2 & Cold War, so the question is: Has the massive spending on the War on Terror produced any public goods?
Follow on question: Where in that pie chart is the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program? Without that, no one would be driving a Tesla today.
You stated that Americans recognize the military as a public good which is why politicians don't haggle, but that isn't true. Politicians never haggle over military spending, but the general public often does. This is due to the incredible expenditures in propaganda by the Military-Industrial Complex. Not just on media propaganda, for which there is plenty, but they have spread themselves out into every district across the US to manipulate the politicians.
Let's do an audit of the $2.3 trillion spent in Afghanistan, for instance. How much of that money was spent on the actual goal of uplifting the Afghan people? How much was spent on infrastructure for the citizens?
Based on the cries from humanitarian aid organizations worldwide, we spent nothing to help the people. How is that possible?
Because military contractors set up shop there to extract the $2.3 trillion we paid toward improving Afghanistan, would you call that worthwhile R&D spending?
I suspect that much of the billions we fork over to Israel is also for R&D, where they test new products that kill Palestinians. How glorifying?
Because our Oligarchy is so inept, we've become solely independent of a semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan, which is why we have broken the One China policy agreed to. Instead, the MIC has been feeding their NGOs and media money to excite a war with China. And once again, it has nothing to do with humanitarian or human rights issues; it has everything to do with Oligarchic profits.
By the way, the Oligarchy also loves universities that spend taxpayer money producing R&D. Then, once a product or service is ready for market, it is handed over to the Oligarchs to make profits. So we socialize the costs and privatize the profits.
I’m Audrey, Rory’s Daughter. I am a 15-year old Junior at the South Carolina Governors School of Science and Math (GSSM) for short. I am interested in Economics, and my dad said that this blog would be a good way to learn.
Thank you for the subscription Noah.
My comment is that do we really want to use the Defense Department to be used as a political tool? Politics’ has always used morally questionable methods to get results, I am not sure about using the defense department in the same way is right.
Using the Defense Department might work, but it seems like it would open up opportunities for corruption. Also, would using department of defense resources blur the line between national security and national services?
Your dad is right about this being a great place to learn economics! My only econ class was in high school and I've learned a ton from the discussion here and on Twitter.
You're completely right that it opens up doors for rent seeking and potential abuse. Matt Yglesias in his blog talks a lot about "Secret Congress" and this is a version of that. With the filibuster intact, Republicans decide which avenues they'll allow action on and defense is always one of those.
It will be very interesting to compare with China since their military crosses economic lines even more explicitly than ours does.
I can see your point about using the Department of Defense. I hate it when civilians weaponize military support.
What are some of things you support? Would you be willing to use the Department of Defense if it meant we got nationalized healthcare like you and I have. (We have tricare because I am retired military).
Also, why did you get all the looks in the family.
Probably better to use 2019 than 2020 for that first graphic --- there was some not entirely usual non-defense spending in 2020, as you may recall. In normal years defense is more like 15% of federal spending, not 10%.
Oct 21: "Given the unique opportunities and challenges posed by emerging technologies, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) today announced it is prioritizing its industry outreach efforts in a select few U.S. technology sectors where the stakes are potentially greatest for U.S. economic and national security. These sectors include, but are not limited to, artificial intelligence, the bio-economy, autonomous systems, quantum information science and technology, and semiconductors." https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-newsroom/item/2254-ncsc-fact-sheet-protecting-critical-and-emerging-u-s-technologies-from-foreign-threats
"The U.S. currently does a pretty good job of identifying top STEM talent — which was a big focus of the original NDEA — but it lacks the broad-based mid-level engineering competence required to compete with China in high-tech industries."
I understand that requirement that candidates produce "Diversity Statements" is having a negative effect on recruiting talent in universities for STEM.
Agree with funding DoD and DARPA in the background, but would modernizing the power grid be the place to start as publicly impactful and salient low hanging fruit?
I want to comment on the following:
"The U.S. currently does a pretty good job of identifying top STEM talent — which was a big focus of the original NDEA — but it lacks the broad-based mid-level engineering competence required to compete with China in high-tech industries. This is a rationale for cheaper college and free community college (Republicans might be appeased by pairing this with incentives for students to learn STEM subjects). "
Working internationally and with Europeans, I've actually thought a lot about this.
The problem with the United States is we have become a heavily service and financial oriented economy.
At the very top of engineering and science level, we do relatively well.
The issue is as Noah say, we lack the mid-level engineering (and technical) competence to compete with China and India.
The issue is the same people who would be good at this level, don't go into technical/engineering fields. They have better opportunities going into non-stem fields, make more money, more prestige, etc....
I see a lot of discourse about we need to just more training to get the less technically skilled trained for these positions, but I'm skeptical.
Yes there is certainly some untapped talent available, but I honestly think a bigger problem is the allocation of talent.
I attribute this to two issues.
1. demand. so much of this level of work has been off-shored, that there currently aren't enough jobs in this area. Therefore the salaries for this skilled technical/field engineering work just aren't high enough or in demand enough to entice talented people into this area.
2. culture. Because of the above, the perception of this productive technical work with involves a combination of manual and intellectual skills isn't as prestigious as it should be.
I think the United States is going to need a pretty serious reboot of culture and the economy to fix the issue.
The easiest bet is as Noah says to increased skilled immigration, but it would take massive amounts of immigration that won't fly politically to transform our economy, and there is something unsettling about the idea that the United States can't provide their own internal expertise as well.
To top it off, this mid-level engineering/technician education is best provided by big State Schools and Technical Colleges, and already I am reading that the Four-year college industry is about to kill Biden's free community college program because they fear competition.
The simple fact our country graduates way to many Bachelor of Arts degrees and not enough Associate of Science degrees.
We produced top level engineers to design new high-tech products. But instead of producing the type of highly competent factory supervisors and technicians to build these products, we instead pump out marketing and business majors who handle the paperwork to off-shore our production, import the products and then sell the products.
Yep, there's a chicken-and-egg thing with technical education and industrial policy.
I am optimistic that Elon Musk might be starting a renaissance of American industrial power. It will be interesting to watch trends around the areas he locates his Tesla and other manufacturing facilities.
Do other manufacturing industries pop up? Do the local schools start popping out more techs and engineers?
I agree with this. It's close to impossible to find junior (or experienced) technical managers. As a result we have to hire new grad lawyers (I kid you not) for anything where you have contracts or some kind of agreements involved and teach them the technical aspects. For other fields we have to hire whoever has a heartbeat and can possibly manage to figure out how VLOOKUP works.
In my line of business we hire a bunch of "uneducated", or educated but behaving as if they are uneducated. A lot of these are trump voters.
We have to pay them well considering their educational level and effort they put in. $90k and up for someone with ~4 years experience, i.e. someone who should be able to take care of themselves work wise.
What do we get?
People who work the bare minimum, who will not take responsibility and move work forward. They will happily blame someone else for not doing something even though they never informed them. People who will fake Covid sickness to get two free weeks off.
The US work force is atrocious. Not because of education but because of attitude.
I think it is a bit unreasonable to define these people as "Trump voters". They may be, but that is likely because of where you are located. I have worked from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles to North Carolina in the Semiconductor industry. We have no shortage of educated-but-need-managerial-babysitting employees. I do not find that they particularly correlate with political party.
(Unless we are just using "Trump Voters" as a general purpose slur in which case I am on board.)
I'm not sure I'm that unreasonable, most of them are trump voters. I'm in the Bay area. The reason I get to deal with them is that part of the work we do is construction (some of that highly technical). And that draws in the people who self identify as "working class" with trucks and all.
I'm not talking about people lacking experience and therefore needing management. That's just natural.
I'm talking about people who just want money and are not willing to put in the effort and they're not ashamed of not doing their job properly or with bad quality. A lot of them are subcontracting for us and are costing their companies a fortune in wasted time redoing and delaying work. Of course there are good people as well but overall it's pretty bad.
There's a lot of work to be done and we need them.
I compare this with how it was when I lived and worked in Asia and Europe.
The best work ethic was Japan but that might be a special case.
Yeah... his comment seems overly politically biased. I wish he would add more.
I am not a fan of Trump, and really do not agree with Trump voters, but I work in the Energy Industry with a lot of Trump Voters (skilled blue collar workers), and they all work hard. I honestly don't see a difference between effort within an industry related to political leanings.
I want to reflexively argue. But, can I ask what industry and more details for context.
I know the UK data on this but not the US, but I'd be surprised if it were dramatically different. In the UK there the only STEM students who go into STEM fields are people who do medicine and allied subjects. Engineering is next highest at 26%, natural sciences, maths and compsci are all about 10%. So the case has to be that there's some big postive externality or public good created when people go into STEM careers that aren't research for the claim that we're not training enough STEM people to make sense.
Sorry Nathan. I am not exactly sure about the last sentence. So I apologize if I misinterpret what you said.
First, we are talking about industry and production, so lets eliminate healthcare. It belongs in its own category.
Lets stick to the 26% engineers. I am assuming this is 26% of Stem majors, so I am not sure about what percentage of the total population is.
Also, I think what Noah means is not just Engineers, but also technicians. The sort of people that work and maintain high tech factories.
So I don't want to get side tracked by the STEM label.
I think... Noah is saying we need a larger portion of our economy to be on the productive side of tech... not just the design side.
I gotta say, as a leftist, this is pretty convincing stuff. Not that I'm for increased *military* spending (nor am I American) but it does sound pretty disappointing that America can only do public goods under the guise of national security. And it's nice that you agree that the culture of natsec-public goods has to change but aren't there a lot of collateral damages when it comes to framing everything as a natsec question? Like increased militaristic culture, xenophobia?, increased nationalism?
But given the current circumstances in the US right now, Biden really should've taken a leaf out of Eisenhower's book and instead bank on the natsec part of his BBB bill (tech capability vis-a-vis China)
Great column but perhaps you should cover how monolpies are impacting the economy as well.
The US overall seems to be functioning as one big monopoly. Either because it is or because back door arrangements have been made not to compete.
Every time one of my colleagues makes a crack about our defense budget, I have to point out that it paid for me to go to grad school in our field (the purest of basic research, nothing to do with war). Of course, the fraction of defense funding that goes to our field is tiny, but thoughtless cracks deserve thoughtless comebacks.
DARPA is one of the best research organizations on the planet and I really don’t think Americans know enough about it or give it enough credit. Obviously the internet as stated above was one of their inventions, but they also created GPS, the graphical user interface and mouse for your computers, Siri, drones, and tons of lesser known improvements to various items that we use everyday. If we can’t increase NSF funding, we should double DARPA. Heck we probably should regardless.
The state makes war, and war makes the state. (btw, Trump tried to eviscerate ARPA-E, but Congress put the $$ back in and then some).
Not mine: Charles Tilly
The massive expenditure on healthcare is a clue. We spend a lot and have worse outcomes relative to other countries and that spending doesn't necessarily drive innovation either (side note anecdotal digression: my cardiologist who also founded a tech company could only sell into single payer markets after getting rejected out of just about everywhere in the US).
Anyway, I wonder if the "internet came from DARPA" days are long gone as defense contractor (where I used to work) have consumed much of the spending that is likely to stay in the confines of those companies' IP. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/07/the-bunker-the-contractors-pie-keeps-growing/
It's not clear to me that whatever money we put into the defense sector will drive another internet type discovery. All the examples you site are from WW2 & Cold War, so the question is: Has the massive spending on the War on Terror produced any public goods?
Follow on question: Where in that pie chart is the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program? Without that, no one would be driving a Tesla today.
You stated that Americans recognize the military as a public good which is why politicians don't haggle, but that isn't true. Politicians never haggle over military spending, but the general public often does. This is due to the incredible expenditures in propaganda by the Military-Industrial Complex. Not just on media propaganda, for which there is plenty, but they have spread themselves out into every district across the US to manipulate the politicians.
Let's do an audit of the $2.3 trillion spent in Afghanistan, for instance. How much of that money was spent on the actual goal of uplifting the Afghan people? How much was spent on infrastructure for the citizens?
Based on the cries from humanitarian aid organizations worldwide, we spent nothing to help the people. How is that possible?
Because military contractors set up shop there to extract the $2.3 trillion we paid toward improving Afghanistan, would you call that worthwhile R&D spending?
I suspect that much of the billions we fork over to Israel is also for R&D, where they test new products that kill Palestinians. How glorifying?
Because our Oligarchy is so inept, we've become solely independent of a semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan, which is why we have broken the One China policy agreed to. Instead, the MIC has been feeding their NGOs and media money to excite a war with China. And once again, it has nothing to do with humanitarian or human rights issues; it has everything to do with Oligarchic profits.
By the way, the Oligarchy also loves universities that spend taxpayer money producing R&D. Then, once a product or service is ready for market, it is handed over to the Oligarchs to make profits. So we socialize the costs and privatize the profits.
If anything, the most dire threat to America right now isn't from outside its borders. And I'm certainly not talking about BLM, NFAC or Antifa.
Here's a clue: it dragged America into a war about it a century & a half ago, and the losers are still relitigating the outcome.
I’m Audrey, Rory’s Daughter. I am a 15-year old Junior at the South Carolina Governors School of Science and Math (GSSM) for short. I am interested in Economics, and my dad said that this blog would be a good way to learn.
Thank you for the subscription Noah.
My comment is that do we really want to use the Defense Department to be used as a political tool? Politics’ has always used morally questionable methods to get results, I am not sure about using the defense department in the same way is right.
Using the Defense Department might work, but it seems like it would open up opportunities for corruption. Also, would using department of defense resources blur the line between national security and national services?
Your dad is right about this being a great place to learn economics! My only econ class was in high school and I've learned a ton from the discussion here and on Twitter.
You're completely right that it opens up doors for rent seeking and potential abuse. Matt Yglesias in his blog talks a lot about "Secret Congress" and this is a version of that. With the filibuster intact, Republicans decide which avenues they'll allow action on and defense is always one of those.
It will be very interesting to compare with China since their military crosses economic lines even more explicitly than ours does.
Hey Audrey... awwwwww. I love seeing you here.
I can see your point about using the Department of Defense. I hate it when civilians weaponize military support.
What are some of things you support? Would you be willing to use the Department of Defense if it meant we got nationalized healthcare like you and I have. (We have tricare because I am retired military).
Also, why did you get all the looks in the family.
Probably better to use 2019 than 2020 for that first graphic --- there was some not entirely usual non-defense spending in 2020, as you may recall. In normal years defense is more like 15% of federal spending, not 10%.
Begrudgingly agree national security justifications seem to get the job done. Even Chomsky has a similar perspective.
Oct 21: "Given the unique opportunities and challenges posed by emerging technologies, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) today announced it is prioritizing its industry outreach efforts in a select few U.S. technology sectors where the stakes are potentially greatest for U.S. economic and national security. These sectors include, but are not limited to, artificial intelligence, the bio-economy, autonomous systems, quantum information science and technology, and semiconductors." https://www.dni.gov/index.php/ncsc-newsroom/item/2254-ncsc-fact-sheet-protecting-critical-and-emerging-u-s-technologies-from-foreign-threats
"The U.S. currently does a pretty good job of identifying top STEM talent — which was a big focus of the original NDEA — but it lacks the broad-based mid-level engineering competence required to compete with China in high-tech industries."
I understand that requirement that candidates produce "Diversity Statements" is having a negative effect on recruiting talent in universities for STEM.
Any proof for this?
Also, just a really good idea.
Agree with funding DoD and DARPA in the background, but would modernizing the power grid be the place to start as publicly impactful and salient low hanging fruit?