Comments on: Top 10 Innovative Countries: USA About to Fall?

By: Jman

Jman — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:34:09 +0000

The problem is that our people are not motivated enough to do any job other than extreme low level. Plus, they are content to do that low level job in a really shitty way.

If the population isn’t willing to move “up the curve” it is hard for us to compete.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:51:00 +0000

And suprisingly, they also feel the same way. They still stick to their guns and their ideologies. But, here we are googling over the interesting innovation, technology and uniqueness of Japanese gadgets and they are always interested about what is on the other side of the Pacific. For example, the IPhone.

Like I always say, best to have the both worlds.

Still, we are losing the ground. Slowly, but surely.

By: Jerad Kaliher

Jerad Kaliher — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:09:43 +0000

@dave, Interesting question. I would say that Japan is pretty heavily invested in US innovation, both figuratively and literally. Because they have had such a huge surplus over the years they buy the one thing that is out on the market without any caps – US bonds. If we ever have a major economic downturn we will be taking Japan with us and I think they know it.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Japanese culture and business. I even joke with friends, when they get back from trips I ask them how “The Future” was.

By: dave

dave — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:18:41 +0000

My question is: How much longer do you think Japan will be on the top of that list?

It seems like we are headed towards a slightly different but same path as the US. Straight down. Not right now. But, 10 years from now.

By: Jerad Kaliher

Jerad Kaliher — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 05:34:01 +0000

@Matt, my argument insists that innovation has always been and still is our core competency. If you strip any performing organization of it’s main function it withers and dies. By looking out for our ABILITY to innovate we are in fact creating and stabilizing jobs for every American.

History may suggest that common men do overturn governments, but the insight for those revolutions are from a select few who are not always all that common. You might even say they were innovators.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:42:29 +0000

Nice to see an article so focused on American standing int he world while forgetting that those jobs being exported take food out of families mouths here. It’s nice that the brightest minds in the world could be attracted here, but not everyone fits into that catagory. What happens to the simple common man? Dont you ever forget that we make up the overwhelming majority and history has shown again and again and again: Hold us down too long, we’ll turn you over like a sack of sand and watch you drift away on the winds of change.

By: Jerad Kaliher

Jerad Kaliher — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:22:00 +0000

@Jay, I agree with you, it isn’t our simple belief in God that is stinting our ability to innovate. It is the ideologies that influence religious belief and denounce reason. Although Jefferson believed in a Creator, his god was a deists god. It is the same god that is often confused as the Christian God in Einstein’s quotes as well.

A quote from Wikipedia:
“Deism differs from theism in that according to Deism God does not interfere with human life and the laws of the universe.

Deists typically reject supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and divine revelation prominent in organized religion, along with holy books and revealed religions that assert the existence of such things. Instead, Deists hold that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of one God or supreme being.”

So when Jefferson is quoting “Creator or God” he is in fact speaking of a supreme being that is detached from the activities of humanity. I think he might be appalled to see religious doctrine influencing political agenda as one of the largest disasters of the modern world.

“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826

By: Jay Ehret

Jay Ehret — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:31:25 +0000

Republicans are responsible for our fall in the innovation standings because of a belief in God? Please.

I think Thomas Jefferson might be more appalled by a government intent on removing evidence of God from every nook and cranny of the nation. The same man who wrote “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” might also be surprised at the attempts to create a nation absent of God. Jefferson might also be upset that scientists with a political agenda use his name to further the notion that belief in God is a problem when it comes to the advancement of our nation.

By: Jerad Kaliher

Jerad Kaliher — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:32:40 +0000

@Wild Bill, I agree, everyone should be under the scrutiny of the system when coming into the country. The goal isn’t to have people fly under the radar, have a breakthrough and fly back home, filing their patents elsewhere. We want a stake and we should help build these people up, whether American or Immigrant, so that they can make a difference.

And sure, I may have been a bit too hasty with my ‘mass exodus’ when describing stem cell research.

By: Wild Bill

Wild Bill — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:27:24 +0000

I agree, bring in people who want to work, just make sure they are here legally. Although I do not agree with you on embryonic stem cell research the rest of this article is dead on. Even the creationism part. America needs to get back to being a nation of ideas and inventions.