The Grass is Greener in China?

Has the U.S. lost its prime spot as an innovator on the world stage?

No, at least not when it comes to China. Chinese industry is good at copying, but not so great at inventing.

Let us not rest on our laurels assuming all they can and will do is copy. Japan was once notorious for copying before become an innovator. If you make the somewhat dubious assumption that only 10% of qualified engineers in China and India are any good, their good engineers would outnumber all the engineers of the West, whatever their quality. This will surely lead to more innovation from the East.

The September 20, 2010, issue of The New Yorker magazine (p. 66) has an apposite article about inventor James Dyson (cyclonic vacuum cleaner) and his campaign in England to correct the perverse incentives that have resulted in decline of manufacturing there. And in the US, I would add. Engineers are scorned as peons and Wall Street swindlers are praised as gurus. Actually making things in the US is passe; boosting your CEO bonus by liquidating assets and firing workers is what is going on in reality now. As in England, a parasitic class of ignorant toffs is in charge of industrial policy. To get the workers to vote for them, they enact ridiculously expanded employer liabilities, which results in manufacturers fleeing overseas and jobs disappearing.

I don't agree with those who think China can't invent, but America can. China gave us steel, paper, gunpowder, the blower, and many other inventions. Even the blind diligence of ants -- if there are enough of them scurrying around -- can produce amazing things.

America still has the capacity, but now lacks the will to invent anything. Inventors in America are treated even worse than engineers. They are the butt of ridicule, and they are accused of destroying jobs by their innovations. Big business and its chorus calls them "trolls." Even issued patents are endlessly reexamined and litigated by well-funded infringers who would rather spend millions on lawyers than anything for royalties or for in-house technology development.