uggabugga

HOME RSS | .

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Steve Jobs passing may be as good a date as any to mark ...

the end of the American Century.

Not to get into Apple fanboi stuff, but Jobs life and tenure parallels what may be the last gasp of economic satisfaction and superiority by the United States. First of all, Jobs grew up at a time when the states (especially California) were supportive of higher education. That brought forth the talent that, in Silicon Valley, got the computer revolution started. And then Jobs was part of the drive (by many others as well) that brought us much of the look and feel of so many electronic products that, for a while, were largely the province of American companies.

But that competitive advantage now appears to be over. Students have to pay much of the freight for a college education, a condition that is never good for a nation. The subsequent jobs risk going away to other parts of the world, which makes one wonder why bother with it at all. The rest of the world is catching up and is very hungry, and with unregulated globalization the competitive forces will be ferocious.

So maybe we can mark October 5, 2011 as an arbitrary - but reasonable - point in time when a distinctive American era ended.

posted by Quiddity at 10/06/2011 09:46:00 PM

2 comments

Students have to pay much of the freight for a college education, a condition that is never good for a nation.

A curious statement. Deciding what college to attend, if any, and what subjects to study is easily the most important economic decision a young person makes. Does one study business or art criticism? Engineering or general humanities? Prepare for your economic future or follow your whims? Career training or four years of Club Med? Perhaps four years in the workplace instead would be more profitable over a lifetime for many people.

It's generally accepted that people make better choices on investments on themselves that they have to pay for, so why would education be different?

And no, the student loan debt situation is not an example of market failure. It's an example of government corruption of the free market. The only reason why banks would loan $80,000 to any 18 year old who walked through the door was that the government was backstopping all the loans, no questions asked, and the only reason why colleges could demand $80,000 to attend their school was because anyone could borrow that much money for the asking. So now we have club med universities and a nation swimming in student loan debt -- hardly the intention of those who were so "generous" with making huge student loans available for the asking.

By jms, at 10/07/2011 6:22 AM

Steve Jobs was truly one of America's innovators/entrepreneurs but he was not the first and he won't be the last.

What did Steve study in college. He explains it all in his famous Stanford commencement address.

... and speaking of Stanford. It is the university that I associate with Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley was an innovative place when Jobs was still a child with companies like Fairchild, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard.

By Rockie the Dog, at 10/07/2011 6:45 PM