Comments

My hunch is that other government's will definitely follow suit. I don't think we have much choice but to "kick start" things again. And once again, my mind is rightfully jolted by the observation that the highest quality "product" we crank out in this nation is "knowledge." No news, but to this day it shocks me that we can do that and still seem at times to be caught up in so many industrial woes.

Posted by Dan Gunter at April 16, 2009 10:08 AM

attributes to VC superstar John Doerr: "We should staple a Green Card to every science, technology, engineering, and math advanced degree."

You see this type of sentiment expressed all the time, and it is always by financial types. Never by engineers. Has someone like John Doerr ever tried to make a living as an engineer in the United States? In India engineers are esteemed, but in the US they are treated poorly and not paid well. Why? Supply and demand. There are TOO MANY engineers in the US. We should be importing doctors to lower the price of health care. We should be importing bankers to lower the average incomes of financiers. These professions make good money in the US. Engineers don't.

It drives me crazy when I see things like Doerr's statement. We don't pay engineers particularly well because we don't particularly need many of them. We have too many already.

Posted by Dirk at April 16, 2009 12:47 PM

First, Mr Chambers is NOT a financial type. And neither am I. But I agree 100% with Mr Doerr, and so do almost all of my Silicon Valley-Cambridge friends, mostly entrepreneurs.

Posted by tom peters at April 16, 2009 2:23 PM

Don't know where Dirk works but we're constantly looking for great engineers. And some of our best come from China and India. Doerr couldn't be more on target

Posted by Bruce Bortree at April 16, 2009 2:52 PM

Yes, I know entrepreneurs want low cost labor, and hence looser immigration. Labor is a major cost in most businesses. I worked for an engineering and construction company for years (Parsons Corp). Most of the engineers were foreign born. They complained that in India doctors and engineers made the same income, but in the US it was doctors who were the big earners. 50 years ago the disparity wasn't so strong, but after the 1965 immigration reform engineers' incomes started to drop.

Further, the engineering culture is always penny pinching. I was in on hiring decisions, and it always came down to who was willing to accept the lowest salary. Now I work in marketing. It's a lot easier; the world isn't always trying to drive your salary down. I am much more of a commodity and less of an expert than when I was an engineer, but pay is higher and the range of job possibilities is greater. Which is why I no longer believe people should become experts: generalists make the money.

Posted by Dirk at April 16, 2009 3:40 PM

Ah, thank you so much for this post, TP It's quite encouraging. A good friend is an executive engineer at one of the Big 3. He often speaks of the diversity of engineers from foreign countries who are employeed with his company. Most are excellent and nearly all have been trained in American universities. We are partners in one of the businesses that I mainly run. He would NEVER give up engineering no matter what the pay was. He LOVES it so much, even after 26 years and through difficult seasons.

Posted by Judith Ellis at April 16, 2009 4:47 PM

And how about stapling a green card to every grade-school, etc., teacher who loves to teach? Then we wouldn't need green cards for all those other folks in the next generation ....

Posted by Mike L. at April 16, 2009 6:07 PM

Buy Palm, Inc. when it was $1.14 a very short time ago - it is now $9.90. $200k then - $1.7M+ now in your account.

Posted by C Love at April 16, 2009 8:28 PM

John Dorr is wrong.

Instead:
We should staple a Green Card to every science,
technology, engineering, and math advanced degree
[awarded by any accredited university anywhere in
the world.]

Poorly paid engineers?

Yes, there have always been companies that have
underpaid their talent. Like Wang, they usually
don't attract enough good people. . . and
disappear.

And remember the Fundamental Law of Employment:
Jobs done well lead to more jobs.

More engineers doing their jobs well in companies
that handle the rest of their business well leads
to greater demand for engineers -- more and at
higher pay.

John
Shakespeare's Debtor

Posted by Shakespeare's Debtor at April 17, 2009 7:38 AM

I attended a services conference a while back. One keynote speaker said that the so called developed world might be better off going back to more focus on a manufacturing based economy. The argument was that China et al were going hell for leather to "move up to" a services based model which is going to massacre the margins in service - strange world

Posted by PaulH at April 17, 2009 9:57 AM

Cisco a manufacturing company? Really? No - Cisco is a design and solution company. Then outsource just about all manufacturing. You know, the part where one needs a large headcount, big factories.

US still manufactures a great deal of stuff, and a lot of world-class stuff. Just not enough to support a country of 300 million people hell bent on a good life. So it's quite simple: to the millions of 'middle class' people who have by now been downsized to earning about $12/hr doing service jobs, do you want to go work in a factory, you know that kind that have sprung up by the millions in China, for $10/hr. If so, a lot of manufacturing jobs might just be re-outsourced back to America. Don't laugh. With the way the economy is going, a middle class wage might just get stabilized to $10/hr. Er ... keep that big flat TV screen you bought running for some time, like 10 years. 'Cause you ain't going to afford to buy a replacement.

There - the new American Dream. A manufacturing job.

Posted by The Real Deal at April 20, 2009 11:52 PM

The Real Deal - It seems unfathomable that a country the size of the United States would merely be a service economy. What about Green jobs? At the gym this evening I watched Van Jones and Robert Redford on Larry King Live talk about green jobs and greenbacks. Many of the jobs that this administration is advocating are manufacturing ones. Jones talked about the necessity of having both a bottom up approach (grassroots) and a top down approach (Washington.) There are good examples of implementation of initiaties in various cities throughout the US that was encouraging. Perhaps this will be good for re-building the middle. It will undoubtedly take many initiatives and innovation in many fields.

In thinking about JP Morgan's day, innovation lead and financing followed. However, a major difference seems to be that private industry financed innovation and not the government. (Yes, I understand the need for the government to step in and assist in getting us out of this slump while private industry is retracting and people saving.) Where are all of our multi billionaires? Why don't they finance innovation as Morgan did back in the day? Perhaps then we wouldn't need financing from other countries. In spite of a kind of ruthelessness Morgan seemed to have (Edison seems to have experienced this), there is a certain responsibility that Morgan had that is admirable indeed. He invested in America seemingly singlehandedly.

Posted by Judith Ellis at April 21, 2009 1:01 AM

Judith:
Green jobs sounds 'good' on the surface but in reality it is very difficult. Otherwise it is a big industry by now. The trouble with green is it does not pay, i.e. provide a reasonable ROI as measured by standard capitalist finance. Because virtually our entire industry was built over a century without regard to green. We screw the environment for a free lunch. Therefore going green means adding a cost to our existing infrastructure without a return. Meaning no return to us in the pocketbook, but a big return back to the environment. Can you take that beautiful environment and deposit it into a bank for cash? No.

Unless we establish a new paradigm, enforced by law, on calculating ROI that must include the cost to the environment, green will go nowhere. If the government do that the right-wing anti-green neocon fanatics will declare civil war. Also, if we do that while our international competitors do not, you know what that means. This goes to the core of the Kyoto protocol - which China and US rejected. Thus no green jobs.

The trouble with green is not the environment, but we human - operating without limit to selfishness and stupidity. The environment has and will always be fine. Nature is governed by the laws of physics, not the laws of man. It will do what's necessary and that include wiping out mankind.

Posted by The Real Deal at April 22, 2009 1:28 PM

Thanks, The Real Deal. You have made some very thoughtful comments here--much appreciated. Regarding ROI, is Green not an industry? Is energy not an industry? It seems that the most important measure of a capitalistic system is demand. If there is a demand for retrofitting i.e., the demand for windmills, solar panels, etc., does this not create a market in which an investor can get a reasonable ROI? (Cars aside, as it will be less efficient to retrofit old cars.) My brother, Ellington, has a friend in Dubai who was recently looking to invest in Green technologies in the States. He is a savvy Dubai businessman and would not even consider such if there was no profit in it, if he could not get a reasonable ROI.

"Therefore going green means adding a cost to our existing infrastructure without a return. Meaning no return to us in the pocketbook, but a big return back to the environment."

There is no doubt that the infrastructure of the great industrial age was built without regard to Green. But does it mean that we have to continue on this path? There is a bit of a lassie faire stance in your comment with regards to our financial system and infrastructure. Have we not created these? If we have done so they can be changed. But change is often challenging. Many, such as Robert Redford, have been on the forefront for many years now. Even if we cannot overhaul systems overnight, a consistent push in the right direction is important. This also goes for our acknowledgement of what each of us nationally and internationally, governments and citizens, can do to make a difference. We also have to be better stewards of our natural resources.

"The trouble with green is not the environment, but we human - operating without limit to selfishness and stupidity. The environment has and will always be fine. Nature is governed by the laws of physics, not the laws of man. It will do what's necessary and that include wiping out mankind."

This statement is quite interesting in two regards:

1. The role individuals play as humans in the environment.
2. The governance of nature by the laws of physics.

I am no scientist, nor am I incredibly knowledgeable as a great many others on this subject. My knowledge is limited. But I have done some reading and have often pondered the scripture in Genesis which reads "You reap what you sow, as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest." It seems very plausible that the earth may not remain and if I’m not mistaken science does indicate that humans do affect the environment by what we do. (I know this is a hot topic.) As a student of religion, I have wondered if what is known as the apocalyptic "hell" or "lake of fire that burns with fire and brimstone" will be of our own making. It can also be the hell in our own minds.

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With regards to nature, it is indeed governed by the laws of physics. This is why we build dams and levees, to manage and protect; otherwise, we would not have a chance against nature and benefit from her. There are also a great many things about physics that we do not understand. Up until the 20's we that thought that the universe was static and unchanging. But we now know that the universe is expanding.

Nature need not wipe us out. We have a remarkable ability to destroy civilizations; we destroy ourselves.

Posted by Judith Ellis at April 22, 2009 6:37 PM

Judith:
Much appreciate for your insightful views, as usual. (We have communicated previously but I used another alias.)

My only comment is with regard to "If there is a demand for retrofitting i.e., the demand for windmills, solar panels, etc., does this not create a market in which an investor can get a reasonable ROI?"

Of course this is true. Let analyze the sequence of events:

a) Traditional non-green power generation come back to bite us big time in the form of pollution and warming, which threaten to blow up the ROI.
b) Thus threatened, and with demand undiminished, we developed alternatives like wind turbine.
c) Making wind turbine work is non-trivial, but we did it after some 20 years of R&D. It does take the highest of high tech you know - turbine, construction (in some of the most severe locales), farm aggregation, distribution, integration into existing grid.
d) A few thousand engineering jobs current exist in the entire world in turbine design. There are a good number of jobs during construction, then small number of maintenance jobs once built.

Now let's look at regions where there is already massive turbine farms operational.

Question 1: Did electricity bill goes down, and did the associated local green economy grew.

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No!!

Question 2: Who profited from the construction? Only a few companies in the entire world supply all turbines. Since 2000 about half a million turbines were installed worldwide. What is the green economic impact?

Compared to the total size of the economies where large numbers of wind turbines were installed, the green incremental economic impact is so small my Excel spreadsheet has to express it in scientific negative exponent numbers.

Green economy, especially jobs, is a highly questionable proposition to grow existing economy.

Why? Because of the un-monetizeable ROI problem I mentioned in previous post.

Think about that.

Posted by The Real Deal at April 23, 2009 1:28 AM

The number of US citizens opting for engineering and science in general appears to be falling. Only medicine seems to remain in high demand.It's all about money.

Posted by Atul at April 23, 2009 5:29 AM

Thanks, The Real Deal. I have taken your dictate and I have thought about that. Pease consider this:

In the early morning I just happened to catch the House Energy and Commerce Committee discussing climate control legislation on C-Span. The panel, including the CEO of Duke Energy, James Rogers, talked about nuclear energy as a source of energy as well as technology as a means to assist in Green development. Rogers spoke of not so much of having a refrigerator list of things to be reminded of daily but technology that would assist us in this regards that would become second nature. Would this not create jobs? Yes, we need engineers to develop the technology but we will also need means of production.

This is a funny statement. I smiled when I read it:

"Compared to the total size of the economies where large numbers of wind turbines were installed, the green incremental economic impact is so small my Excel spreadsheet has to express it in scientific negative exponent numbers."

It might also be a good idea not to think of just one way of solving this issue but many ways of doing so. Is it not possible to have many ways of tapping into renewable energy and improving the environment? The economy that we now have is made up of many parts. (I also appreciate your point about infrastructure.) By the way, with regards to taking "the highest of high tech," is this a problem? Does it not usually take a few, or in some cases one person, to create a technology that is then immediately developed and redeveloped endlessly?

Scientists and engineers are often working on the same kind of development and there is a breakthrough from which others develop or sharpen their study or model. This was definitely the case with alternating current electrical power, for example. While we want to encourage science and technology without doubt, if nothing more than to have a plethora of ideas working on the same problem, breakthrough usually comes from a few.

I have not bought into your "un-monetizable ROI problem" wholeheartedly to say the least. But I'm still thinking. Demand is still key and how that demand is diversified matters. Wind turbine is one way. A little while back I read a paper which even posited that the humans were not the cause of the earth heating up and but the sun itself; the paper included NASA scientists studies. (If I can find it again, I will post it.) Do you have any books or papers to recommend on the topic in general? Just for fun, I thought I'd include this little editor's note I found on ABC's 20/20 that included an array of distinguished scientists.

In a piece, "A Real Inconvenient Truth" John Stossel writes:

"The most impressive demonstration in Gore's movie is that big graph of temperature and carbon dioxide levels stretching back 650,000 years. Carbon dioxide is thought to amplify temperature increases, but his graph seemed to show clear cause and effect: When carbon dioxide levels rose, so did temperature. It suggested that carbon levels controlled temperature. But a real inconvenient truth is that the carbon increase came AFTER temperatures rose, usually hundreds of years later. Temperatures went up first."

By the way, wazzup with all the aliases? No answer required—really; it's always the ideas that matter most for me, no matter from whom or where they come. Thanks for yours and for reading this.

Posted by Judith Ellis at April 23, 2009 12:47 PM

Atul - You have a point there. A major push by President Obama is to encourage science and math again. We seem to have been lagging behind for some time now in science and math in middle schools and high schools in the US. Of course, we train the best in our universities which is partially evident in the number of foreign students in our colleges and universities in these subjects.

Posted by Judith Ellis at April 23, 2009 12:58 PM