China Set To Surpass US In R&D Spending In 10 Years 233
dcblogs writes "China is on track to overtake the U.S. in spending on research and development in about 10 years, as federal R&D spending either declines or remains flat. The U.S. today maintains a large lead in spending over China, with federal and private sector investment expected to reach $424 billion next year, a 1.2% increase. By contrast, China's overall R&D spending is $220 billion next year, an increase of 11.6% over 2012, a rate similar to previous years. This finding is shared by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. 'China's investment as a percentage of its GDP shows continuing, deliberate growth that, if it continues, should surpass the roughly flat United States investment within a decade,' it said in a report last month."
Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
America has become an anti intellectual society. Particularly when talking about STEM. All the pundits like to scream how we need to hire eleventy zillion teachers and then turn around and pout and scream that they're not all social workers focused on bullying, eating disorders and special needs. And if anyone so much as suggests that all the MFA's in Italian poetry pay more in tuition to offset the cost of the courses in engineering we're told we're all redneck knuckledragging philistines.
Someday, soon, a bunch of Federal grant wielding puppeteers will put on a show in Esperato about how we used to have fire but the inventor died.
Focus on science and science education (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think... (Score:0, Insightful)
Think of all the wonderful things the USA could afford to do if we weren't so busy destroying capitalism. We've got record numbers of people out of work and on government assistance and an administration who only knows how to grow Washington DC in response. We are in a death spiral because we treat our elections like another episode of American Idol. We have a blueprint of how to be free and prosperous, but nobody pays attention to it anymore.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
America has become an anti intellectual society
That much is obvious even to the densest dim-wits since the appointment of a "Christian Scientist" as the head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Their problems isn't research spending (Score:5, Insightful)
It is cheating. Basically the culture in China right now is one of do whatever you want to get ahead. Cheating, lying, all ok, expected even. So it goes on in research all the time. Straight out fabricated results and such. The problem is, as Feynman said, Nature cannot be fooled. So you can have all kinds of results that say X causes Y, but if X doesn't in fact cause Y it isn't helpful.
It is a societal thing that will need to change before they start to produce more useful research.
Re:Just think... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:R&D Stealing (Score:3, Insightful)
and it's got absolutely nothing to do with spending. Instead the problem is with our educational system preferring to not teach our kids how to think for themselves. The continual dumbing down of America is happening each and every day in our schools when they refuse to teach Civics, Geography, Math - when so called high school grads working at McDonalds can't even count back change w/o the damn computer telling them how much of what type of change to give back. Hell I've watched the same kids getting their change and they don't even know how to count it anymore.
Re:Just think... (Score:5, Insightful)
What does debt have to do with capitalism? There is nothing about debt that precludes capitalism.
Had we let the auto companies fail, what would have been created in its place? Nothing. The expense of setting up a new car company is unbelievably expensive. All we would have gained by letting them fail was the loss of over one million jobs and the death of the American auto industry. I fail to see how that helps capitalism.
You make a point of singling out unions but fail to mention all the banks that were too big to fail and have no unions. Should we have let them fail? By your logic, we should have. But by all accounts we would have entered a full blown depression (ala 1939). Keep in mind we were losing over 700,000 per month at the time. Are you pro capitalism at the cost of a depression? I hate to tell you this but unrestricted capitalism is what caused the problem in the first place. Saving the banks (as disgusting as that feels) is what saved capitalism. The reason social programs like medicare exist is to save capitalism. Study history and you'll understand why.
What most capitalism purists fail to get is that there are no pure systems and that includes the economic system of capitalism. Do you think the stock market is a free market? Not even close. Such things just don't exist.
Re:R&D Stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, the wealth of the world is being redistributed, and the US and EU are coming up losers.
The wealth of the world being rebalanced so everyone has more equal wealth is a good thing, in my opinion. I'm not sure how it isn't, in any way at all.
Now, if you're saying that corporations are taking most of the money, and distributing the wealth unequally, that's a different issue, which is a result of our current system, which they've adopted to some degree.
More equal wealth will allow manufacturing and farming to actually exist in the west without subsidies, too. At the moment we're clinging on to high tech specialised manufacturing, but I doubt that will last for that long.