Something worth reading in the New York Times "the quiet crisis"

The New York Times > Magazine > It's a Flat World, After All
Thomas L. Friedman writes about globalization and whether the U.S. is up to the new challenges it presents.
"Some three billion people who were out of the game walked and often ran onto the playing field... people of China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia. Their economies and political systems all opened up during the course of the 1990's so that their people were increasingly free to join the free market".
"And be advised: the Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom."
Instead of whining about outsourcing, Americans and Western Europeans should be thinking about raising "the bar" and doing things better.
"A quiet crisis" is eating away America's capability to compete in this new world market and is the product of three gaps now plaguing American society.
The first is an "ambition gap". Compared with the young energetic Indians and Chinese, too many Americans have gotten too lazy. As David Rothkopt, a former official in the Clinton Commerce Dept., puts it the real entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.
Second, we have a serious "numbers gap". We are not producing enough engineers and scientists. And finally we are developing an "education gap" C.E.O's...are not just outsourcing to save on salary. They are doing it because they can often get better-skilled and more productive people than their American workers."

Despite some peoples wish to "shut the gates", impose restrictive tariffs and regulations, economic protectivism will not work. A closed society unwilling and unable to compete in a global marketplace is destined to decline. America's ability to constantly create new products and services has always been the source of plenty, only widening the middle class and it is this ability to innovate that will best serve us in the future.