We lead China, but politics could cost us
Polls shows major misperception about economy, space
Matt Reed - Florida Today (Commentary)
What would be worse for Brevard than losing jobs or a space race to China?
It would be worse to “choke” — for our nation to blow its big advantages over China in nearly every category of human pursuit, including manufacturing, finance, energy and spaceflight. And I fear we just might choke if we keep waiting for an election to solve our problems instead of moving by ourselves to invest, learn and profit.
I buried my head in my hands at the sight of a new Gallup Poll that shows Americans now consider China the world’s “leading economic power.” A discouraged 53 percent of Americans see China as No. 1, while just 33 percent believe the United States leads. Half of us have given up on U.S. leadership for the long term, Gallup found.
C’mon, people. Snap out of it.
You think China’s economy is bigger than ours?
America’s gross domestic product —– post-bubble, mid-recession –— was three times bigger than China’s in 2010, the last year available from the International Monetary Fund. Yet China’s population is 4.3 times bigger than ours.
Which means the average American worker is about 11 times more productive than a Chinese worker, the conservative Heritage Foundation calculated. In manufacturing, it takes more than eight Chinese workers to equal the output of one American.
Think China “owns” America because its $2.85 trillion in foreign securities includes 8 percent of our public debt? That’s still less than half the U.S. overseas portfolio of $6 trillion.
Think the Chinese are working and we’re not? Unemployment is twice as high in China.
Think we rely too much on foreign oil? China depends on it even more — along with its heavy reliance on foreign grain and metals. We don’t need those from others.
And our education system is hardly hopeless. Our school teachers spend more hours in the classroom than Chinese teachers, says a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Robotics teams from Brevard County have beaten Chinese students in head-to-head matchups.
Unfortunately, nothing gets out the vote like a good scare. What’s more scary than Chinese workers out-producing us for jobs or China foreclosing on Interstate 95?
You’ve got to hand it to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who mentions China in one of this year’s best stump-speech lines:
“Is this government program so important that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?”
Watch our smoke
The most foolish misconception is the Chinese space program could soon surpass our own — proof, politicians say, we need someone new from one political party or the other to tear up our game plan and set an all-new vision for NASA. To use a football analogy: We’re losing to the Chinese in the fourth quarter, so stop running it up the middle and throw a long bomb.
But we’re not losing. America can maintain a magnificent lead in spaceflight just by steadily funding its current plans. Thinking otherwise could kill our momentum.
Consider last fall, the Chinese space program docked two unmanned craft in orbit for the first time. It was a real breakthrough — for China. With lavish spending by its federal government, China hopes to reach the moon and start a space station by 2020.
Wow. And here?
· A Las Vegas hotel magnate has already launched his own inflatable space station into orbit and plans more.
· A dot-com billionaire this year will fly a smaller, faster private rocket to deliver supplies to our vast International Space Station.
· A NASA probe the size of a MINI Cooper, outfitted with a laser and robotic chemistry lab, is on its way to the Red Planet right now to look for drinkable water.
· The president’s budget just funded a next-generation heavy-lift rocket to fly to the moon and Mars.
Meanwhile, American middle-schoolers can order up photos of past U.S. landing sites on the moon, taken by a pair of new, orbiting science observatories. The images show our astronauts’ stuff still lies where they left it on the lunar surface 40 years ago.
Fear the fear itself
My point here is not to tell Floridians to relax. It’s to tell them to stop pouting and get to work.
Learn a new skill or language. Invest in a local startup. Launch a new product. Write your resumé. Don’t wait for help from anyone you see give speeches on TV.
We don’t need a dramatic turnaround to save us from China.
If anything, we need small stuff that helps us help ourselves, like visa reforms to let in more tourists. Or Small Business Administration loans to help Brevard County entrepreneurs with great ideas but no venture capital.
We have profound advantages over China that we can build upon right now. But as with a great team that forgets it’s the favorite, inaction or bad decisions made out of political fear could someday cost us our lead.
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