I want it all and I want it now!

I was watching Joe Scarborough on MSNBC this morning at my parent's place, and he threw a couple of interesting numbers out.

India is graduating 20 times as many engineers as the US, the Chinese are graduating 10 times as many as us. These are apparently pretty good engineers and they have a few great engineering schools. They have many of the advantages in engineering and technology we have.

What the Indians and Chinese don’t have that we do is an overpriced labor force. As Indian and Chinese and other foreign countries continue to produce great engineers and business leaders, many trained here and then returning home, they have a huge pool of a billion people that are eager to learn and appreciative of the jobs that they have. I would assume kids in India grow up eager to work and partake of the advantages that are out there for them. Even if our workers are more productive, and I am not sure they are, they cost so much to employ that it makes no sense to hire them. Why build a plant in Michigan and walk into a union hornets nest? Build in Alabama where it is cheaper and just as good. Or better yet, build it in India.

American kids are affluent and lazy, they aren’t hungry. My kids are that way in a lot of ways. They have never known hunger. They have never known not having heat. They have X-Box, internet, iPods, Nintendo DS, gameboys. Life is painfully easy for them.

I was watching a commercial at my parents house, and the gist was that the whole family in the commercial was fighting over the computer and the internet. The solution? Buy everyone their own laptops! No more of the whole family gathering around one TV, now everyone gets their own TV in their room.

We also have a strange notion that every kid MUST go to college. Really? Even the ones who have no business and no need for a four year degree? They all go to college and none of them want to work their way up. I was meeting with a very successful business owner the other day, built a business up on sweat over less than a decade and now has a very good business. He employs 60 people and is growing every year. That is unusual in the Detroit area. His big complaint? Keeping young men employed. None of them want to work their way up and believe me this is a great place to work and a ton of opportunity. Fifty years ago young men would have lined up for jobs at a place like this. Now? The entry level work is beneath them, they want to move up and do the coolest jobs right away. When it becomes apparent that isn’t going to happen, they go somewhere else.

Heck, I am this way. Someone should pay me more and ask less of me. I am pretty lazy and discontent about a lot of things.

Our kids will not be able to compete in the coming decades. It is no longer true that American quality is far and away superior to that of anyone else. These are no longer backwards nations, but thriving economies full of people educated in our finest universities. 15 years ago when I was an undergrad, especially at Ohio State as a freshman, the engineering schools, math, computer science, economics were all foreign students. Half the American kids there couldn't write a coherent sentence if their life depended on it. Econ was an important one we overlook, because we already see the impact of an econ illiterate nation. No one understands and no one cares about the economic impact of political decisions. If we do X, then Y will result. Who cares, what do I get out of it! Heaven help the guidance counselor who tells a kid that they are probably not college material and should learn a trade. Momma will be in that office in minutes, and no doubt getting the school psychologist involved because of the damage done to poor Johnny’s psyche. Sure Johnny can’t spell “cat” if you spot him the “c” and the “a”, but he needs to go to college and get educated and the tax payers need to subsidize it. The Wall Street Journal had a great article on this last week: For Most People, College is a Waste of Time.

Barack Obama panders to this moral illness. It is all someone else’s fault, we need to tax the successful people more. No one encourages young people to work their way up and become rich. Bill Gates didn’t wake up one morning with billions of dollars. He built a business. But that takes too long. Better to heavily tax the “rich” and give it to me. Don’t encourage people to work hard and become rich themselves, instead drag the rich down. That is a dangerous attitude and these days it plays in Peoria. We are headed the way of the Roman Empire if we don't adjust our course soon.