Three years ago, I wrote about the sale of the Holmdel Bell Labs facility that was my workplace in the mid-1980s. That was mourning the loss of the building.
The Business Week article talks about the loss of the basic research capabilities with ever shrinking budgets. As recently as 2001, Bell Labs had 30,000 employees; today there are 1000.
The effects of the massive scaling back of American science and engineering research in the 1990s and 2000s may just be beginning. Unless reversed, it is likely to have its greatest impact a decade from now, when the missing discoveries of a generation earlier would have been expected to come to commercial fruition. It’s time to identify—and fix—the root of the problem.
The article suggests an aggressive tax credit system to finance $20B in new fundamental research, to enable a new innovation ecosystem to begin to build critical mass.
From the government’s perspective, the money put toward innovation today is the highest-return investment it can make.
According to the article, only 20% of American jobs pay better than $60,000. The remaining 80% pay an average of $33,000 raising concerns about the foundations of a strong middle class.
I commend the article to you and thank Alec for the pointer.
So much industrial R&D is focused on development rather than research. What steps will Canada take to ensure its a place in a next generation economy?