Industry as an engine for change

Friedman puts forth a relatively good effort today (although the basic idea is ripping off a Tierney column from a week ago...Update: check that, it was Matt Miller):

Is there any company in America that should be more involved in lobbying for some form of national health coverage than General Motors, which is being strangled by its health care costs? Is there any group of companies that should have been picketing the White House more than our high-tech firms, after the Bush team cut the National Science Foundation budget by $100 million in 2005 and in 2006 has proposed shrinking the Department of Energy science programs and basic and applied research in the Department of Defense - key sources of innovation?

Is there any constituency that should be clamoring for a sane energy policy more than U.S. industry? Is there any group that should be mobilizing voters to lobby Congress to pass the Caribbean Free Trade Agreement and complete the Doha round more than U.S. multinationals? Should anyone be more concerned about the fiscally reckless deficits we are leaving our children than Wall Street?

Yet, with a few admirable exceptions, American business has not gotten out front on these issues. In part, this is because boardrooms tend to be culturally Republican - both uncomfortable and a little afraid to challenge this administration. In part, this is because of the post-Enron keep-your-head-down effect. And in part, this is because in today's flatter world, many key U.S. companies now make most of their profits abroad and can increasingly recruit the best talent in the world today without ever hiring another American.

Those are some strong paragraphs (plug for his book notwithstanding). In particular, I feel strongly that the educational deficit he mentions is key and has gotten a lot less attention than that of the budget deficit or cute white girls who have been abducted. The jobs and skills we have taken for granted are rapidly becoming endangered, yet the administration has absolutely no strategy with which to deal this concept. Education in this country is woefully unfunded from an administrative level and woefully underprioritized from a societal level.

Unfortunately, the mindset of our society on this issue is key, because, as Friedman points out in that last sentence, industry doesn't care: they will just go hire an Indian engineer or whatnot. As long as they get the skills they require, they don't really care about nationality. As such, the people of this country will have to take the lead role on this.

Our current role in the world and the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed will not last with this kind of foundation. It seems so patently obvious to me, and for the life of me I can't understand why the people of this country don't demand more from their representatives on this issue... too busy with the judicial nominations I guess.