We should be taking advantage. Now is when we should be stapling a green card to the diploma of any foreign student who earns an advanced degree at any U.S. university, and we should be ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here. They would invent many more jobs than they would supplant. The world’s best brains are on sale. Let’s buy more!

Barrett argues that we should also use this crisis to: 1) require every state to benchmark their education standards against the best in the world, not the state next door; 2) double the budgets for basic scientific research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; 3) lower the corporate tax rate; 4) revamp Sarbanes-Oxley so that it is easier to start a small business; 5) find a cost-effective way to extend health care to every American.

We need to do all we can now to get more brains connected to more capital to spawn more new companies faster. As Jeff Immelt, the chief of General Electric, put it in a speech on Friday, this moment is “an opportunity to turn financial adversity into national advantage, to launch innovations of lasting value to our country.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources

1. John Wilkins wrote: well, those who are anti-immigrant and hate the government won’t like these ideas.  I personally do believe we should eliminate corporate taxes.  It would save a lot of people - including the government - some money.  Accountants might have a hard time, however. June 29, 10:32 am | [comment link]

2. Sick & Tired of Nuance wrote: “...ending all H-1B visa restrictions on knowledge workers who want to come here.” Yes, let the corporations have complete control so that they can keep all those American software engineers flipping burgers and pay the foreigners less.  Hey, if the foreign worker doesn’t like something about the work environment…just send them packing…no unemployment insurance! They came for the minimum wage jobs, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a minimum wage worker.  Then, they came for the blue collar jobs, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a blue collar worker.  Then, they came for the white collar jobs, but there was no one left to speak out for me. Globalism is evil. June 30, 6:28 pm | [comment link]

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