The American economy is relatively flexible, and various candidates for future growth are strong: technology, health care research, energy and higher education.
Everyone knows that Tyler plays fast and loose with the facts, but this statement really plumbs new, uncharted depths. Healthcare research seems to mean the pharmaceutical industry, and that field has been in trouble for 15 years. The major players have been on an outsourcing spree for the last decade, research is being gutted, and despite all that the development pipelines are not doing well. Energy is by its nature an extractive industry, which have this habit of creating some very rich people and many very poor people.
Finally higher education: higher education in the US is in trouble. Research is being done only at top-20 places. Even there the money is getting tighter, at any conference you'll go to you'll hear that so-and-so is shutting down their lab for lack of funds. The rest of the universities are repositioning themselves as vocational colleges, where students are paying for workforce training. It used to be that companies would train their staff, but nowadays a college diploma is the equivalent of a GED; you cannot afford not to have one. And then there is this proliferation of useless Masters degrees. Higher ed in its current form is a growth industry, but the country would be better off if it weren't.
Everyone knows that Tyler plays fast and loose with the facts, but this statement really plumbs new, uncharted depths. Healthcare research seems to mean the pharmaceutical industry, and that field has been in trouble for 15 years. The major players have been on an outsourcing spree for the last decade, research is being gutted, and despite all that the development pipelines are not doing well. Energy is by its nature an extractive industry, which have this habit of creating some very rich people and many very poor people.
Finally higher education: higher education in the US is in trouble. Research is being done only at top-20 places. Even there the money is getting tighter, at any conference you'll go to you'll hear that so-and-so is shutting down their lab for lack of funds. The rest of the universities are repositioning themselves as vocational colleges, where students are paying for workforce training. It used to be that companies would train their staff, but nowadays a college diploma is the equivalent of a GED; you cannot afford not to have one. And then there is this proliferation of useless Masters degrees. Higher ed in its current form is a growth industry, but the country would be better off if it weren't.