Well stated. The US can learn from Germany though. A mild midcourse correction could help.
The US needs to emphasize the value of all stakeholders. With this, the US will have greater growth over the longterm. Its the stable growth economies that grow and prosper over the boom-and-bust economies.
Gordon Gekko, in the original Wallstreet said greed is good for all stakeholder interests because it eliminates wastes.
Shareholder vs. Stakeholder (employees, customers, community,and investors as opposed to just investors) is an important consideration for CEOs. Wallstreet makes it difficult for companies to plan longterm, and many companies speak of the importance of the CUSTOMER (and the community), but mean INVESTOR.
CEO Entreprenuers get the chance to choose for themselves, stakeholders vs just shareholders. The work of some German companies over the last two decades is an encouraging example.
It didn't take too long before it was time to stop reading this article. After two paragraphs of this kind of stuff its easy to fill in the blanks.
America will do fine in the future. It is easy to lose site of this when looking at things on the surface such as imports vs. exports in the US and emerging markets vs the stale US economy.
America has the best univerities in the world, and the largest amount of highly educated workforce and entrepreneurs. This IS earning power for the 21st century.
With declining traditional labor forces, markets in the future will be based more around innovation and knowledge management. The US will be well positioned for this in the future even with all it's current troubles.
With the recent saving of our financial systems with the bailouts, the US government done the nation great service by ensuring the low cost of capital in the future. This is another reason America's future looks very bright.
We are also very well positioned geographically to optimize trade by sea and land to the US.
I agree, it's great to hear two experienced and varying perspectives.
I found the argument on location, and varying perspectives on where growth will be in the future around the web.
I enjoyed Fred Wilson's perspective on the developing markets in the New York City. Maybe there are some great advantages to New York that might be missed in Silicon Valley. Great ideas come from knowing external markets whether business, social, personal, global, etc., and NYC is a good place to be in the middle of a lot of external markets.
Mr. Gates has identified the 50 state school superintendents as critical stakeholders in his plan. With this identified audience, he's turned what seems an impossible task into a more manageable one.
Now he has an identifiable audience, with identifiable needs. He will be able to eliminate some of the noise that surrounds such a large issue because of this.
Ultimately, the goal is to build the best possible performance based system, but Mr. Gates saves the time and effort associated with re-crafting rejected ideas, by identifying and including necessary input from his crucial stakeholders (state superintendents) on the front end.