When other Nations are spending on High Wage, High Tech R&D, Republicans want to Freeze and Cut Spending.

Just like an older neighborhood that gets infused the next generation home owners, the U.S. is watching competing countries change, updating their economies by investing high tech development. Thanks to the Republicans, and their troglodyte tea party whiners, we’ve decided to stop spending and keep pretty much to ourselves. As long as we keep muttering “we’re the greatest nation in the world,” what could go wrong? Good luck with that.

After seeing the loss of manufacturing, you’d think we would have learned our lesson. Nope. It’s happening again, this time with technology. Instead of investing in high tech, the U.S. continues to pour money into keeping the old infrastructure working, protecting the legacy companies that have controled our political agenda for generations. Don't say we weren't warned.

WaPo:The United States lost more than a quarter of its high-tech manufacturing jobs during the past decade as U.S.-based multinational companies placed a growing percentage of their research-and-development operations overseas, the National Science Board reported Tuesday. The rapid expansion of science and engineering capabilities in China and its neighbors pose a more formidable economic challenge to the United States, according to the group, with Asia rapidly boosting the number of engineering doctorates it produces and research dollars it spends.

The number of high-tech manufacturing jobs in the United States has declined by 687,000, or 28 percent between 2000 and 2010. China and developing countries in Asia have in recent years sought to lure more sophisticated manufacturing operations — and better jobs — by expanding their engineering prowess through government investment in education and research.

The decline in U.S. manufacturing “is not solely due to low-wage competition,” the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology wrote recently … found that other nations, by increasing their research and education spending, “challenge the world leadership role of the United States.”

There is one slow moving positive piece of news:

Other factors at work are expected to give a boost to U.S. manufacturing by making it more competitive with China. Wages in China have been growing rapidly, lessening their advantage over those in the United States. Moreover, increasing automation in the United States is lowering labor costs. Finally, analysts said, U.S. workers are far more productive. “China’s overwhelming manufacturing cost advantage over the U.S. is shrinking fast,” the report said.