Best Natural Resource Is Still Plentiful

Best Natural Resource Is Still Plentiful

Would have us believe that the loss of our former industrial monopoly is attributable to the fact that we no longer are the world's major producers of many primary natural resources such as copper, phosphorus, molybdenum, bauxite, zinc, iron ore and lead, and that today's lower international transportation costs have made such resources available to other countries on a level playing field.

This explanation ignores what is generally believed to be the primary cause of our loss of technological world leadership: Since World War II we have had a disproportionately large military program, which was needed to deal with the Soviet threat. Then, President Kennedy superimposed the space program on that budget, and in the following years roughly half of all scientific and technical personnel in the U.S. were engaged in military or aerospace work. This massive diversion of technical talent into non-civilian areas deprived the economy of the talent to develop civilian-oriented products. Neither Japan nor Germany had military or aerospace programs and, hence, their scientific and technical talent was wholly devoted to civilian-oriented production with the inevitable consequence that, among others, we now drive German and Japanese cars, a field in which America enjoyed world-wide pre-eminence.

Natural resources do play a role, but not a critical one. The most important resource is a person's talent, and proof of this is that the highest per-capita income and living standard is enjoyed in Switzerland, a country with few natural resources.