Heidi Alexander: “Mr. Friedman said he had just returned from Seattle, where he saw a stunning amount of innovation. He said it filled him…”

“Mr. Friedman said he had just returned from Seattle, where he saw a stunning amount of innovation. He said it filled him both with exhilaration and with dread. The question is, Is the United States prepared to deal with the innovation we may be seeing around the world over the next decade? Yesterday I heard Robert Zoellick, the retiring President of the World Bank, brief a number of us about the problems we are going to have at the end of the year and whether the U.S. Congress and President can rise to the challenge of governing so we can show the rest of the world we are capable of that. Mr. Zoellick says he travels a lot--that is an understatement given his reputation and the jobs he's held over the last 20 years--and he said that two-thirds of global growth over the last 10 years has come from developing countries and that advanced countries, such as Japan, and Europe and, to some extent, the United States have been stagnant or drifting. Mr. Friedman's column says that we should try to remember the things that made us great and preserve as many of those as we can. He said we need a plan, and then he suggested what he called a magic combination: No. 1, immigration of high-IQ risk- takers, as he called them; No. 2, government-funded research; and No. 3, cutting-edge higher education. That was the plan. That was the magic combination. He said: This is not a call to ignore hard budget choices we have to make.…”