Douglas Alexander: “Other than the war in Iraq, I suppose the subject we hear most about is jobs. We are worried, as are our constituents…”

“Other than the war in Iraq, I suppose the subject we hear most about is jobs. We are worried, as are our constituents, about the future. How do we keep good-paying jobs? We are aware that in this country of not very many people, compared to the rest of the world, we have about 25 percent of all the money in the world. We are a fortunate country. How do we, as the country grows, and as we worry about global competition--especially about how China develops--keep our good-paying manufacturing jobs? How do we keep our standard of living? We have struggled through that for a long time. We have worried about it for a long time. After World War II, we helped Europe get back on its feet through the Marshall plan and basically provided direct competition there, as the people making lower wages began to make some of the things we made. We struggled with Japan, worrying about whether the Japanese, in the 1980s, might take us over economically. But that didn't happen. We were able to keep our standard of living. We have watched Africa, the former Soviet Union, and other parts of the world grow and develop, even though people there were making much lower wages than Americans. We have been able to keep our standard of living. I want to talk today about one major reason why we have been able to keep that standard of living and why there is a lesson for us for the future there. I want to talk about our investments in the physical sciences, about our investments in science and technology.…”