In his book, Is America Falling off the Flat Earth1, Norman Augustine highlights the sharp competition that the U.S. has begun to face in the world stage…our competitors have not been standing still. The World Economic Forum dropped America from first to seventh place in its ranking of nations' preparedness to benefit from advances in information technology; the number of US citizens entering engineering school declined still further; the remnants of the legendary Bell Labs, the birthplace of the laser and the transistor and the home of many Nobel laureates, were sold to a French firm; a new generation of semiconductor integrated circuits-the mortar of the modern electronics revolution-was introduced; the largest initial public offering in history was conducted by a Chinese bank; another $650 billion has been spent on US public schools while the performance of its students on standardized science tests of those about to graduate declined further; American companies once again spent three times more on litigation than on research; and in July, for the first time in history, foreign automakers sold more cars in the United States than American manufacturers.
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