Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, highlights the need for more investment in long-term basic research and in K-12 science and math education.

What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policy-makers could take to
enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully
compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st Century? What
strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?

Conclusion:

Having reviewed trends in the United States and abroad, the committee is deeply concerned
that the scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding
at a time when many other nations are gathering strength. We strongly believe that a
worldwide strengthening will benefit the world’s economy—particularly in the creation of jobs
in countries that are far less well-off than the United States. But we are worried about the
future prosperity of the United States.

Although many people assume that United States will
always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch
as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which
a lead in science and technology can be lost—and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost,
if indeed it can be regained at all.

This nation must prepare with great urgency to preserve its strategic and economic security.
Because other nations have, and probably will continue to have, the competitive advantage
of a low-wage structure, the United States must compete by optimizing its knowledgebased
resources, particularly in science and technology, and by sustaining the most fertile
environment for new and revitalized industries and the well-paying jobs they bring. We have
already seen that capital, factories, and laboratories readily move wherever they are thought
to have the greatest promise of return to investors.

RISING ABOVE
THE GATHERING
STORM
RISING ABOVE
THE GATHERING
STORM

Energizing and
Employing America
for a Brighter
Economic Future

Full Report: http://www.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11463.pdf