Quote Originally Posted by bmolsson
R&D is not only access to staff for research jobs.
In the end, the larger portion of jobs are not found in R&D, and as long as the production etc are in your country it doesn't really matter.

Note: In the case of US, I believe that if there are not enough researchers, they will be "imported" rather than the actual jobs "exported"......
I wish you were right. However, I've watched R&D organizations shrivel up to nothing in the past 6 years. These were strong productive organizations that had been built up over many decades and have survived various economic cycles.

There are more than enough researchers in the U.S., it is the research culture that is disappearing. 30 years of falling R&D investment tends to have that effect... Complacency is a killer of R&D.

And has been said, production has been moving overseas as rapidly as possible. It is not necessarily one following the other, but it is difficult to justify R&D after the production facilities are gone. So the skilled manufacturing and technical jobs have been moving with the production. What is skilled today will be mainstream tomorrow, and those jobs can be done in low wage environments.

The U.S. economic engine has been: Leadership in research > develoopment > new technology production > licensing/exportation of the production. As long as the R&D pipeline is maintained, the system works, new production replaces the old. Cut back on the R&D pipeline enough...and the whole engine comes to a halt.