# John Mace Says: "Americans are too stupid to educate themselves..." **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 15, 2010, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-mace-says-americans-are-too-stupid-to-educate-themselves/560703 "2010-11-15T04:02:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-mace-says-americans-are-too-stupid-to-educate-themselves/560703/181 "2011-03-28T05:17:44Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > 80% think there is a problem, they don’t agree with your solutions, just the existence of a problem. I’d beg to differ on that. No politician even runs on a free trade platform anymore. Few, if any, lose an election running on protectionism. Tariffs are wildly popular now. Put that in your political platform and your chance of winning goes up, not down. Seriously. Protectionists can march out in the open now. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-mace-says-americans-are-too-stupid-to-educate-themselves/560703/182 "2011-03-28T05:35:19Z")
Damuri: [http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/a\_scaled\_tariff\_would\_help\_bal.html](http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/a_scaled_tariff_would_help_bal.html) > [@](#): > > But the United States faces not only a huge budget deficit, but also a huge foreign trade deficit. A December 2010 National Review/Allstate Heartland Poll contained an extensive battery of questions on trade and U.S. manufacturing. The poll revealed strong public majorities in favor of a variety of measures that would move trade towards balance. For example, 68 percent of respondents supported a policy requiring that “a certain percentage of every high-end manufactured product, such as automobiles, heavy machinery, and transportation equipment, sold in the U.S. also be produced or assembled within the U.S., even if that means higher prices for their products.” In 2006 and 2008, the Democrats won elections by advocating protectionism. The conservative pro-free-market alternative is balanced trade. When trade again becomes a dominant issue, Republicans could go back to minority status unless they address the trade issue themselves. Now I never knew the American _Thinker_ to be friendly to anti-offshoring advocacy. Especially not tariffs. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2011, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-mace-says-americans-are-too-stupid-to-educate-themselves/560703/183 "2011-03-28T05:44:53Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I thought your focus on the computer science (and especially the R&D) was because the counter argument to your concerns about offshoring was that we were offshoring the modern equivalent of the buggy whip making industry, jobs that we basically don’t want to keep anyways. You pointed out that we were offshoring jobs that were further and futher up the human capital and technology ladder. Not just that these jobs were being created overseas but that we were dismantling operations here and moving them overseas. The computer science related jobs we’re sending overseas are not being made obsolete. I never said they were, because they’re not. There are few if any jobs out there right now that we’re sending overseas which are falling prey to the buggy whip effect. I’ve made this point many times. We are dismantling a LOT of stuff here and moving it overseas. I never ever said we’re offshoring jobs we don’t want to keep; because there are few modern jobs that nobody wants to do. Pay a decent wage for any job and you’ll be flooded with applicants. We need low end jobs in order to train people for higher-end work in the same fields. I’ve also pointed this out before. I have pointed out that we are offshoring jobs further up the value chain, such as jobs in the R&D / knowledge industry. My contention in this thread is that offshoring, along with the H1B thing, is scaring people away not only from CS, but now as the data shows, they’re running away from the entire tech world altogether. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-mace-says-americans-are-too-stupid-to-educate-themselves/560703.md?page=9)