Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

problem is jobs. The job market is undergoing a historic change, and the nations that will thrive in the future are those that take advantage of this.
    For developing nations, one strategy is to use commodities to build a sound foundation, and then use that foundation as a stepping-stone to make the transition to intellectual capitalism. China, for example, has been successfully adopting this two-step process: the Chinese are building thousands of factories that produce goods for the world market, but they areusing the profits to create a service sector built on intellectual capitalism. In the United States, 50 percent of the Ph.D. students in physics are foreign born (largely because the United States does not produce enough qualified students of its own). Of these foreign-born Ph.D. students, most are from China and India. Some of these students have returned to their native countries to create entirely new industries.
    ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS
    One casualty of this transition will be entry-level jobs. Every century has introduced new technologies that have created wrenching dislocations in the economy and people’s lives. For example, in 1850, 65 percent of the American labor force worked on farms. (Today, only 2.4 percent does.) The same will be true in this century.
    In the 1800s, new waves of immigrants flooded into the United States, whose economy was growing rapidly enough to assimilate them. In New York, for example, immigrants could find work in the garment industry or light manufacturing. Regardless of education level, any worker willing to do an honest day’s work could find something to do in an expanding economy. It was like a conveyer belt that took immigrants from the ghettoes and slums of Europe and thrust them into the thriving middle class of America.
    Economist James Grant has said, “ The prolonged migration of hands and minds from the field to the factory, office and classroom is all productivity growth. … Technological progress is the bulwark of the modern economy. Then again, it has been true for most of the past 200 years.”
    Today, many of these entry-level jobs are gone. Moreover, the nature of the economy has changed. Many entry-level jobs have been sent overseas by corporations looking for cheaper labor. The old manufacturing job at the factory disappeared long ago.
    But there is much irony in this. For years, many people demanded a level playing field, without favoritism or discrimination. But if jobs can be exported at the press of a button, the level playing field now extends to China and India. So entry-level jobs that used to act as conveyor belts to the middle class can now be exported elsewhere. This is fine for workers overseas, since they can benefit from the level playing field, but can cause inner cities to hollow out in the United States.
    The consumer also benefits from this. Products and services becomecheaper and production and distribution more efficient if there is global competition. Simply trying to prop up obsolete businesses and overpaid jobs creates complacency, waste, and inefficiency. Subsidizing failing industries only prolongs the inevitable, delays the pain of collapse, and actually makes thing worse.
    There is another irony. Many high-paying, skilled service-sector jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified candidates. Often, the educational system does not produce enough skilled workers, so companies have to cope with a less-educated workforce. Corporations go begging for skilled workers whom the educational system often does not produce. Even in a depressed economy, there are jobs that go unfilled by skilled workers.
    But one thing is clear. In a postindustrial economy, many of the old blue-collar factory jobs are gone for good. Over the years, economists have toyed with the idea of “reindustrializing America,” until they realize that you cannot turn back the hands of time. The United States and Europe went through the transition from a largely industrial to a service economy decades ago, and this historic shift cannot be reversed. The heyday of industrialization has passed, forever.
    Instead, efforts have to be made to reorient and reinvest in those sectors that maximize intellectual capitalism. This will be one of the most difficult tasks for governments in the twenty-first century, with no quick-and-easy solutions. On one hand, it means a major overhaul of the education system, so that workers can retrain and also so that high school students do not graduate