President Obama to announce $500M manufacturing drive with $70M for smarter robots, $300M for MIC

[somone]

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/president_obama_to_announce_50.html

President Obama to announce $500 million high-tech manufacturing drive

PITTSBURGH — Imagining advances from lighter cars to smarter robots, President Barack Obama is announcing a $500 million project to spur high-technology manufacturing, a sector of U.S. industry that presidential advisers say has lost ground to such competitors as Germany and Japan.

Today in Pittsburgh, Obama is to call for a joint effort by industry, universities and the federal government to help reposition the United States as a leader in cutting-edge manufacturing, including biotechnology, robotics and nanotechnology — the development of new materials at the molecular level.

The initiative represents yet another effort by Obama to promote job-creation in the midst of an economic slowdown that has reduced hiring and weakened his job approval standing with the public. The president has tried to elevate his profile on the economy with weekly job-related trips to states that are key to his re-election.

In 2008, Obama beat John McCain, his Republican opponent, by a 55-45 percent margin in Pennsylvania. But presidential elections are usually competitive there, making the state a 2012 battleground...

[hfojvt]

1. it is ironic though

because I feel certain that those smarter robots will end up costing jobs.

At some point, we need a smarter economic system that better distributes the effort required and better distributes the division of the output.

Instead millions more will be without jobs and others scrambling to find full time work as janitors and barbers while the benefits of the robots' efforts largely go to making some others even more obscenely rich.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

[babylonsister]

2. Excellent; recommend. nt

[Scuba]

3. Why not $300 for somthing other than MIC? ....

... wind turbines

... medical equipment

... educational equipment (e.g., lab, workshop, computer)

... anything else that might actually help someone????

[MrTriumph]

4. Confronting China would do more, quicker. Oh, but it would be harder.

x