CPs to Solve Competitiveness/Economy/stem advanced Manufacturing Networks cp
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- An educated workforce is the biggest internal link to competitiveness---our study prices in other important factors
- 2AC — Economy Turn
- Clusters can’t solve competitiveness – sparks harmful competition and high costs
- 2AC — Unemployment Turn
- High levels of unemployment cause economic recession, youth suffering, and negative health effects
Industry Clusters CP Answers2AC — Education KeyEducation reform is a pre-requisite to cluster programs – educational innovation, workforce growth, and Finland provesSahlberg 6 (Pasi Sahlberg – PhD from the University of Jyvaskyla and is adjunct professor at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu, director general of the Centre for International Mobility in Helsinki, Finland; PDF; Journal Of Education Change – 2006; “EDUCATION REFORM FOR RAISING ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS”; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10833-005-4884-6; accessed on 7/21/17) [DS] Education system performance has to be seen in the context of other systems in the society, e.g. health, environment, rule of law, governance, economy and technology. It is not only that education functions well Finland but it is a part of well-functioning democratic welfare state (Castells & Himanen, 2002; Lewis, 2005). Attempts to explain the success of the education system in Finland should be put in the wider context and seen as a part of overall function of democratic civil society. Economists have been interested in finding out why Finland has been able to become the most competitive economy in the world since 1990. The quality of a society is rarely a result of any single factor. The entire society needs to perform satisfactorily. There are some interesting parallels between education and economic development policies in Finland during the period of transformation and related rapid growth in 1990s. Table 3 summarizes some of the key policies and strategies that have been driving education system development and economic growth since 1990. Four common features are often mentioned as contributory factors towards positive educational and economic progress. First, policy development has been based on integration rather than exclusive subsector policies (Aho et al., forthcoming). Education sector development is driven by medium-term policy decisions that rely on sustainable basic values, such as equal opportunities to good education for all, inclusion of all students in mainstream publicly financed education and strong trust in public education as a civil right rather than an obligation. These medium-term policies integrate education and training and involve the private sector and industry in the creation and monitoring of their results. Similarly, economic and industrial policies have integrated science and technology policies and innovation system with industrial clusters (Routti & Yla¨-Anttila, 2005). Integrated policies have enhanced systemic development and interconnectedness of these sectors and have thus promoted more sustainable and coherent political leadership for their successful implementation. Second, strategic framework development and change have been built upon longer-term vision. National development strategies, for example Information Society Program (1995), National Lifelong Learning Strategy (1997) and Ministry of Education Strategy 2015 (2003) have served as overarching frameworks for the sector strategies. These and other strategies have emphasized increasing flexibility, coherence between various sectors and development of local and regional responsiveness and creativity in institutions. Third, the roles of governance and public institutions have been central in policy developments and implementation of both education and economic reforms. Good governance, high quality public institutions and rule of law play important roles in policy development and implementation of planned changes. Evaluation approaches in both sectors are development-oriented and various players in the system are held accountable for process and outcomes. Specific institutions, such as the Committee of the Future and Vocational Education and Training Committees are shared by private and public representatives as well as the key stakeholders of the society for consensus-making purposes. Fourth, a highly educated labor force and broad participation in education at all levels guarantee the stock of human capital that is necessary for both good education service delivery and economic growth. For instance, all teachers are required to hold a Masters degree and most workers are encouraged to participate in continuous professional development as part of their work. Teachers are professionals in their schools and therefore actively involved in planning and implementing changes in their work. An educated workforce is the biggest internal link to competitiveness---our study prices in other important factorsDevaraj and Hicks 16 – Srikant Devaraj, research assistant professor at the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, PhD in economics, and Michael J. Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, George & Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Miller College of Business at Ball State University, PhD in economics from the University of Tennessee, 2016 (“Advanced Manufacturing in the United States,” Conexus Indiana, June, Available Online at http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/Conexus2016-AdvMfg.pdf, Accessed 07-21-2017, HK) This study has evaluated the size, growth, and composition of advanced manufacturing in the United States over the past decade. We find that advanced manufacturing employment has grown, but that employment growth has been clustered in STEM and white-collar employment. Blue-collar employment in advanced manufacturing has either declined or remained unchanged since 2004. Examining the correlates of this growth, we find, as virtually every study before has found, that growth in advanced manufacturing is highly correlated with levels of educational attainment. While other factors such as tax and regulatory climate, availability of research universities surely matter; over the long run, a well-educated and ready workforce matters more than any other single factor in the health of advanced manufacturing firms. Examining Indiana, we find that the state leads the nation in the share of employment in advanced manufacturing with at least one out of every 12 workers employed in this area. The growth in this cluster has likely provided the bulk of manufacturing employment growth in Indiana over the past decade. Importantly in terms of the industrial mix, Indiana enjoys strong diversification, suggesting that advanced manufacturing will be less sensitive to cyclical changes than most states. There is one concern about advanced manufacturing in Indiana. Indiana’s educational attainment ranks no better than average for the skill areas in which advanced manufacturing depends. Continued growth and strength in advanced manufacturing will depend on how effectively the K-12 and higher education systems perform in transitioning students into potential employees for these sectors.
Clusters hurt economic competitiveness and business participationMazur et al 16 (Vladimir A. Mazur – Moscow State University of Mechanical Engineering, Moscow, Russian Federation, Karine A. Barmuta , Sergey S. Demin , Evgeny A. Tikhomirov , Maxsim A. Bykovskiy, Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation, 3 Financial University Under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russian Federation, 4 Moscow State Forest University, Moscow, Russian Federation, 5 Moscow State Forest University, Moscow, Russian Federation PDF; 2016; International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues; “Innovation Clusters: Advantages and Disadvantages”; https://www.econjournals.com/index.php/ijefi/article/viewFile/2397/pdf; accessed 7/21/17) [DS] However, clusters are not an ideal element for the economy because the list of advantages may be continued by the list of innovation cluster disadvantages, as follows (Petrov, 2010): The excessive concentration of enterprises in domestic relationships and environmental conflict beyond the cluster may lead to technology obsolescence and decrease of their competitiveness in the domestic and foreign markets; • The cluster’s reserved character may cause the elasticity reduction of participating enterprises; • The absence of competitors in an isolated cluster “destroys” the need for constant updating of the production and sales process; • The uniqueness of each cluster leads to considerable complication of efficiency assessment of its functioning, because there is no opportunity for comparison with other clusters; • The correlation between the entire cluster consequences and the performance of its each member. Clusters can’t solve competitiveness – sparks harmful competition and high costsHuber 11— Franz Huber, Research funded by Gates Cambridge Scholarship, 2011 (“Do clusters really matter for innovation practices in Information Technology? Questioning the significance of technological knowledge spillovers”, Oxford Academic, February 1st, https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/12/1/107/1155585/Do-clusters-really-matter-for-innovation-practices#SEC4, Accessed 07-21-2017 // GHS-JK) The following discussion is based on the analysis of extensive interview material; the respondents had the opportunity to qualify why they think that the Cambridge IT Cluster is not beneficial for their work. Their responses fall into these groups (Figure 1).10 The first group of responses highlights disadvantages of the Cluster. All of these were stated by people in managerial positions.11 Several interviewees emphasized that although there is an extensive pool of high-skilled labour available in the Cluster, local competition between the employers for bright minds is intense, which can be a disadvantage. This was particularly mentioned by small companies, which lack financial stability and kudos. This warns us that labour pooling cannot be regarded as advantageous for all companies. Other reasons mentioned are that the costs (for office space and labour) are too high, and that other locations would be closer to the customers. Second, the most frequently mentioned reason is that there is simply no need to have interactions within the local region. The most important arguments mentioned are that personal contacts and suppliers and customers can be anywhere because of the global focus of the company. Also, one respondent emphasized that they recruit people from elsewhere and are therefore not dependent on Cambridge. Moreover, several respondents highlighted that their internal knowledge base is sufficient for being successful and nowadays they can access a lot of useful knowledge via the Internet; consequently, there is no need to source knowledge from the local region. Also, a few respondents stressed that strategically their firm is quite guarded, aims to keep their expertise in-house and does not want to have any knowledge interactions with other Cambridge companies. Another reason put forward by one firm is that the business model is based on feedback from customers rather than on research (i.e. a synthetic rather than an analytic knowledge base according to Asheim et al., 2007); therefore, the research intensive Cambridge environment is not relevant. A third group of responses underlines that there are no opportunities to benefit from the Cluster. The most frequent argument is that the technological field is so highly specific and specialized that there is nobody within the Cluster who could be helpful in terms of either an official business relationship or as a source of knowledge as the following quote illustrates: 2AC — Unemployment TurnCluster development causes unemployment rates to skyrocketLambert et al 16 (Thomas E. Lambert – PhD Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice, and Organizational Leadership MPA Program, Garry Mattson – PhD Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice, and Organizational Leadership MPA Program, Kyle Dorriere – MPA Student Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice, and Organizational Leadership; PDF; Northern Kentucky University; MPRA Paper; “Industry Clustering and Unemployment in US Regions: An Exploratory Note”; https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/69584/1/MPRA_paper_69584.pdf; accessed 7/21/17) [DS] Yet in the course of performing research for this paper, no studies have been found that empirically document the impact of greater clustering on the unemployment rates of metro regions in the United States. It is important to point out that gains in regional employment do not immediately and necessarily translate into proportional decreases in an area’s unemployment rate. Many times, the new jobs created are filled by those currently working or those who move in from outside of the region (Bartik 1991, Persky, Felenstein and Carlson 2004). Some regions also suffer from greater degrees of structural unemployment than others. Structural unemployment exists where there is a large number of unemployed whose skills are obsolete because the industries in which they worked have dramatically shed jobs in the area or have left the region completely. These unemployed workers often do not derive much benefit from new jobs in newer industries that are created in a locale (Blair 1995). Therefore, higher than normal unemployment rates possibly can persist in a region which has seen the loss or decline of one or several key industries even as there are gains in local job growth. Although the literature on the benefits of clustering do not explicitly mention clustering as a way to address regional unemployment, the emphasis on clustering as a way to accelerate employment growth can be considered as implying that clustering can indirectly solve local unemployment problems, especially if regional job training and human capital investments can be done in such a way to help the unemployed get jobs in the clustered industries, which is a policy often recommended (e.g., National Governors Association 2002). On the other hand, during periods of economic downturn or stagnant economic growth, a large degree of regional industrial concentration, especially in industries with mature or declining markets, can translate into higher unemployment levels for a metro area, all else held constant. Although the benefits of clustering imply lower unemployment rates, an area which has too much concentration in one or a handful of industries (e.g., Detroit or Gary, Indiana with steel making) could end up with an abnormally high level of unemployment during a recessionary period. Therefore, the impact of a high degree of clustering can be uncertain with regard to the unemployment rates of different regions. High levels of unemployment cause economic recession, youth suffering, and negative health effectsTerzo 10 (Geri Terzo – graduate of Campbell University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in mass communication, business writer with more than 15 years of experience on Wall Street; Article; 9/3/10; “The Effects of a High Unemployment Rate”; https://www.sapling.com/6946350/effects-high-unemployment-rate; accessed on 7/21/17) [DS] Once the U.S. unemployment rate surpasses the 5 percent to 6 percent range, it reflects high unemployment in the country, according to a 2014 article in USA Today. The effects of high unemployment are far reaching, extending from the confines of the home to the nation's broader economy. The damage surfaces in lost wages, weaker skill sets and less business and consumer spending. The longer high unemployment persists, the more likely an individual is to stop hunting for a new job altogether. Lost Income The amount of earnings that an individual loses after being laid off is tied to the unemployment rate at that time. After all, the higher the unemployment rate, the fewer the number of companies that are hiring. Someone who is laid off when the unemployment rate is less than 6 percent will lose an average of a year and a half's worth of earnings, according to research cited in a 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal. With unemployment at more than 8 percent, the individual loses nearly three years' worth of earnings. Economic Effect High unemployment slows the nation's economic growth, which hurts major pockets of the economy like consumer and construction spending. Consumer spending comprises 70 percent of the economy, according to a 2009 Bloomberg article. When unemployment is high, consumers have less to spend and are more likely to add to their savings instead. Less spending leads to weaker economic expansion, which hurts areas like construction that provide jobs to the economy. Youth Suffer The effect of high unemployment on youth traces back to the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the unemployment rate among youth reached 30 percent, surpassing the national average. Many young people couldn't afford to attend high school. In 2013, the unemployment rate for young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 was more than twice the average U.S. rate. Young, unemployed workers not only suffer lost income. They also lose the chance to expand their skill sets, which can suppress their earning power over the long term. Personal Effects A high unemployment level doesn't just affect the wallet. It extends to the overall health of society and the home. After being unemployed for 18 months, a person's chance of developing a serious ailment like diabetes or heart trouble increases twofold, according to a 2012 "Time" article. It hits the home in other ways, too. Unemployed parents can lead to family dysfunction, where parental stress interferes with parents' ability to engage with their children. This in turn can negatively affect a child's drive to perform at school. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.72 Mb. Share with your friends:
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