Could we do something about this? Yes. Will "we", and by "we" I mean the government run by rich folks? Never.
But as the rich destroy the social fabric of the USA, they will get their due. The USA is as small to India and China as Britain is to the USA. Britain ruled the world just 70 years ago. It lost its wealth in a massive transfer to the USA industrial machine in WWII. The USA is managing to transfer its wealth quite happily without a war. The difference is, the rich Brits fit in quite well in the USA. Good luck with that in China, rich americans!
What can we do? Protectionism. The rich can show you all sorts of reasons why this doesn't work. Just add "for the rich" on the end of everything they say and its true: "protectionism doesn't work for the rich". I'm not sure we can manage IT protectionism (unfortunately, since this is what I do), but we can manage protectionism for manufactured goods. That's basically our only hope.
If we can get a manufacturing industry going again, we can have a genuine middle class, not funded by debt. That, in turn, can fund education and innovation.
Or we can do what Britain did: "We don't need manufacturing because we have our science, services and financial services". But manufacturing funded our R&D. "Well we don't need science, because we have services and financial services". But our services can be run from India. "Well we dont need a service industry because we have the city of london." So know if you live outside of the spending radii if the 20yr olds earning $5m then you're fucked. Hooker or coke-dealer is the most promising profession for a young brit.
My grandfather use to complain about "coolies" coming on board his ship (he was chief engineer) posing as customs and just making drawings. "They are just copying us" he would complain. "They'll never be any good".
Ah yes, the "Rome will stand forever" argument. No, wait, it was the "Mongol Empire shall stand forever". No, thats not it. "The Macedonian Empire shall stand forever". Hmm. Or was it "The Holy Roman Empire shall stand forever". No wait, it was the "British Empire shall rule the waves forever".
Perhaps in the past Time might have been a reputable news organization, but its just part of the corporate oligarchy now. Of course they awarded it to one of their biggest link feeds. Hell they probably negotiated some kind of kick-back.
Depends. Let me start by addressing the HTML/javascript toolchains out there: they suck. One of my clients has experience of this. The first thing they tried was using one of those javascript/html systems. Its a fairly simple app that one would think was ideal for HTML/javascript, but it was barely usable and tech support was awful. Thats why they hired me.
What platforms are your target - the "etc" you mention? Blackberry? Blackberry is still huge but by iPhone and Android standards they are hardly smartphones. How about WP7? Interesting but so far tiny.
Next question: what kind of app? If its games, you use C/C++ and OpenGL for Android and iPhone.
Personally, I use C# and manage core business logic libraries with platform-specific user interfaces in Silverlight, MonoTouch and MonoDroid. I have a client who wants Android and later Blackberry, so for that we do the Android version in "normal" java so we can share libs with Blackberry in the future.
I don't think there's a one size fits all. The ones that do (e.g. Flash, or HTML/javascript) end up looking or running like ass.
But as the rich destroy the social fabric of the USA, they will get their due. The USA is as small to India and China as Britain is to the USA. Britain ruled the world just 70 years ago. It lost its wealth in a massive transfer to the USA industrial machine in WWII. The USA is managing to transfer its wealth quite happily without a war. The difference is, the rich Brits fit in quite well in the USA. Good luck with that in China, rich americans!
What can we do? Protectionism. The rich can show you all sorts of reasons why this doesn't work. Just add "for the rich" on the end of everything they say and its true: "protectionism doesn't work for the rich". I'm not sure we can manage IT protectionism (unfortunately, since this is what I do), but we can manage protectionism for manufactured goods. That's basically our only hope.
If we can get a manufacturing industry going again, we can have a genuine middle class, not funded by debt. That, in turn, can fund education and innovation.
Or we can do what Britain did: "We don't need manufacturing because we have our science, services and financial services". But manufacturing funded our R&D. "Well we don't need science, because we have services and financial services". But our services can be run from India. "Well we dont need a service industry because we have the city of london." So know if you live outside of the spending radii if the 20yr olds earning $5m then you're fucked. Hooker or coke-dealer is the most promising profession for a young brit.