“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking.” | Sir Ernest Rutherford, Nobel Laureate (Physics)

interesting statistics:

„While only four percent of the nation’s work force is composed of scientists and engineers, this group disproportionately creates jobs for the other 96 percent.

... Importantly, leverage is at work here. It is not simply the scientist, engineer and entrepreneur who benefit from progress in the laboratory or design center; it is also the factory worker who builds items such as those cited above, the advertiser who promotes them, the truck driver who delivers them, the salesperson who sells them, and the maintenance person who repairs them—not to mention the benefits realized by the user. | National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation (NSB 10-01), Figure 3-3.) [pdf]

... with regard to Knowledge Capital it was noted that federal government funding of R&D as a fraction of GDP has declined by 60 percent in 40 years.

With regard to Human Capital, it was observed that over two-thirds of the engineers who receive PhD’s from United States universities are not United States citizens.

And with regard to the Creative Ecosystem it was found that United States firms spend over twice as much on litigation as on research. | rising above the gathering storm, NAS, 2010

the US truly has a problem:

Thirty years ago, ten percent of California’s general fund went to higher education and three percent to prisons. Today, nearly eleven percent goes to prisons and eight percent to higher education.

In the 2009 rankings of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation the U.S. was in sixth place in global innovation-based competitiveness, but ranked 40th in the rate of change over the past decade. (The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU & U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness, February 2009.| quoted in "gathering storm", p6