New Jersey & The World - Perfect Together?

From the Star Ledger:

N.J. has place in globalization history
BY BETH FITZGERALD

"Globalization has a long history in New Jersey: It was building fortunes on the banks of the Raritan River long before it became the anxious buzzword for modern international competition. The state's citizen-of-the-world legacy was the subject of a recent Rutgers University symposium that looked at the Raritan Valley's past as a microcosm of globalization, and its implications for New Jersey's uncertain future in the world economy."

"But will New Jersey keep its technological edge in a modern world that ignores traditional barriers of country and culture and instead spins people, patents, money and manufacturing across the globe in pursuit of lower costs and higher profit?"

"Rutgers economist James Hughes said New Jersey is an expensive place to do business and he warned there is no guarantee the state will be a key player in the future of pharmaceuticals or any other knowledge-driven enterprise."

""Until the 21st century, New Jersey actually thrived with globalization but there are gathering storm clouds suggesting this is no longer the case," Hughes said, noting that New Jersey lost 9,800 high-tech jobs from 1990 to 2004, while the nation gained 1.3 million."

"He advocates visionary public policy, backed up with public money, to keep New Jersey in the high-tech game, "but stimulating and shaping our economic future has never been a state public policy priority; proposed public investments to support the future high tech economy usually succumb to immediate political exigencies. This era does not favor New Jersey: a global economy with an abundance of low-cost, highly educated knowledge workers is going to turn out to be a challenge of unprecedented complexity.""