Reagan Stresses Technology Role in Economy

President Reagan--a student during the era of slide rules--Thursday embraced the world of technology and said that it is “the very source of our economic dynamism and creativity.”

The President, who has made American technological competitiveness with its global partners a focus of his final two years in office, equated technological progress with economic success--rather than with a threat to employment.

Using a tour of two laboratories at Purdue University to draw attention to the role of technology in job creation, Reagan said that some fear such innovations as computers and robots “will destroy more jobs than they create, that technology is in some way the enemy of job formation.”

“Technology is not the enemy of job creation, but its parent--the very source of our economic dynamism and creativity,” he said.

“During the economic expansion of the past 52 months--a time of technological breakthrough after breakthrough--our nation actually created over 13 million more jobs,” the President said. Critics, however, have contended that most of the new positions are in the lower-paying service industry.

Reagan recalled that when operators were no longer required to place telephone calls, with the introduction of the dial telephone, there were fears that such progress would eliminate the operators’ jobs.

But, he said in ad-libbed comments, with the growing use of the telephone, “there aren’t enough women in the United States to man those operator jobs as they did at that time.”

Reagan stopped at Purdue on his way to California, where he will spend next week on an Easter holiday at his ranch 30 miles northwest of Santa Barbara.

“To improve our nation’s competitiveness in the world economy, we must strive for new standards of excellence at all levels of American education,” he said in a speech to the university’s students.

In stressing the competitiveness theme, the President has emphasized higher educational standards, including longer school years, with funds coming mostly from non-federal sources. He recently has proposed cuts in federal education spending in the coming fiscal year.

In his State of the Union message last Jan. 27, he proposed a 43-point program as he sought to move ahead on the budding issue of improving U.S. competitiveness in the world economy in general, and in correcting the nation’s trade imbalance in particular.

In choosing Purdue as the backdrop for his public emphasis on technology Thursday, Reagan was visiting a campus that claims to have trained one of every 17 engineers in the United States.

During his visit, he toured two laboratories in the engineering research center, where students learn computer-aided manufacturing processes.

Mixing his focus on the future with criticism of previous administrations’ economic policies, Reagan said that in the past, “economic policy lost sight of the individual and focused instead on government.”

He said that in the future, scientists working for the government would be encouraged “to patent, license and commercialize their research.”

He reiterated his proposal to establish “science and technology centers” to emphasize scientific developments that would “directly contribute to America’s economic competitiveness.”

Reagan flew into Los Angeles Thursday evening and will deliver a foreign policy speech today to 2,000 members and guests of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in the Los Angeles Ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel.