Incentive? What incentive?

Annual compensation for hourly jobs in the Big Three auto industry: $145,000 ; annual compensation for professors $93,000. On the whole, engineers in industry don't do any better than professors, as their jobs don't last long enough to vest the vast and lavish pension benefits which form a big part of compensation at the Big Three, government, and, often, academia. Oh, and they don't get overtime, and, in some industries, their travel is not so much to academic conferences at resorts in Bermuda and Hawai'i as it is to worksites in torrid deserts in summer, or frigid Arctic wastes in winter.

Oh, and I was forgetting, auto workers start earning four to ten years earlier than college grads, and they do so free of crippling college debt.

Things have not changed one iota since I knew a somewhat demoralized guy in grad school who saw his friends from his auto-industry town already ensconced in luxurious houses, owning big cars and boats, and so on, while we were still in, well, college-style housing. Nor since a relative living temporarily in northeast Wisconsin was agog at the way folks there showed no ambition beyond the local paper mill, as that paid much more than they expected to net by getting a higher education.

The comments at the link tell me there is zero likelihood of change in the foreseeable future. It's a sociopolitical issue independent of any diminishing of opportunities that might be caused by oil and energy issues. It follows that as someone here mentioned, the goods and technologies and alt-energies will continue to appear by magic, "poof", from elsewhere. How else should they appear?

That is, they will appear until they don't. Or until the dollar has tanked so far that it no longer matters to "us" whether they do or don't.