Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek  and host of Global Public Sphere (GPS) for CNN Worldwide answered questions about prompting job creation in the U.S. in a session of the show broadcast Oct 31. Among the fields Zakaria discussed as having huge potential for growth was Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology which he credits as the fuel behind the “next internet revolution.”  Zakaria, who is among the best respected financial commentators in journalism  today, suggested that America needs more investment in industries that will continue to shape the way society works and people communicate, like GPS systems, in order to reclaim jobs that have gone to other countries.

Zakaria says that the key to getting growth and middle-class jobs back is that we make massive investments, investments in technology, investments in research and development, investments in infrastructure. That is in a sense, investing in the middle class, because that is investing in the industries of the future, the industries that will create middle-class jobs.  “Perhaps the most intelligent investment we can make is in human capital, particularly in talented people in science, math and computers,” said Zakaria.

According to Zakaria, “We used to spend 3 percent of GDP on research and development. We don’t do that now even though Obama has raised it a lot. I would argue that we actually need to do a lot more than we did in the 1950s, because in the 1950s there were millions of jobs for semiskilled labor, manufacturing jobs, making steel, making cars. All those jobs are under enormous competitive pressure from both technology and globalization.”

According to Zakaria,  “We need jobs in new industries, industries of the future, knowledge based industries, scientific industries, including telematics and GPS tracking system technology. To get those jobs and to make sure that American companies dominate them will take huge investments.”