It’s no secret that much of the world covets Washington’s twin economic engines, aerospace and technology, anchored by Boeing and Microsoft. And it’s no secret that this state occasionally takes its prosperity for granted. Every so often, Boeing will remind lawmakers that complacency is not a prize-winning strategy. But for the most part, Olympia tends to assume our major industries are secure here.

Yet, even for those of us who worry about competitiveness, it’s unnerving to see a columnist in Forbes suggest that Microsoft would be better off in San Francisco. Peter Cohan – management consultant, venture capitalist and business professor (yeah, just one guy) – writes today that Microsoft would jump start its innovative juices in the more dynamic City by the Bay.

Today the most fertile ground for entrepreneurship is shifting from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. And that is where Microsoft must move…

I’ll not replay his arguments, which I find unpersuasive (as do the majority of folks in this Seattle Times poll), but nonetheless provocative. You can read them yourselves. Still, they are a good reminder that many people across the country do not view metropolitan Seattle as globe’s tech Mecca. To begin with, as Robin Lake writes, we have serious deficiencies in STEM education.

You might think that given Washington’s wealth of STEM employers, we would be doing better than the rest of the country — but you’d be wrong.

We’re among the lowest in how much time our K-12 schools devote to science instruction. We are nearly last in the country when it comes to degree production in science and engineering, a report by nonprofit Washington STEM showed.

According to recent research out of Georgia Tech,in 2013 half as many students in the state that’s home to Microsoft and Amazon.com took the Advanced Placement computer science exam as did students in Maryland.

She identifies corrective measures currently underway and recommends additional steps that need to be taken quickly. All good ideas, but that this debate continues illustrates how far we’ve fallen behind.

In addition to education, to hold our leading industries we need to tend to transportation infrastructure and tax incentives. Too much of this legislative session has been built on the premise that incentives don’t work and that transportation can wait.

That’s another sign of complacency. And in a competitive world, complacency is a risky strategy.