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We Need To Build An Innovation Economy For The 21st Century
In a recent New York Times column, Bret Stephens argued that the political opposition needs to “celebrate prosperity, not deny or trivialize it.” He has a point. We are in the midst of a historic expansion, with record low unemployment, rising wages and low inflation. That is something to celebrate.
However, what Stephens failed to address is that, in the midst of all this prosperity, there is considerable anxiety about the economy. Some of this anxiety can be quantified in statistics like rising income inequality, national debt, credit card debt and the fact that 40% of Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency expense.
Yet the problems go deeper than that. As I explained in Barron’s, our economy can be thought of as having two key activities, capacity building and maximizing that capacity to produce output. While we are clear producing a lot of output, there are worrying signs that we are not building capacity the way we should. We need to right the ship before it’s too late.
Science, The Endless Frontier
By 1941, it had become clear that the war raging in Europe would soon envelop the US. With this in mind, Vannevar Bush went to President Roosevelt with a visionary idea — to mobilize the nation’s newfound scientific prowess for the war effort…
