Comments on: What Policy Can Do for Growth and What Politics Won’t

By: Tesco vouchers

Tesco vouchers — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:40:18 +0000

Business do pay a premium for college educated students. Again, if there was a form of technical schooling (associate degree) that had some certifying/testing/retraining guarantees for work skills, businesses would be pretty damn impressed, and would hire those people above people with some college education.

By: coupon codes

coupon codes — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:27:49 +0000

Could you expand on this? This seems like a “liberaltarian” talking point. Liberals want to reduce prescription drug cost, Libertarians want less government intervention and a more rational approach to encouraging innovation.

By: voucher codes

voucher codes — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:19:08 +0000

I know it's apostasy these days, but I think far too many people are getting pushed into college, where their time is often spent learning things with zero applicability to their future careers.

By: Voucher codes

Voucher codes — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:28:58 +0000

In these times of faltering growth and worries about a relapse into recession … If interest rates are used as a policy tool for abetting and abating investor …

By: Florida News

Florida News — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:48:30 +0000

We face loss of standard of living as well as social and political unrest. … “We make believe that we can have infinite human growth and the age of oil will last forever. …

By: Christian Stewardship

Christian Stewardship — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:46:56 +0000

If you cannot fix what's wrong in our political system it won't be possible … else needs fixing and how we do that, particularly in industrial policy. … can't be totally anti-politics, anti-business and anti-growth, …

By: Glen

Glen — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:34:02 +0000

Manuelg, it's true that a college education commands a premium, but that doesn't mean the college is actually making the student more productive. I suspect most of the premium is attributable to signaling of pre-existing quality. The student who graduates proves that he is relatively persistent and does the busy work. But there are surely cheaper ways of performing the signaling function than encouraging everyone and his dog to go to college in order to see who pops out the other side.

By: manuelg

manuelg — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:14:53 +0000

Wilkinson:

> ...promote the deep structural changes needed in primary education to actually improve the quantity and quality of American human capital...

But the fact remains that when businesses hire, a person having gone to a private primary school or a charter primary school (as opposed to a public primary school) commands no higher wages. I hire; the issues affects me personally. If the private school or charter school had a document certifying modern workforce training to the student (with the ability to test to confirm, and retrain at no cost to the business if the skills are actually below what is certified), I would be pretty damn impressed. If such a thing exists for private or charter schools, it is well hidden and very scarce. Until then, why would a business pay a premium for a person who received primary school education at a private or charter school? And if public school is good enough, how can change be expected to happen?

Dan:

> ...I think far too many people are getting pushed into college...

Business do pay a premium for college educated students. Again, if there was a form of technical schooling (associate degree) that had some certifying/testing/retraining guarantees for work skills, businesses would be pretty damn impressed, and would hire those people above people with some college education. I would like to see such resumes.

By: DWAnderson

DWAnderson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:54:22 +0000

,i>Matt thinks entrepreneurship is an empty business buzzword, but it is in fact the foundation of economic growth.

This is the critical insight that is missing from the vast majority of the discussion of US economic problems in the media.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:00:37 +0000

“Another thing it can do is to restructure intellectual property law to encourage rather than discourage invention.”

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:16:58 +0000

“…the loyal, powerful bloc of Democrats who make their living pouring valuable human capital into nineteen-year-olds by making them pretend to have read Plato and Beloved.”

Well said. I know it's apostasy these days, but I think far too many people are getting pushed into college, where their time is often spent learning things with zero applicability to their future careers. Unfortunately, the “everyone goes to college, no matter the cost” mentality seems to be only growing stronger.

By: Vangel

Vangel — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:11:41 +0000

What we have is an example of failed ideology. The bottom line is that interventions will not work and the only policies that will help are those that reduce the size of government and remove arbitrary burdens placed on private economic activity.

By: forkthis

forkthis — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:58:29 +0000

I understand. If, in fact, Obama's green energy proposals are technology neutral, then I think it's safe to say that his proposals will not crowd out private investment in green technology. In fact, given state backing, it should encourage private investment.

I think the concern (and the thrust of my prior comment) is that the government's notion of green technologies may not be the most innovative technologies. That is, he's already picked the winners, and now it's all about doling out the cash (e.g., the Stimulus Bill significantly extended the Renewable Energy Grant Program -- you build windmills and the government will pay you directly). This strikes me as something different than innovation.

By way of example, it could be that some new form of nuclear energy (I don't know shit about nukes) could be the most innovative and safe solution, but who's going to invest in nuclear when the government is handing out cash to wind and solar developers?

By: DMonteith

DMonteith — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:49:08 +0000

My point is that for green technology, “incentives to innovate” (or, if you prefer, high oil prices) have gone south for the recession. I'm failing to see how Obama's plans, as I understand them (and, since I don't have adequate incentives to read budget proposals, I'm quite possibly misinformed), will affect these incentives one way or another because they are currently almost non-existent. Presumably, the idea is to maintain existing green tech capacity (such as it is) until such time as economic recovery raises oil prices and the incentives return from vacation to pick up where they have left off. A better idea, of course, would be to rejuvenate the incentives through a carbon tax, but I digress.

Furthermore, the idea that government spending would crowd out private investment right now is laughable, as the chart I linked to amply demonstrates. Not exactly a textbook illustration of investors straining to get a foot in the door is it?

By: forkthis

forkthis — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:55:32 +0000

Worse than the decline in oil prices? See here? Are you implying that "innovation" is synonymous with "green"?