Alright, so this is my first serious go at having a blog. I think I will start my first blog with a topic of particular significance to many of my beliefs: Human Capital.

One of the things that I have developed a devout belief in over the past year is the importance that education plays in international relations, economics, and comparative power. Rather nationalistic elements of the US can profess that various other issues have determined the current American supremacy, most popular tend to be our freedom, our religious element (from conservative folks), our founding fathers, etc. But those are all wrong. First up, freedom and our founding fathers:

We seem to have an almost mythical relationship with the founding fathers, and rightly so. Imagine what would go down if, right now, we ceased to have a constitution. If Connecticut would have to agree with Alabama on the set-up of the nation, it is certainly a miracle considering the diversity of the US that an agreement was ever achieved (as tentative as it was, remember we did have that civil war thing). But other then an agreement was reached amongst them, and they had read their Machiavelli, More, Livy, Thucydides, Locke, Plato, etc... what was their real accomplishment.

The question I am getting at is: does the US matter just because of its constitution and the founding fathers and the resulting freedom? And the resounding answer is No! Economics, good relations with the British, industrialization, and damn good education are what made the US the most successful nation in the past couple of centuries. The Weimar republic had one hell of a constitution, at least according to Fareed Zakaria (whom I trust), but that didn't do anything in preventing it from going down the tubes. If you look at any liberal (the classical liberal, not the present perversion) democracy and the funny coincidence is that they all have annual GDP growth and an industrialized economy. Would the founding fathers matter without Rockefeller, coal, steel, and annual increases in American productivity that far outpaced anyone in the world? Think about that one.

So lastly, what are the implications of this argument? Well first it points to the importance of the US doing something about the sciences and some more about education. “No Child Left Behind” is not all that bad (I said it). Accountability tends to be a good thing and literacy is certainly a good thing (Russia is really the only once-world power to not have much literacy, Britain, Germany, Japan, France are all examples of once-powers that had great education systems-relative to the times of course). But the US must do two things. First it needs to let up on the immigration restrictions for students. Because there is more and more of a worldwide demand for damn good education, and at least according to Keynes, demand creates a supply all its own. India and China will create their own colleges that cater to the rest of the world and then there goes all those engineers, physicists, and biologists we'll need to keep our comparative international advantage. The US desperately needs foreign students who go to Yale, Harvard, MIT, Cal-Tech, and maybe the University of Chicago, and end up staying the US after education. Better to have foreigners in the sciences then some legacy blue-blood majoring in some soft science (like I intend to do). Second, Pell grants need to be increased; education is the best investment someone can make in themselves, ever, period. And those Pell grants should be subject specific. People follow the money trail and if the government gives an incentive to be a physicist, people will physicize away, why do people want to become doctors and lawyers anyway? Its the pay. Give similar incentives, because lawyers are not doing anything for our relative geopolitical advantage.

I'll depart with a very interesting quote from my economics professor, "The largest cause of inequality in the US is not the inheritance of wealth, but the inheritance of human capital."

-Mr. Alec