Nouriel Roubini: The US has been living in a situation of excesses for too long. And when you have too many financial engineers and not as many computer engineers, you have a problem. I think this country needs more people who are going to be entrepreneurs, more people in manufacturing, more people going into sectors that are going to lead to long-run economic growth. When the best minds of the country are all going to Wall Street, there is a distortion in the allocation of human capital to some activities that become excessive and eventually inefficient.
From the archive: Things are going to be awful for everyday people.
Speak up: When nonengineers think about engineering, it’s usually because something has gone wrong. In the follow-up investigations, it comes out that some of the engineers involved knew something was wrong. But too few spoke up or pushed back — and those who did were ignored.
If you see something, say something: The difference between alchemy and science is if you tell people what you’ve learned.
Consider: Georgia is about to become the first state to approve the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools.
Finally: Government policies -- from as early as the 1890s -- subsidized the spread of cities and fueled a chronic nationwide dependence on cars and roadbuilding, with little regard for expense, efficiency, ecological damage, or social equity.
Facetime with the Money Honey |