- IT DOESN'T MATTER!
- QUIT RUSHING ME!
- QUIT WASTING MY TIME!
- IS THAT REALLY NECESSARY?
- No, Dad, that's not how it works.
- Look, just let me do it.
(sources below) | Population | Area | 2019 GDP (PPP) | 2019 GPD per capita (PPP) |
Oklahoma | 3.95 million | 69k sq miles | $206 billion | $52,150 |
Hong Kong | 7.45 million | 1k sq miles | $491 billion | $64,928 |
% difference | 89% | -99% | 138% | 25% |
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. –Andy Warhol
Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort. [...] [T]he capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses. –Joseph Schumpeter*
Tyler Cowen pointed to this “debate”, which I was a bit disappointed in for being too much an untethered discussion. Tyler’s portion I found more meaningful, but still it didn’t do much to advance my thinking.
Since they didn’t really have an objective topic, I guess I shouldn’t be too critical. But I find that a lot of the recent thinking on how things will change in the age of COVID-19 to be like this—not very deep, a combination of wish list and fear. My own view is an attempt at nuance between "most things will change very little" (we will snap back to prior norms) and "this epoch event has accelerated by multiple years that which was already underway" (e.g., teleworking just leapt forward at least 5 years along the prior trendline). To be clear I think holding both views is the best prediction--that is the nuance. Not a lot will change, but that which was already changing has been accelerated.
Here are some of my thoughts regarding changes in education (both what was already happening and how they have accelerated) as well as the obstacles faced (incumbents and traditionalists don’t go down without a fight).
Elementary and High School
For higher education I think we should solve for the equilibrium and use a typical university, the University of Oklahoma, as an example.