Knowing and Making

I may have more to say about this in the next few weeks, but this New York Times article about industrial policy reminds me of a question I asked on twitter the other day: ...hedge funds and venture capitalists are geared toward investing in financial instruments and software companies. In such endeavors, even modest investments can yield extraordinarily quick and large returns. Financing brick-and-mortar factories, by contrast, is expensive and painstaking and offers far less potential for speedy returns. This might not just be a change in investors' preferences. (Although if they have decided they prefer fast returns over slow ones, I don't know that I'd criticise them for that.) What if something deeper has happened. In the late 1940s and early 50s, macroeconomic trends were fairly clear: Europe was on the verge of a major recovery, and American growth was likely to continue. In conjunction with this, we could predict with some confidence what people would want to ...

The BBC reports that: Nearly 37,000 immigrants landed on Italian shores last year, an increase of about 75% on the year before. This increase means that last year's invasion - making up 0.004% of the EU's population - has leapt to an overwhelming 0.007%. Clearly this army of economic refugees must be stopped. Otherwise Europe's carefully designed demographic timebomb will be accidentally defused. Instead of declining by 9.4% in the next 25 years, Europe's population will fall by only 9.2%. If they're not careful, European countries may actually be able to pay some of their pension commitments. The question the BBC has to ask itself is not: what should we do about this incoming flood of one immigrant for every 13,480 Europeans? It's not even: why are you publishing ridiculous stories like this? After all, the BBC covers plenty of ridiculous stories . The question that matters is: why do you bring attention to the laughable opinions of Nick Griffin? Just let t...