Academia and the decline of wealth in America
I actually do think he's onto something when he talks about the decline of engineering relative to law, banking, and medicine.<p>It's interesting, because in the midst of an article about how much poorer we are than our parents, he does discuss extremely high salaries in these fields.  I think the problem is that the "Best and Brightest" young Americans are now chiefly interested in entering fields where they <i>get</i> a lot of money but probably don't <i>create</i> much wealth.<p>I read a while back that many economists believe that while a good legal system is critical to a modern economy and state, the marginal value of an additional lawyer in the US is actually negative - that is, additional regulation, litigation, and so forth is actually wealth destroying. Banking, as defined as moving money from where it is to where it is needed is a valuable economic activity, but a lot of banking lately seems to have been a wealth destroying activity that is lucrative for its practitioners as well.<p>Medicine seems more defensible, but my father (a prof of medicine) told me recently that he was disturbed by a report on how much of a person's lifetime medical expenses are accrued in the last few years/months of life.<p>By the way, sorry about the lack of cites.  But I'm guessing that these generalities really aren't all that controversial.<p>A friend of mine (a lawyer) makes a lot of money by creating corporations that exist purely to purchase expensive equipment (such as airplanes) and then lease them back to the actual "owner", mainly because this creates a favorable tax write-off.  Have the methods used by the "elites" to gain personal wealth always so unaligned with the general creation of wealth?<p>One really wonderful thing about the US is that there isn't all that much class resentment.  People generally talk about "making" or "earning" money, and we admire people who do it, largely because we believe that they create wealth for everyone as they create it for themselves.  I think this is very true of high tech entrepreneurship and other activities... but it does seem (especially from the massive expansion of the banking sector) that many of our current wealthy elite seem to be adding about as much to the general economy as feudal lords.<p>They'll try to cast this in terms of "disliking people who make money", but I really don't.  It doesn't bother me at all that the google guys have billions.  I may envy them, but I don't resent them.  However, I <i>resent</i> AIG and GS, because I'm utterly unconvinced that they are contributing a damn thing, and that they are probably damaging wealth creation.