I saw two very nice papers this week, that blog readers would enjoy “The Wealth of Working Nations” by Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Gustavo Ventura, and Wen Yao has a simple and lovely point. It’s best encapsulated (as Jesus did in a great seminar presentation, which should be
Thank you for sharing. The topic of Japan and demographics is fascinating. It sounds very much in line with Goodhart's and Pradhan's points in The Great Demographic Reversal. I really enjoyed reading that book and would highly recommend it.
This sentence: "Women didn’t have lots of children in the 1950s because there was ample government-provided day care" could be interpreted multiple ways, so I find it a bit confusing.
I think it's supposed to be sort of a sarcastic jab? I.e., "Look, there wasn't government childcare in the 50s and yet women still had lots of kids." But it's also possible to just read it straight: if you don't know the data well then you might interpret that as saying "the fact that there was ample childcare in the 50s led women to have lots of kids." But that, of course, doesn't really make sense!
Maybe I'm being pedantic. But could you rephrase to include a little nod. Like: "It's not like the lack of ample government funded healthcare in the 1950s prevented women from having lots of kids."
The Jacob Light paper/word cloud were interesting - but not surprising. There's probably the herd mentality dynamic also at play - particularly for both new offerings.
In The Jacob Light paper/word cloud I wonder if change may also be driven by competence of curriculum makers. I recall in early 2010 Chicago Public Schools considered getting rid of physics, biology, chemistry, etc and having more of engineering, etc, more practical classes.
I understand demands of the times, only not at the expense of fundamentals. I often recall titles of Lenin's works. He is getting little credit for being a great marketer 🙂 One of his work was titled: Better Less But Better.
It seems to me that not enough thought is given to what "better" is.
On a separate note, at his speech at Davos, Argentinian President Milei criticized Classical Economics from the Austrian point of view. I wonder if you would mind analyzing/responding to his critic.please
Re: the last segment on academics. In leadership, it's said you have to say something at least 6 times before you're heard. I often said I get tired of listening to myself, but you have to keep repeating for the message to stick. Is it perhaps too many in the academy have gotten tired of listening to themselves and/or have lost faith they are teaching the eternal truths necessary for a vibrant, functioning society and are moving on to the next shiny object? I understand the original university model was lecturers got paid based on attendance. It evolved to performing this duty to society, which has flourished for several centuries. The two concepts can meld when the lecturer is able to make these eternal truths stimulating instead of putting it to a vote of what students might like to learn (which seems oxymoronic anyway, since how do I know enough about what I don't know to offer an opinion on what I should know?). Another saying I'll offer is it only takes one generation for a language to die. How many generations does it take for the entire body of western knowledge to die off as well?
-->"South Korea’s population will be cut in half in a generation."
I wonder if that's quite right. (I might not understand the fertility statistic.) Wouldn't it be that the new generation born will be one-third (0.7 divided by 2.1) the adult generation having babies. Since the live population is made up of 3-4 generations, depending on the measure of a generation used... It would take two generations to cut the population in half. Dire still, I suppose, but playing out over two generations allows for a lot of things to happen. (I don't know the time it took S. Korea to go from 2.1 to 0.7.)
Thank you for this very captivating post. While I do not believe in word clouds, where are "Poisson" and "π" in Mathematics, . . . ? It is also a bit disconcerting about the debasement of college courses in poetry and lit, though technical people appear not to care -- poorly developed language skills can get you, especially in English - maybe see WORDSTRUCK, a simple book by by Robert McNeil. Great!
Thank you for sharing. The topic of Japan and demographics is fascinating. It sounds very much in line with Goodhart's and Pradhan's points in The Great Demographic Reversal. I really enjoyed reading that book and would highly recommend it.
Writing/grammar note/question:
This sentence: "Women didn’t have lots of children in the 1950s because there was ample government-provided day care" could be interpreted multiple ways, so I find it a bit confusing.
I think it's supposed to be sort of a sarcastic jab? I.e., "Look, there wasn't government childcare in the 50s and yet women still had lots of kids." But it's also possible to just read it straight: if you don't know the data well then you might interpret that as saying "the fact that there was ample childcare in the 50s led women to have lots of kids." But that, of course, doesn't really make sense!
Maybe I'm being pedantic. But could you rephrase to include a little nod. Like: "It's not like the lack of ample government funded healthcare in the 1950s prevented women from having lots of kids."
The claim that so much calculus-related material is supposedly on the way out is enough for me to doubt that entire word cloud.
The Jacob Light paper/word cloud were interesting - but not surprising. There's probably the herd mentality dynamic also at play - particularly for both new offerings.
Thank you, John. Great articles.
In The Jacob Light paper/word cloud I wonder if change may also be driven by competence of curriculum makers. I recall in early 2010 Chicago Public Schools considered getting rid of physics, biology, chemistry, etc and having more of engineering, etc, more practical classes.
I understand demands of the times, only not at the expense of fundamentals. I often recall titles of Lenin's works. He is getting little credit for being a great marketer 🙂 One of his work was titled: Better Less But Better.
It seems to me that not enough thought is given to what "better" is.
On a separate note, at his speech at Davos, Argentinian President Milei criticized Classical Economics from the Austrian point of view. I wonder if you would mind analyzing/responding to his critic.please
In math, the term "programming" most likely refers to "mathematical programming", i.e., optimization, not writing code.
Re: the last segment on academics. In leadership, it's said you have to say something at least 6 times before you're heard. I often said I get tired of listening to myself, but you have to keep repeating for the message to stick. Is it perhaps too many in the academy have gotten tired of listening to themselves and/or have lost faith they are teaching the eternal truths necessary for a vibrant, functioning society and are moving on to the next shiny object? I understand the original university model was lecturers got paid based on attendance. It evolved to performing this duty to society, which has flourished for several centuries. The two concepts can meld when the lecturer is able to make these eternal truths stimulating instead of putting it to a vote of what students might like to learn (which seems oxymoronic anyway, since how do I know enough about what I don't know to offer an opinion on what I should know?). Another saying I'll offer is it only takes one generation for a language to die. How many generations does it take for the entire body of western knowledge to die off as well?
-->"South Korea’s population will be cut in half in a generation."
I wonder if that's quite right. (I might not understand the fertility statistic.) Wouldn't it be that the new generation born will be one-third (0.7 divided by 2.1) the adult generation having babies. Since the live population is made up of 3-4 generations, depending on the measure of a generation used... It would take two generations to cut the population in half. Dire still, I suppose, but playing out over two generations allows for a lot of things to happen. (I don't know the time it took S. Korea to go from 2.1 to 0.7.)
Thank you for this very captivating post. While I do not believe in word clouds, where are "Poisson" and "π" in Mathematics, . . . ? It is also a bit disconcerting about the debasement of college courses in poetry and lit, though technical people appear not to care -- poorly developed language skills can get you, especially in English - maybe see WORDSTRUCK, a simple book by by Robert McNeil. Great!
Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde's papers are always so beautifully written. Were that all economists were so eloquent.