Likes Jump-Starting America.

Transcript context

…There is no constitution, exactly. There’s just heuristics, and there’s just what happens, and then establishing traditions. Look, it’s not unusual in the British parliamentary system, certainly, for one party to gain control, to keep control for a long period of time. That’s what the Labour Party did previously. Now the Conservatives have had this long run, and you run out of steam, I think, Tyler. You’ve run out of ideas. Alternation of power would be good, but the parliamentary system is one in which a small . . . First, you can get a majority with a minority of the vote, and also, a relatively small shift in the vote can give you a big majority, and those big majorities are unassailable. I think it is the unfortunate downside of what is otherwise a pretty robust and definitely entertaining parliamentary system. I’m a big fan of your book, Jump-Starting America, about science and science policy. It’s with Jonathan Gruber. I have a few questions about science policy. You argue for a place-based policy to jump-start different regions in America. I suppose I’m worried in the same way that you’re worried about northern England, that we could do a lot of good things, which I would be in favor of, but most of the gains will go to the coasts. Since you wrote the book, we’ve had mRNA vaccines. Well, Moderna — that’s in the Boston-Cambridge area; Open AI — that’s in San Francisco. Those are phenomenal developments, but they’re not in Rochester. They’re not in Iowa. Are you now more despairing of our ability to use place-based policies to jump-start these other regions? No, actually, we’ve gone the other way. We’re a bit more encouraged, Tyler. You’re right, of course, about those big breakthroughs, and we are all about the breakthroughs there. But one of the things that strikes me as being a strength of the US is the depth of the bench. All these other places where real estate prices are not so high — there are plenty of talented people who want to live there. Of course, there are massive spillover effects from investing in basic science, which is the basis of our argument. When we make those public-sector investments — that’s to get the spillovers — why not look more broadly outside of Boston, outside of New York, outside of San Francisco or Seattle, and attempt to make those places more central, tap into the talent that already exists in those places? I think the shrinking of distance, or a different view of distance, Tyler, after the pandemic, has got to be a helpful part of that.…

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