Simon Johnson: belief

Transcript context

…Reading the book, much as I like many parts of it, I feel you’re underrating the benefits of sunshine. When you list your most promising places for regeneration, the top three on the list are Rochester, Pittsburgh, and the Syracuse area. Now, Pittsburgh may be doing okay, but Rochester is still losing population. Syracuse area not doing so well. The entire southeast — not the entire, but most of the southeast — has done well. Nashville — a star performer, not on the list. Most of Texas, doing well. What if we just had a simpler theory that said it’s sunbelt, and a good university helps. Isn’t that a better predictor for the up-and-coming places than like Rochester, Pittsburgh, Syracuse? Cleveland is on your list. Ithaca, New York; Cincinnati — they’re all in your top 10. They don’t seem like winners to me. [laughs] Well, what we were flagging there was potential, potential that could be tapped. On our website, jump-startingamerica.com, there’s an interactive map, and you can put in different criteria, so if you like the idea of ranking places, you can change the ranking or change the weight on different elements. We did not put hours of sunshine in there, Tyler. Maybe we should in the next version, and then you could put that in the index. Totally valid point. I think the bigger argument that we’re making there is, look beyond the East and West Coast. There are some really great places full of talent in the US. Which ones will surge to the front? I don’t know. That depends a little bit on who gets their act together and who gets focused on this. I do think the importance of a good university should not be understated, but that university should also feel pushed to engage with business, engage with finding jobs for graduates, helping start-ups — the kind of things that my university does and your university does very well, Tyler. Circa 2023, with some more years behind us — apart from wanting to spend more money, how would you improve US science policy for any given level of expenditure?…

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