Xalapa Thoughts

I am in Xalapa, Mexico for the next couple of days teaching a course on policy.  I have always thought of policy as a silly word.  Among some of the academics it is really a nice way to say politics.  So this course will be a challenge.  

I am reading a book  by a writer named Juan Enriquez (As the Future Catches You) which is written in an interesting style but has some very good facts in it.  Enriquez argues that without invention/patents your country will not prosper in this age.  Indeed, there is a lot of data that as technology has become more important - that nations have become divided more on incomes based on how much technology is present.  For a long while we imported a lot of people who now seem to be going back to their home countries.

We clearly have done a bad job in the last couple of decades in preparing our own on science and technology but the number of patents from American firms continues to be robust.  This is an issue that would separate politics and policy - what are the politics here and what are the policy issues?  That may be the way I start the class tomorrow.

I am always interested to hear what I will say when I start teaching a new class.