One way to ensure impoverishment in the future is to recklessly eat the seed corn. Practically everything that is good about the US comes from its awesome higher education system. It is arguably the world’s best. One indicator is the number of Nobel prizes it gets each year. Just this year, of the 12 people who shared the five (I am ignoring the peace prize joke) prizes, 10 are Americans. But how long will this last?

Two people — Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University, and Oliver Willamson, UC Berkeley — win the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2009.
Go Berkeley!

Go read the story of Babar Ali, a 16-year old kid who runs a school in his village in West Bengal. [link thanks to Vipin Veetil.]

ACT 1: A Course on Development
This summer for teaching an undergraduate course on economic development (Econ171) at Berkeley, I naturally considered the major factors that affect — and effect — economic growth and development of an economy. The major headings included growth models, energy, infrastructure, urbanization, education, agriculture, and one other topic which I will come to presently. It should come as no surprise that the government of India — being one that professes a sincere commitment to economic growth and development — actively intervenes in all of those areas. …

I loved going to watch the Blue Angels do their show at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale California. I came across this picture in SFGate.