Sometimes I catch Marketplace, which plays on WSHU at 18:30 weekdays, on my drive home. The other day they interviewed Richard Florida about whether post-9/11 paranoia is strangling our economy.
As of tomorrow, most visitors to the U.S will have to put their index fingers on a glass plate for an electronic scan. A digital photo will be taken, too. This is an expansion of a surveillance system put in place after 9-11. Abroad, there are complaints about civil liberties. But in the new edition of the Harvard Business Review, Professor Richard Florida of George Mason University makes the argument that the tightening of borders threatens to strangle something unique that’s made America’s economy remarkably strong.
Philip Greenspun posits that America’s economy will not be hurt much by the movement of labor in the International market, because America will still attract the best and the brightest. Richard Florida worries that we’re doing our best to drive the brightest away.
Whoever picks the music for this show has a sense of humor. “Leave Them All Behind” by Ride?
That program on immigration was followed with two today on immigration. The first, ostensibly on geneology, was bridged to another, on indentured servants H1-b visas, by Pilgrim, by Eric Clapton.
I’m related to Kerry and Bush. Are you? Some call it the American Myth…others, the American dream. The proposition that everyone in the U.S. succeeds or fails on their own merits. Yet perhaps success has more to do with ancestry than some are willing to concede. Consider this. President George Bush and his challenger, John Kerry have something in common. Both are distantly related to our own Adam Davidson. Something else Bush and Kerry have in common: both are rich and powerful men. Yet Adam squeaks by reporting for public radio. Perhaps, he thought, it might be useful to double-check the genealogical record.
The hypothesis in the above story is that some family members are not content, leave their homes, and take risks. Others stay within walking distance of Plymouth. The risk takers end up with the most toys.