The Best Field of Economics
Does schooling cause economic growth?
Videos are back this week! After the surprisingly successful tier list of fields of economics, I decided I wanted to explore the fields further. I’m starting with development economics, sharing my story of falling in love with development economics then giving you a taste of what you’ll learn.
Here’s my claim before you watch the video: we do not have evidence that giving people more schooling causes economic growth or development.
Is that surprising to you? Watch the video for the explanation.
Skipping College
Speaking of schooling, ten years ago, Peter Thiel (the early investor in Facebook who gave them $500,000 in The Social Network) decided that for many high-performing students, college was a complete waste. So he started the Thiel Fellowship where he paid kids to skip college and to start a company instead. And this isn’t like skipping Juneau State College. He was paying these kids to not go to Stanford or Harvard.
Well this last week the Fellowship announced that so far the companies started by these fellows are worth more than $29 billion. That gets even bigger if you count Ethereum, the cryptocurrency started by Thiel Fellow Vitalik Buterin and is valued at $40 billion. Does this mean college is a waste?
If you’re interested in why it’s so hard to see if college improves wages, here’s my video from September.
MrBeast YouTube AMA
Last week MrBeast decided to hold a Q&A on twitter. I collected all of the questions and responses into one twitter thread. Since he crossed 50 million subscribers this last week, he knows a little about how to do well on YouTube.
RIP Adobe Flash, Long Live Economics
Adobe Flash, which used to power a significant share of the internet, officially died this past week. Imagine you know how to program Flash and suddenly demand for your skills shrinks. What’s going to happen to your wages?
Well, it depends on how flexible you can adapt to changes. An economist looked at programmers and found evidence that programmers are quite flexible. Young programmers stopped using Flash, leaving plenty of jobs for the older programmers, which kept wages constant.