Someone asked me: if the world is so dependent on emerging markets for growth, what will happen once all the markets have emerged? The short answer I gave was that technology will still drive growth, that it's the only underlying driver of economic gowth anyway, once all the inefficiencies have been teased out. But this broadest possible response didn't really satisfy, I guess because many people see technology as a threat to people's jobs rather than a force for overall growth -- and that's not unreasonable. I'm not sure this was the underlying issue, but do we eventually want a society without work, or with significantly less work?
Also, I've been wondering: given the importance of the state of the economy to the political process in this country and the complexity of these issues for the average voter, why is it that we don't have more economics education at the high school level? If people are going to be dealing with these issues as citizens, shouldn't they at least have some baseline of knowledge about what the economy is, what it means when it's doing badly, etc? Otherwise, there's widespread myopia about economic issues, and we see only our own circumstances (and perhaps those of our neighbors). Or maybe this is how it should be?
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