I meant to add this a couple weeks ago but got distracted. Prof. Khan had been one of my favorites in grad school, I first read Krugman’s and Rodrik’s books in his class. I feel much better equipped to understand the current crisis and the net positive but mixed bag of globalization. I think I would have had a rudimentary sense of many of these discussions from the news, but now I have some sense of the theory and the possible solutions. As we as a nation debate what to do about the auto-industry or green infrastructure, I think Prof. Khan will continue to be a great resource.
His new blog covers the same issues I learned about in his class: globalization, development, and democracy. He’s got one post up so far on whether Obama is going to be able to pull off his goals. Here’s one point that’s of particular interest in my present line of work:
The good news is that the money spent on green development projects will create more jobs than other public investments. By using a social accounting matrix for the US, I estimated that more than 22 jobs will be created by spending an extra one million dollars on green public investment projects. By contrast, even progressive, non-military projects at best create approximately 15 new jobs per million dollar expenditure. Of course, military-industrial complex creates even fewer jobs; fewer than 10 for every million dollars of added expenditures.
I recommend the post if you want to get a better idea for some of our options and their likely effects.
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