Reflection on Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson

               This is a pretty cool book that just says that we should spend more money on scientific research and development as a country. Specifically, the federal government should step in to do things like basic research that don’t yield profits very quickly to entice the private sector. It talks a lot about Vannevar Bush, who was the chief of the scientific research program that the United States federal government ran in World War II, which serves as a model for the authors. The primary mechanism of research is to build a trifecta of government funding backing university research that will have commercial uses in the private sector. The authors point out that government spending on research and development has significantly declined as a portion of GDP beginning in the 1970s and we would do well to bring it back to old levels. US government funding has been critical in the development of radar, the internet, the atomic bomb, and the mapping of the human genome, mainly in the ability of the government to fund expensive projects with high ceilings that may be risky. They propose developing a board based off of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that would evaluate regions of the United States for potential federal science investment complemented by increases in education funding to ensure that there are trained workers who can do these new jobs. They would also increase the amount of later-in-life-education, as they point out that by the time a person hits thirty, they get no more formal education usually, but are still learning new things. More training for mid-career professionals could be very useful.