Sunday, August 4, 2013

How Many Engineers [or economists] Learn Political Engineering, Not Just Physical Engineering [or mathematical modeling]?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

About the same proportion as that fraction of economists who ever learn much about actual banking and currency operations?

"1904, the Americans' first year in Panama, mirrored the French disaster. The chief engineer, John Findlay Wallace, neglected to organize the effort or to develop an action plan. The food was putrid, the living conditions abysmal. Political red tape put a stranglehold on appropriations. Disease struck, and three out of four Americans booked passage home. Engineer Wallace soon followed. The Americans had poured $128 million into the swamps of Panama, to damned little effect.

The arrival of Wallace's replacement, the rugged and ingenious John Stevens, marked a turn in fortunes for the beleaguered canal. Stevens had built the Great Northern Railroad across the Pacific Northwest. In rough territory from Canada to Mexico, he had proven his tenacity. And his new plan of action would ultimately save the canal.

The kind of work that needed done, Steven reasoned, could only be done by a well-housed, well-fed, disease-free labor force. Stevens began work not by not digging, but by cleaning. 
...

The Panama Canal opened officially on August 15, 1914. The world scarcely noticed. German troops were driving across Belgium toward Paris; the newspapers relegated Panama to their back pages. The greatest engineering project in the history of the world had been dwarfed by the totality of World War I."


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tr-panama/

So why not regain a healthy, well-housed, well-fed, economic-disease-free Middle Class today, by cleaning up Wall St? Too distracted by Class War? ... Again?


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