New at Cato Unbound: Frank Levy on Education and Inequality in the Creative Age

In today's reply to Richard Florida's lead essay on "The Future of the American Workforce in the Global Creative Economy," Frank Levy, Daniel Rose Professor of Urban Economics in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, agrees that creativity is more important than ever in a world where computers and foreign workers can do routine work less expensively than domestic workers. This shift, Levy says, requires better education in problem-solving. But better education can only do so much. The gains from rising labor productivity are going largely to the wealthy, Levy argues. Unless policies and norms are reinstated that spread those gains more widely, "all of the nation's institutions will be at risk."