The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.
The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.
Florida states that Technology, Talent, and Tolerance attracts the high-value creative class, and goes on to talk about how people are not immigrating to the United States anymore due to post-9/11 restrictions. Most of the book's entertainment derives from guessing where Florida's muddled argument will go next, since he likely has the causation backwards:
Young, un-married, English-speaking people with a good education really can go most places on this planet at the drop of a hat because 1) global travel has become really cheap, 2) global communication back to parents and disparate friends has become cheap, and 3) they don't really have much tying them down.
Now give that young person a choice: A) work in a slow economy where young people have to wait for someone to promote the older person in front of them, or B) work in a growing economy which needs all the talent it can get, so effective young people get promoted quickly to work on interesting problems.
The achievement-oriented youth will probably pick the growth economy, making that economy a bit more Talented. Tolerance happens when companies need talent so badly they don't care where it comes from, thereby putting people from different cultures to work together towards a common goal. Technology happens when that talent competes against other companies in the same industry.
How do you get a growth economy? Devalue your currency a bit, target an international market for development, redirect education and investment to support that industry. If you happen to get lucky, you picked a growing international market and can create a competitive advantage. Repeat.
The elite of any society have, of course, always been highly mobile; what's distinct about our times is the extent to which more and more people are developing the cultural, political, and economic freedom to choose where to live and work globally.
The basic rules of biology indicate that, in the next twenty years, the US is going to experience a lack of available workers that hasn't been seen for the past fifty years. What we saw happen in the information technology markets of the late nineties was only a warm-up for what's coming. "I .. drink .. your .. milkshake" says otherwise.