Jump-Starting America! How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream

Please join the House Research and Development (R&D) Caucus

For a conversation with Simon Johnson, co-author:

Jump-Starting America!
How Breakthrough Science Can Revive
Economic Growth and the American Dream

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

2:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Room 2325 Rayburn House Office Building

Link to RSVP

Beginning in 1940, massive public investment generated breakthroughs in science and technology that first helped win WWII and then created the most successful economy the world has ever seen. Private enterprise then built on these breakthroughs to create new industries–such as radar, jet engines, digital computers, mobile telecommunications, life-saving medicines, and the internet– that became the catalyst for broader economic growth that generated millions of good jobs. However, U.S. public spending on research and development has fallen to 0.71% of Gross Domestic Product from more than 2% of GDP in 1964. In Jump-Starting America, Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson offer a compelling vision of a research- and education-led American comeback, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Jump-Starting America recounts the broad historical arc of innovation and economic growth, reminding readers that the pinnacle of America’s public support for science coincided with our economic peak. The authors argue that public investment in knowledge and research can help put American economic growth back on track, estimating that increasing research funding by 0.5% of GDP—$100 billion per year—would add jobs and push the annual growth rate from 2% to 2.14%. In addition, Gruber and Johnson propose “to spread the availability of public research funding more broadly across America” by creating new technology hubs in places like Cleveland or Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Come hear Simon Johnson discuss the visionary and pragmatic plan that will lead to job growth and a new American economy in places now left behind.

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. His much-viewed opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. With law professor James Kwak, Simon is the coauthor of the best sellers 13 Bankers and White House Burning and a founder of the widely cited economics blog The Baseline Scenario.