👎 No surprise: We're not going to remedy massive education loss from the pandemic. Sorry, kids!

Also: 5 Quick Questions for … Cameron Wiese, advocate for a New World’s Fair

In This Issue

The Essay: We're not going to remedy massive education loss from the pandemic

5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … Cameron Wiese, advocate for a New World’s Fair

Micro Reads: the Immaculate Disinflation, AI and health, green lithium, and more …

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Quote of the Issue

"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men — the balance wheel of the social machinery." - Horace Mann

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The Essay

👎 We're not going to remedy massive education loss from the pandemic

A big part of the Faster, Please! mission is discussing and evaluating public policy on its potential to help create a better future for America and the world. And that doesn’t just mean a sci-fi tomorrow of nuclear fusion reactors, universal vaccines, space elevators, and Mars colonies. More simply, it means creating an ecology of opportunity where everyone has the chance to maximize their human potential and create lives of value as they see fit. Everyone, everywhere. That’s the goal.

And to effectively evaluate policy, we need to acknowledge trade-offs. That may seem like boilerplate, Econ 101 stuff, but it’s something policymakers too often ignore or underplay. Take, for example, one of the most momentous policy actions of our lifetime: the decision by many local leaders across America to close schools and hold classes remotely during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. These decisions were made in good faith for public health reasons, but the impacts went far beyond public health.