Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

by Andrew Yang

Our economy has progressed from making things to supplying financial services. It’s not the first time an economy has made this transition. Both the Netherlands and Great Britain were global manufacturing powers in their day. The British supplanted the Dutch in the early 1800s. We supplanted the British in the early 1900s. The Dutch and British then turned to financial services and insurance as the drivers of their economies. Unfortunately, it’s hard for an economy to rely solely on financial services, and both countries receded from the world stage.* We no longer manufacture devices, we manufacture analyses. Investment banks, private equity firms, corporate law firms, and management consultancies are all vitally important to today’s US economy. They serve crucial roles in helping companies raise capital, get acquired, document complex transactions, and integrate new technologies, among plenty of other necessary tasks.