Saturday, August 6, 2011

As Usual Scott Adams Has It Right

On his blog:
My hypothesis is that the best indicator of long term economic health is the number of engineers a country produces relative to the number of lawyers. A country that is cranking out more engineers than lawyers will trend up. A country that is moving toward a lawyer-heavy economy will grind to a stop.


Some of you will argue that education in general is the biggest predictor of success. But I think you'd agree that if everyone started majoring in English, we'd all starve to death with impeccable grammar.
Yup.  There's a need for lawyers, and a need for people with English degrees (and history degrees).  But we need scientists and engineers quite a bit more.


  1. I would agree but take it a step further.

    How many engineers are working as engineers?

    How many lawyers are working as lawyers?

    John Henry

  2. Get an engineering degree and then move to a country with jobs...

  3. While I tend to agree, Japan must be examined as a strong exception to this rule of thumb.

    (Of course, nothing more than other non-judicial system methods of hindering engineers is quite sufficient, and Japan has those in abundance.)

    China and India would tend to support the thesis.