The case for mutual educational disarmament

ECONOMISTS TEND to be big fans of education, which is perhaps not surprising given how much of it they consume and how well their textbooks can do. Alfred Marshall, writing in 1873, hoped that education would help erase the “distinction between working men and gentlemen”. Gary Becker of the University of Chicago reimagined education as an investment in “human capital” that would earn a return in the market much like other assets. Harvard University’s Greg Mankiw, whose books have educated more than most, once calculated that differences in human capital between countries could account for much of their otherwise inexplicable differences in prosperity.