“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Stanford economist Paul Romer said at a venture capital seminar 21 years ago, referring to the increasing levels of education in other countries that would make them more competitive with the United States.
Romer’s comment transmogrified into a political slogan when Rahm Emanuel, manager of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory, attributed it to exploiting popular angst over a deep recession.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel told an interviewer.