David Brooks almost wrote an interesting article there. The beginning is promising, he writes about the different growth rates in developing vs developed count

David Brooks almost wrote an interesting article there. The beginning is promising, he writes about the different growth rates in developing vs developed countries. This is a well established economic fact. There's an opportunity to infer something from this... Brooks just never quite gets to it. Another interesting idea he does not clarify but does mention is the productivity improvement we have experienced over the course of this (and last!) century. Technology has greatly reduced the need for labor. Again great potential for a discussion which Brooks is never able to take anywhere meaningful. Instead the article slowly degenerates into some kind of drivel about hypothetical individuals states of mind... I don't even, what? It's kind of sad when someone clearly has the education to start a discussion but just completely lack the personal ambition to write to a much higher standard. Write about hard facts, falsifiable theories based on them. Write something more akin to a readable scientific paper. Instead we get something which resembles a bright high-school student's essay on the human condition in a consumerist world. But that's what the work of an op-ed columnist must be like. If you told me I was doomed to be a ditch digger, I would be quite upset, but I'd get over it. If you told me I was doomed to sit in a cubicle, well I'd be rather upset that I'll never fulfill my dream of working for myself but I would get over it. If you told me I was doomed to create nothing other then op-ed articles like this one, I would shoot myself.