Bennett Pope, Chapter 6, question 5

A passage that I found interesting in chapter 6 was Wheelan's paraphrase, "500 million minds are a terrible thing to waste." In this chapter about productivity and human capital, I thought this quote encompasses both ideas very well. Productivity is as much about how much we waste as it is the amount we create. It doesn't matter how many millions or billions of people we have, the addition of 500 million educated minds will help us become more productive. This all hinges, however, on the human capital that these people provide. They are "wasted" because they have low human capital. By investing in their education, we do not waste their minds, which, as the quote says, is a tragedy.