"The US’s top politicians are mostly lawyers. Wang argues that the US once built like China until the 1960s came, and the US began regulating itself into a collective torpor."
But the politicians in the US in the 1950's were not engineers either! The fraction has never been much higher than 2%. And conversely, plenty of the highest ranking soviet officials during the Brezhnev stagnation (notionally) had engineering or science backgrounds.
Whether or not politicians have engineering degrees doesn't seem predictive of a country's capacity for economic growth at all.
"The US’s top politicians are mostly lawyers. Wang argues that the US once built like China until the 1960s came, and the US began regulating itself into a collective torpor."
But the politicians in the US in the 1950's were not engineers either! The fraction has never been much higher than 2%. And conversely, plenty of the highest ranking soviet officials during the Brezhnev stagnation (notionally) had engineering or science backgrounds.
Whether or not politicians have engineering degrees doesn't seem predictive of a country's capacity for economic growth at all.