This is John Batchel. A happy conversation with Joel Kotkin writing for Civitas Institute Civitas Outlook and also at Unheard about the comparison between North America, the United States in particular, and our trading and adversary allies.

Trading allies, Europe. Adversary, that would be China, and then plain

adversaries, that would be Russia and Tehran. What is it that we do that makes us rosy about the

future and our allies, adversaries, and trading are not.

Why is it that we have higher productivity?

Where did it come from?

Joel looks at that and says very carefully, because we came from Europe and the people

who came here were adventurous.

Here's Joel Kotkin to explain.

In comparison to everybody else, things are really good.

We're moving.

Tough to hear.

Here's Joe.

Moving forward.

America has not yet lost that sort of sense of ambition.

We think about, when you mentioned we come from a European

culture. What made Europe so powerful was an adventurous spirit. You think about the explorers

from Spain and then, you know, eventually from the UK, from France, and of course a lot of

the real explorers were Italian.

These were people who were outward looking, who were risk takers.

And today, where are the risk takers?

I mean, that's why when we look at space, I do a lot of work on space.

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