What is the value of the whole world?
more from chapter 1 of THE VALUE OF NOTHING
I was the one who broke the news to the sleepy students on the morning of September 11th. In that era, few students had mobile phones, let alone smart phones, twitter, and text messages. They knew nothing about Flight 175 crashing into floors 77 through 85. They knew nothing about the South Tower collapsing an hour before and the North Tower collapsing 30 minutes before they sat down at their desks.
We all have a story about where we were on September 11. This is mine.
Occidental College is a picturesque campus on the outskirts of Los Angeles. When it was established in 1887, the founders of the college had two options to site the new school: a hundred acres in the foothills north of downtown or an isolated stretch of beach further north and west. They chose the foothills town of Eagle Rock. The sparsely populated beachside town lost the prize and the big development money, but don’t feel too bad. It went on to become the Hollywood playground known as Malibu.
As a newly minted professor, I started teaching a course in introductory economics at Occidental in the fall of 2001. Three weeks later, on September 11, terrorists struck The World Trade Center and the Pentagon using hijacked airliners. In the blissfully peaceful weeks before that world-changing event, I was juggling overflowing classrooms and students begging to be added. Econ classes were always overflowing because economics was the most popular major on campus. And, importantly, the econ faculty were a limited commodity.
During one of the first lectures, as I reviewed key definitions and concepts, gross domestic product (GDP) came up. One student raised her hand. I don’t recall her name but can still see her face - a sandy-haired young woman from New York.