I’m in the process of writing a summary of a recent presentation this week by Nouriel Roubini that I hope to be able to post here shortly. However, there is one observation he made that I thought was so striking that it was worth mentioning on its own…
He mentions that the US Army did a study to assess the potential size of the population that they would consider suitable for recruiting. Their methodology was to exclude all of the following –
- those who are obese
- drug users
- those without a high school diploma
- those with a criminal record
Their conclusion was that out of all young American’s (precise definition not given), two-thirds would not be eligible based on these criteria. Kind of scary. I can’t help wondering how NZ would compare. I’m not confident that it would be much better.