The 2012 Global Go To Think Tanks Report and Policy Advice is the most updated source we have (apart from books and academic papers which are published less regularly) to know the evolution of think tanks. It is based in a survey conducted among journalists, experts and institute officials. «The Program’s Rankings remain the first and most comprehensive ranking of the world’s top think tanks, and are based on an annual global peer and expert survey of over 1950 scholars, policymakers, journalists, and regional and subject area experts».
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One of the most ugly faces of the economic crisis is unemployment. There are countries in the South of Europe where the unemployment rate is around the 25 %. In the last four years we have broken the raising line we followed from the nineties. In fact, many of the objectives of the Lisbon Agenda on this matter have failed.
It is stimulating (Please not to confuse with stimulus plans or whatever) to discover the strength of new approaches to the progress of economy and the human being in general terms. This is the case of the biomedical field, which is opening a new frontier to the extension of life and to the development of a economic sector with a huge future. Far from expired economic recipes recommending to insist in public expenditure, financial engineering or real state, this sector shows that the next economic lanscape will be linked to serious Research, Development and Innovation, where science plays a major role. In a similar way than the renewable energy sector (but with less protectionism and ideological bias), the biomedical field is emerging in several developed countries and obtaining big investments from entrepreneurial institutions. In fact, many Governments are working desperately to set up biomedical clusters in their areas, but it is not only a matter of money and facilities. Highly educated human capital has the key to success in this sector and a long experience in medical sciences and engineering are also needed. You cannot improvise.
Taxes! Taxes! Everybody hates them but they are as necessary as the air we breathe. However, it is hard to know taxation is growing all the time, beyond the good or bad economic environment. Modern Democracy is a thirsty monster who always asks for more money, more civil servants, more resources. Although we constantly create new public needs to solve public problems, the middle taxpayer feels things could be better. In fact, citizens believe public budget should be managed more efficiently. It is not an easy task as officials keeping the money depend on the increase of resources to survive. To play a political role is nowadays a professional career and no one wants to retire at 45. I would like, but I am not a politician.
The short term and populist politics our politicians are used to practise is delaying the end the global crisis. They are not the only factor of the solution, but their fear to face the real problems of the economic system is causing so much pain in our societies. At the moment, the only big action they have taken is to increase the public expenditure as it is an easy and popular policy.