You know I love all things evidence. But while evidence helps us understand past events, it can get in our way when we're trying bold, new things. And just because we understand important evidence doesn't mean we know how to solve important problems.

Was reminded of that today. Richard Florida was on NPR Morning Edition (I think most of NPR's business journalism is simplistic and insulting, by the way). Florida is known for evidence showing that a city "is much better off if it has a large share of knowledge workers, of innovators, entrepreneurs, artists, professionals that make up the creative class". (He has a nice overview of innovation evidence in the Feb 1 Atlantic. And this evidence on Chicago's class divisions.)

But tech incubators don't fix everything. Florida is finding that places with "creative class concentrations have greater levels of inequality". Here's anecdotal evidence from a friend in San Francisco's tech-dominated SOMA neighborhood: Rent $3,900/month for 830 sq ft. Now that's an inequality stimulus if ever there was one.

Evidence doesn't solve problems, people do. So what does Mr. Florida suggest we do about the "non-creative" classes? Vast economic evidence doesn't lead directly to reasonable solutions. When asked on NPR for one concrete thing a mayor could do "that would improve the problem you're talking about", Richard Florida fails to impress: He says "boost the wages and salaries of the more than the 60 million workers who deliver our services, who prepare our food, take care of our homes, wait on us in stores.... The first thing you have to do is figure out a way to engage the service companies, to call them together in a summit and say we're going to work together to boost the wages and productivity of service workers. At the same time, begin to work on more affordable housing options, begin to work on how to increase density. If you're in a city like Chicago or New York, where there is transit, encourage the development of more knowledge-intensive and creative work around transit nodes and connections."

Bzzzt! Thank you for playing. Re: housing density: Lots of people are already trying that. And w/r/t a wage summit, I can't think of a time when employers put their heads together to increase pay.

Florida says: "The way to do that is not to falsely do it by just imposing minimum standards, although that may be worth doing in some big cities, by the way. The way to do that is to make their work more productive, to engage them in innovation, just like we did in our factories. When we began to organize workers in team, organize them in quality circles, engage them in continuous improvement, the factories got more productive and the wages of the workers went up. Listening to the workers and making them part of the solution, not just in factories, not just in Silicon Valley high-tech work, but in all sorts of work - that's the path to prosperity in the future."

Not everything is a Toyota factory. Or a Cheesecake Factory. Yes, the Cheesecake Factory is famously well-managed and profitable (hopefully this is reflected in people's paychecks). But I'd like to hear a creative proposal to solve America's in-home healthcare problem: Evidence tells us the elderly population is exploding, that employees are underpaid and unprotected by regulations. Meanwhile, agencies providing these services are constrained on many fronts. But can management and technology create prosperity out of car trips to care for old people in their homes?