> I encourage you to take a moment to absorb the size of these gaps. Women, African-Americans, Latinos, Southerners, and low- and middle-income children are far less likely to grow up to become patent holders and inventors.

I know the author uses patents as a proxy for innovation. But is it really a valid proxy?

Do we want to maximize innovation or do we want to maximize patent holdings?

Why not remove patents and construct a modern understandig of "innovation". Did Einstein even patent anything in his own name? What about his contemporaries: Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger?