Add education and educators to help the nation's economy

"The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."  So said Winston Churchill, according to a book in my library.  Maybe so; in any case, it's pithy.

The June 2011 issue of Smithsonian magazine contains a great article on some folks in the Columbia River Gorge area who are in the business of developing and producing aerial drones; this is a story about entrepreneurial small business, and it's a good one, currently available at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Drones-are-Ready-for-Takeoff.html.

Stick with me; there's a connection here.  By the time you reach the end, you might even agree with my case for increasing public funding for education!



America is the planet's shining example of the success of capitalism and free enterprise.  Consequently, we also have ample evidence of the validity of the first phrase in Churchill's comment.  We hear about it daily as we learn about the huge and increasing disparity in wealth and earnings between the top 1% or so of our society and the rest of the population.  (Am refraining from loading you up with numerous statistics on this subject. . .for now!)

Nonetheless, as a nation we put up with these shortcomings in our chosen form of social structure because we Americans have a tendency to be optimistic and believe that our individual share of those capitalistic blessings will be sufficient, and perhaps even more than merely sufficient.  Most of us will seek to accomplish this through gainful employment.

Employment opportunities do not exactly abound at this point in time.

Why is that?

Well, there are many reasons, of course:  the large companies make headlines for themselves by disposing of thousands of workers, and the smaller companies just aren't hiring enough of the available workforce.

The root causes of this lack of hiring are what we want to address, and they are probably many and varied.  One such cause is what seems to be a diminished amount of innovation in American businesses.  Naturally, innovation occurs constantly, but today there is no discernible "mega-theme" like the aerospace industry of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, or the Information Technology developments of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

These mega-themes had purpose, required capital investment, and they caught the imagination, thereby encouraging education and skill-development.  With a better-educated and more skillful workforce we saw people succeed in further innovation or by achieving gainful employment.

As the '90s drew to a close, two new mega-themes emerged:  the Internet, and creative financial management.  The Internet theme--an evolution from the earlier Information Technology themes--is still with us, it is still beneficial and probably will persist in those ways.  On the other hand, we will continue to pay for the excesses of the financial management theme--remember collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs)?--for many more years.  And to make matters worse, American manufacturing was collateral damage (pun intended) because creation of the financial outputs did not require all that much in terms of manufactured goods.

Is there a new mega-theme in American business?  Perhaps an answer is production of "green energy" via renewable energy resources.  It's possible, but even if that is so, there would need to be others.

So what all of this means is that there are fewer new products that can achieve marketplace success, whether domestically or overseas.  And that means less demand for workers.

I wish that I had an innovation that could make a small contribution to fixing the problem, but I do not.  So, instead the best that I can do is to spread the word about the small business success of these entrepreneurs and developers in Oregon and Washington who are profiled in Smithsonian.  They have been at it for several years now, they employ local people, and they are developing machines which might some day be used to improve weather forecasting, enhance agricultural crop management, enhance the maintenance of pipelines and power lines, and to do other commercial activities.

And, it's well worth noting that these innovators are highly-educated people; I imagine that most of their employees have benefited from good educations, too.

Let's take note of the fact that throughout our nation, one of the byproducts of governmental fiscal austerity has been a significant reduction in public funding for all levels of education.  The result has been or will be fewer educators in the workforce and lower quality education for children and adults who need the best possible education, whether it is K - 12 or college or vocational.

If there are some effective educators who have been put out of work, let's find some government funding to get them working again.  That will be a small help to our employment situation, and possibly a bigger help for the future of our nation's economy and society.