We all know that the key to our economic future is a more educated workforce, right? Here, for example, are the "Guiding Principles" of President Obama's education policies:
Providing a high-quality education for all children is critical to America's economic future. Our nation's economic competitiveness and the path to the American Dream depend on providing every child with an education that will enable them to succeed in a global economy that is predicated on knowledge and innovation.
Now it's certainly true that a good education is still the best ticket -- other than inheriting wealth -- to entering the middle class. In the simplest terms, Americans with a Bachelor's degree or more earn more than the average wage and those with an Associate's degree earn less. So it makes sense for us to encourage our children to get a good education. But is the president's assertion that the path to the American Dream in the new global economy depends on providing every child with a good education true?
As an important new report underscores, if that is the only path we rely on, our economy will come up way short and so will the great majority of Americans who are striving to live the American Dream -- with and without a good education.
In Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?, Center for Economic and Policy Research economists John Schmitt and Janelle Jones make a simple and powerful point: Over the past three decades, the workforce in the United States has gotten a lot more educated and productive, but fewer of us have a good job. The standard that Schmitt and Jones set for a good job is pretty basic: earning the median wage for men of $37,000 a year and having some sort of health insurance and retirement fund at work. Of course, that isn't a lot of money, and with most workers forced to pick up a bigger share of shrinking health benefits and pensions giving way to 401Ks, not a lofty benefit plan. Which is what makes the results of the study so striking. Even though the typical American worker is twice as likely to have a college degree than 30 years ago, the share of the workforce that has a good job declined, from 27.4 percent to 24.6 percent. The kicker here is that the decline occurred at every education level, although it was worse for those with a scanty education. But even workers with a four-year college degree or better were less likely to have a minimally decent job.
The CEPR researchers take the data a bit further to make two compelling points. If we had not increased our educational level, it would have been a lot worse: only 17 percent of workers would have good jobs. The second point is that if job quality had kept up with increases in education, then 34 percent of workers would have a good job.
I want to throw one more scary statistic into this brew before drawing the implications for building an economy that will work for everyone: most of the jobs that will be created in the next decade don't require much of an education. Of the 10 occupations expected to create the most jobs, eight of them require a high school degree or less. There will be almost four million job openings for retail clerks, home health aides, and the like compared with one million for nurses and college professors, the only two jobs in the 10 that require more than a high school degree.
These numbers foretell an economy where even workers with a good education are barely making it and most Americans don't have a prayer of living the American Dream.
The guiding principle for a different economic path is making the middle class the engine of the economy. Our economic policy must be driven by a commitment to make every job a middle-class job, regardless of the educational level of the worker. That means sharing our economic progress broadly, not concentrating it among a shrinking sliver of the rich.
As the authors of Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? point out in the first paragraph of their report, we have gotten a lot richer as a nation -- 60 percent richer -- over the 30 years in which good jobs dissolved. A more educated workforce, and an increase of about 50 percent in physical capital growth, led to a big jump in productivity. If that growth in productivity had been shared fairly, that $37,000 median wage would be a lot higher: $68,000 by one calculation. Even by a more modest measure -- if inequality had not increased, median family income would be $9,000 more. By either calculation, if that extra income were in the pockets of Americans -- instead of sitting in the investment portfolios of the super-rich and big corporations -- the economy would be booming.
There are a host of policy solutions to build an economy in which our growth is broadly shared. A huge step would be to increase unionization. The manufacturing and construction workers of the mid-20th century didn't have a high school education -- they had a union. We should boost pay for low-income workers by increasing the minimum wage and enforcing wage laws so that employers pay workers for overtime and meal breaks and don't steal their wages or pretend they are independent contractors. We need to use public dollars to invest in job creation, from construction workers to school teachers, all with good wages and benefits. And yes, we should make it possible for many more of our young people to get a good and affordable education. But whether they get that education or not, all workers should get enough to live a dignified, secure life so they can take that path to the American Dream.
Cross-posted from Next New Deal. US added 163000 jobs in July; unemployment rate ticks up to 8.3 percent
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As long as we don;t accept that this is a fact and not a temporary issue, there will be an unemployment problem... We have half of the country who believe in a world being created 6000 years ago and never evolving... how does that fit with t a world where technology and products cycle are ever accelerating? where everything is changing fast and where adaptation (and evolution) is the major factor for everyone?
Imported cash from the sales of those services might/would help to save the USA economy if the USA still had that capability.
Since we have completely destroyed our human technology database with our collective de-industrialization and the destruction of the STEM education system in the USA, we no longer have that option.
Exporting STEM services for sale to foreigners is impossible today.
Asian countries are now producing large quantities of technically educated and competent scientists and engineers with the hard work ethics, the concentrated critical thinking ability, and the intense focus that are probably better technically qualified than the US engineering graduates to create new commercial products with the associated jobs and new taxable NATIONAL WEALTH, while the USA educational system produces mostly non-STEM graduates that generally do not create very much new taxable NATIONAL WEALTH.
The Asian and other industrial countries produce very few of the non-technically educated graduates that will generally not contribute anything to the foreign trade or create wealth for that country.
I do not believe that any business anywhere in the world has a philosophy department with a room full of philosophers sitting around talking philosophy at each other. Most of these graduates are probably employed in the "Fast Food" industry.”
If Robotics and Computer programs eliminate the need for workers, then somebody will have to create, design, manufacture and maintain the Robots (or robotics) and the computer programs of the future.
Why don't US citizens educate ourselves and become the World Robotics Leaders by creating the STEM educated citizens with capabilities to endure the hard work, concentrated critical thinking, and intense focus that is required for science and engineering degrees that are also necessary for creating, inventing, developing, and applying Robotics that the USA can sell and export to foreign nations to get some of their NATIONAL WEALTH back into the USA?
Individuals in the USA need to become STEM educated that have the concentration and critical thinking skills necessary to invent, construct, maintain and operate the robots in order to earn wealth by creating and selling Automated Manufacturing Robotic machines to Foreign and US manufacturers in order to make money to buy food, shelter and clothing as required to feed their own families, instead of becoming non-STEM graduates that are unable to contribute anything to this effort.
The Balance of foreign trade and the national debt changes are the indicators of whether a nation is creating wealth or consuming (borrowing) their existing wealth that was created by previous generations prior to de-industrialization of those nations.
The USA must create superior engineers, medical doctors, dentists, scientists and other STEM graduates if the USA wants to regain the technological edge that the USA has lost and purposefully destroyed in the last few decades with FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS in if the USA wants to create any new industries in the USA that will generate any new NATIONAL WEALTH and new jobs in the USA.
The USA has instead elected to produce large numbers of liberal arts graduates, history graduates, philosophy graduates, English graduates, foreign language graduates, economics graduates, musicians, artists, social workers, government graduates, political scientist, anthropologists, archaeologists, and/or other similarly educated US citizens that will not contribute very much to correcting the foreign trade deficit or generate any new NATIONAL WEALTH in the USA that is needed to save the US economy.
Education only works for those that want it, those that want to participate and those that want to succeed. Ask any high school teacher who is in tune with their students, there are way too many that try to get by while doing the minimum.
The President isn't the key to education, the policies aren't the key to education, the unions or teachers aren't the key either . . . it's the parents that hold the key.
Realistically the advances in productivity have not come from better workers but from innovations in technology, the study looks at the numbers from the past 3 decades . . .
Computers and automation have changed the way we live, work and do business. A job that required 1, 2 or 3 workers 30 years ago may not require anyone now.
http://www.flixya.com/blog/3201910/Beautiful-Butterflys
The techies like to talk about how many jobs technology will create. Will they still be saying that when code-writing software begins to replace them?
In India, where many of our 2nd opinions in the medical world are being outsourced, they are testing a new software against those 2nd opinions. Watch out doctors who depend on those 2nd opinions and consultations for extra income.... Soon to be outsourced to Watson.
Answer: No
Does that mean we shouldn't provide a high-quality education for all children?
Answer: likewise, NO
There's more to education than just the economy and vice-verse. It might also be a good idea for a democracy to have an educated and informed electorate for reasons other than just economics.
I'm a big supporter of unions in the private sector because on the other side of the table is the management . . .
When it comes to unions in the public sector, they are harmful to our state and local governments in many cases. The unions are the biggest funders of Democrats at the state / local levels and when they win, the unions are negotiating with the people they bought.
Beg, go on ss or start your own business.
Would anyone really want to work in education or medicine today. Slave camps.
(1) We embraced the idea of "multi-nationalism" translating that to mean "no-nation -ism." Play every nation against every other one in a race to the bottom. It doesn't matter where you make stuff. Oh yes, it does.
(2) We decided that "no child should be left behind" but didn't define what that meant. We stuffed our classrooms with computers because, you know, "computers are a good thing." Life as a multiple choice test; the teacher reduced to the role of a "classroom operator." No wonder people are not getting degrees in Education. A billion-dollar bounty for "master teacher" won't change that.
(3) Employers, not the Guv'mint, are the true power-source of the "life support" infrastructures that held up the middle class. They provided the pensions. Unions held the employers to the fire on that. If people stumbled, they could land. If they got sick, they went to the hospital to get well, not bankrupt.
There's a lesson for us in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who did not turn around until there was literally no where else =down= for him to go. We have not yet fully reached that pig-sty and so we will for a time longer continue to descend, as our leaders eat, drink, and make merry.
*I have never understood this use of "Middle Class". A person who works for a wage of any kind is "Labor Class".
The problem is that not everyone is in a position to be able to get a degree whether it be due to money reasons or due to reasons that limit their available time for school.