How True!!

In a recent Huffington Post Business posting, Jodie Levin-Epstein could not have said it better in her piece, "Don't Cut Off Your Knows." 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jodie-levinepstein/dont-cut-off-your-knows_b_832286.html

Congress is killing our future and any potential increases in productivity by their drastic cuts in education and particularly in worker training.  Their drastic cuts to such programs as the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and other programs are illogical and so poorly thought out that they are killing our future.  Yes, we may need to cut some of the fat out of our budget, but this is not the place to do it.

She says and I quote,

"Even though unemployment has declined in recent months, it's still significantly higher than it was before the start of the recession.  Further, given the skills/jobs mismatch that many economists have noted, now is the worst possible time to cut investment in workforce devdelopment programs."

Sheer logic has to tell you the same thing.  To get the economy moving on the right track, we have to get the jobs back on track and to do that we have to get those people currently out of a job trained to do other activities than they were previously capable of doing in the past.  Recently new jobs opened up at a plant in Arizona at a solar plant, yet these jobs did not require your basic manufacturing skills of putting two widgets together and bolting them together or some such activity.  This plant required higher technical skills than are typically available in the open market.  Either we educate our people so they can perform these jobs or the jobs are going to ultimately go overseas and we lose those jobs as well.  There are many companies trying to do their end in this regard, but it is not just the companies, it is the educational system as well as the government.  It is all of us, but if Congress does not send the right message and provide the money, then they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.  Unless perhaps they want to see more and more jobs go overseas.  But I am hoping that is not the case.

We already we know we have a major problem with our schools.  Of course, many of our teachers are great, but how can we place in the mid 20's when China and other Asian countries are in the top 5 in the world in terms of math and science.  We can do better.  We need to do better.  We must do better.  But it is also not a teacher problem, an administration problem, it is a parental problem as well.

So if Congress, the state and local governments, the education boards, the teachers, the unions, and the parents don't get it together, we will lose and lose big-time.  More jobs overseas and then there will be no jobs for our next generation and the ones after that.

Bob