Index

It’s the Education, Stupid

In today’s e-mail, Paul Krugman talks about how business, law and NIMBY have conspired to run less-educated people out of California cities thanks to soaring housing prices.While this is true from a short-term standpoint, the roots of the problem were created as far back as Richard Nixon, and firmly planted in Ronald Reagan’s time - the real problem is the GOP’s fascist destruction of the public education system.

He even points this out, without intending to:

Since the 1980s America has experienced growing regional divergence. We have become a knowledge economy driven by industries that rely on a highly educated work force, and firms in those industries, it turns out, want to be located in places where there are a lot of highly educated workers already—places like the Bay Area.

That makes it very clear, but the real problem isn’t where the companies want to be. It is the lack of highly educated work force everywhere else that makes them decide where to be. If we had a functioning public educational system, this problem would not exist, or at least nowhere near this level. The companies that could locate in less expensive places would benefit, and the rest of the country who could benefit from the improved employment and paychecks that this would bring.

You can’t blame the companies - they have to do what they are doing. They are the only growing part of the economy, and no amount of legal shenanigans or trust busting is going to change that. In the short run, the housing shortages that result from these problems can be dealt with by what is basically government charity and de-NIMBY-ing of the legal system, but in the end the real problem is the malice-aforethought destabilization of the knowledge economy by the Luddites and fascists in what remains of the former Republican party.

Until we take education out of the “show up on time, sit down, shut up, and regurgitate what we tell you” industrial mindset that controls education in this country, the few people that escape the system with any creativity left will be the ones that keep the knowledge economy running. “No child left behind” was and is the wrong way to go - we need to teach people how to think critically and intelligently, not barf up random facts on command.

It is time to move beyond the 18th century educational system. We need to support companies, sure, but even more importantly we have to have people capable of solving the existential problems of global warming and pandemic diseases. It takes intelligent and creative people to fix the problems we have created with the excesses of our industrial mindset, and that need requires social and educational changes.