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Is America the sick man of the world?


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#1 duke_Qa

duke_Qa

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Posted 20 December 2010 - 08:13 AM

Link to big read

Basically an article about the state of the US auto-industry and the likes. I haven't gotten through it yet as its 11 pages, but it seems to hit the nail on the head.

"The recession merely revealed a reality that has been with us for a long time. We faced a growing gap in education and skills that we tried to fill with debt and credit, which gave us the illusion of growth."
After World War Two, unskilled blue-collar jobs in manufacturing -- typified and in many ways defined by the auto sector -- became America's easy path to the middle class. As U.S. manufacturing declined, starting in the 1980s Congress and successive administrations focused instead on the financial sector and relied on debt -- its own and that of the U.S. consumer -- to foster economic growth.

[...]

One third of American college students require remedial mathematics classes because they have not taken those classes at the high school level. A sound knowledge of mathematics is apparently exactly what America's children need.

Achieve, a Washington-based bipartisan education reform organization, says math-intensive science and engineering jobs are growing three times faster than overall job growth. Through 2016, professional occupations will add more new jobs -- at least five million -- than any other sector, and within that category, computer and mathematical occupations will grow the fastest.

But education reform and retraining jobless workers for skilled jobs of the future will be painful, last many years and require long-term thinking that PIMCO's Bill Gross says is lacking thanks to America's unending election cycle.
"The problem we have is that our politicians are focused only on the next 12 to 24 months."

Another factor that does not favor reform is that it would cost money. Christopher Koch, state superintendent of Education at the Illinois Board of Education, says school districts are not keen on having the federal government leading the charge on education reform. But the government could play a supporting role by providing research into best practices and funding to help cash-strapped states overhaul their school districts systems.

"I confess I am not optimistic that funding will be forthcoming from Washington given the current political environment," he said.

[...]

Mesirow's Swonk says rather than acknowledge the depths of the country's problems or the cost of fixing them, Democrats and Republicans have retreated into "faith-based ideological views of economics that do not reflect reality."
"We're still a nation in denial," she said. "If we had a 10-year deficit reduction plan we could include spending on necessary reforms. But America's political class is not willing to do that because the incoming Congress has decided gridlock is good and our politicians keep lying to us by telling us we can get out of this without pain."
"So we're going to get a double whammy of adding insult to injury by not focusing on a pro-growth fiscal policy and creating a very wealthy class of people," she added.


Edited by duke_Qa, 20 December 2010 - 09:01 AM.

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