What do these three have in common?

They are the main themes of the News Journal, most progressive blogs and radio talk shows, and Pope Francis….

Since the News  Journal came out with their report on jobs in the economy, there has been a shill of shrill callings for education to become the white knight to raise children up from poverty…  Pick up a News Journal (paper version preferable)… Op-ed piece: James Butkiewicz; Robert Frost, Letter to The Editor, Phillip Socorso, Letter to The Editor, Bruce W. Lee, Letter to the Editor, Editorial Board writes “Get Ready for Lifetime of Learning.”

Hell, I was even guilty of it myself….”The path out of poverty is a good education and that’s the very thing we are not giving them:  a good education.

But there is this idea boiling up pretty much only here in Delaware,with piece, after piece, after piece, that we need good education to grow jobs in Delaware….

Our direction is misplaced.

Good education can’t hurt, but with only a casual glance around the world, one can see the nonsense in connecting good jobs with good education…. Examples?  Japan.  Japan has the best education around, but has been in a slump for 20 years… Well educated populace does not equal booming economy and full employment.  China, although Shanghai has private schools rated rather well, most of the jobs are in the outlaying regions.  Places where people work for cheap.  Education out there is not as high as we often hear about in Shanghai.  Finland is rated as the best for education.  It is the model.  And yet the Finnish economy is facing industrial restructuring, rising domestic costs and an aging population.  If one takes average wages, as a sign of prosperity… the US is on top, followed by Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Austrailia.…  none of which are touted for their prowess in education.

Not globally astute?  Let’s look at domestic, shall we…   Top job growth in 2012…?

North Dakota (+ 29)
D.C. (+25)
South Dakota (+21)
Alaska (+19)
Arkansas (+17)

All home to America’s most brilliant minds…. “Can someone please pass the jelly?” All states educated and populated with rocket scientists, all… “Honey, you stay and wash the clothes; I’m going out and shoot me a deer.”

And the worst….

States with the Worst Job Growth
Nevada (-6)
New Jersey (-2)
California (0)
Oregon (+2)
Connecticut (+2)

New Jersey ranks at number 6 according to the NAEP, the nation’s report card.  Connecticut was number 20.   What about the two top educated states?  Massachusetts?  Employment peaked in 2001…. Minnesota? It’s lost 24,000 jobs across the past 6 months…

Time to pop that balloon once and for all… Other factors relate to full employment, not education.  Luck is a big part of it. Who 5 years ago would know that the upper Midwest would produce more energy than the Middle East?   Jobs depend solely on economics; there is no relation to how smart one’s educational system is, and more jobs… Period….  In fact, if one looks at the economic maps showing employment and unemployment, the most prosperous states right now, are all drilling… If you can’t drill, you are suffering….

Why are jobs not being created elsewhere?  Actually there is a reason.  A very good reason, and it is not, NOT, the quality of one’s education….

Our job’s situation is being hit on two sides with a double whammy….  The first is technology.   Machines cost the same as people, and we have the technology to now replace people..  Face it!   If you ran a business and the costs were the same, who would you prefer?  A machine, of course…  “Hello, I’m your machine, and I am so sick, I have to call out today… Yeah, I was up all night and had diarrhea and was throwing up and stuff…  Must have been something I ate…. I should be fine tomorrow though… ”  said no machine, ever.

And the other, is our intentional cutting away all public sector jobs… Mostly thanks to Republican philosophy….  “We gotta cut the government.”

NO…… We ……. DON’T……

In fact it defies rationality that as our economy was tubing, we were shedding jobs.  And now that it is rebounding, we are shedding jobs…  Does that makes sense to you?  In fact… in an ideal world, where thoughts and ideas could be debated in the open, without being ignored or amplified by the main stream media to achieve their preferred result…. we would have figured this out long ago….

Machines replace people and cause profits of those who are doing the replacing to soar…   However, because machines are not moral entities, they don’t know right from wrong.  Therefore it will still take people who do have moral judgment to discern the moral qualities behind a certain business….  That was essentially a polite way of saying: we need more inspectors now… We always had people checking up on people.  We need people to check up on machines….

As one example.  If the London Whale had to be first cleared to make his huge transaction, would it have been made?  That type of monitoring across all industries, is sort of what we are talking about….  We need public sector employees to do things like monitor rivers, air, crabs, venereal diseases, and hookers.  If no one is monitoring them, what happens?  Exactly.

These people need hired, trained, and jobs.  But where should the money come from?  Silly question… those who have it, of course…..

It is now time for the kavipsian family pizza analogy….  You have a family who is hungry.  You put in a Red Baron Pizza, cook it at 425 for 15 minutes, and cut it for 4 people….  Everyone gets enough, but not too much….  That is normal…  That describes the baby boomer’s parent’s economic lifestyle…  But, it gradually evolved to where the baker person, got to cut his piece first, and the others split what was left…  He now takes half, and the others split the other half, getting one sixth, whereas before it was one fourth…. The baker person, gets a whole half…  so the pizza is consumed like this: by one half, one sixth, one sixth, and one more sixth…  Three people are a little hungry, and the fourth, has too much so he wraps up roughly the left-over quarter he couldn’t eat and puts it into the freezer of the refrigerator, and scrawls his name across the plastic….

Over time, (he never eats them), that freezer fills up, because there is always a new pizza being ordered… always.  Everyone else is hungry, and the baker keeps taking his half….

So… finally a change comes… And the other three decide, niceties aside, they have to eat MORE…  They change the rules so that pizza being kept in the freezer, gets offered to them…   The baker still gets his half off each new… but he gives a slice of frozen pizza to each of those others, and they can microwave it and add that to their one sixth….

All live happily every after…   The baker is glad to still be alive, and he keeps his share of pizza… the others are glad they have one sixth and one fourth a pizza with each meal.  And the refrigerator slowly empties its inventory…. but it takes a while because the baker is still putting in his quarter of pizza he can’t eat, back into the freezer….

Translated to the economy…  It is not socialism.  The baker had ownership of what was originally the other three’s shares. He is just essentially paying them back the loan.

If only some of that money that once was used to make jobs, was returned to making jobs again, all would be good…  The rich would still get richer (though at a slower pace), and everyone else would get richer …too.   Amazingly all levels of income brackets would simultaneously get richer… Wasn’t that once the American dream?

The answer to the capitalists when the backlash come, and it will come, is this:  we gave you the opportunity to get wealthy by investing in us, and you turned us down cold…  Since you didn’t do it, for our nation’s survival, we have to do it in spite of you…  For actually, they very well could have trimmed profits and put much of that money back into their own companies in order to make sure, for instance, that they did not overlook a mistake costing them dearly in the future….   They chose not to and now, well, here we are.

So what we collectively need to say to the capitalists, is that since you have the advantage of the machines who replaced us, we will have to charge you for our public sector jobs now…  That is fair.  After all, what you made equals exactly what we gave up….

For if something happened, an EMP for instance and none, not one of those machines would work… Suddenly they’d be desperate for workers to make things again…  Their loss of profits would be …”oh well, it has to be done this way.”  and not…. “what?  your taking my, my, my money, and giving it to, to, to, T-H-O-S-E … people???”

Since their loss of money would not affect them in that particular scenario ( they call it a cost of business), we should not worry about how loud they boast it will affect them now…  Because you see, in our simplistic illustration, there are three who’ve been quiet this whole time, who desperately need this change to go forward now… They should have yelled, but for some reason, didn’t. Now one loudly complains; three are immensely grateful;  two points ahead, it’s a win.

Bottom line.  IT IS OUR INEQUALITY THAT IS COSTING US JOBS, MAKING US UNEMPLOYED.  It is something we could readily fix… today!  Well, maybe not exactly today… but when Congress returns in January.

Raise taxes, by however method you wish, just raise them solely on those who have stolen and fattened their refrigerators with our victuals.  We can raise them a lot, if we want a 5 Hour energy economic boost, or, it can be done gradually with Mountain Dew if we wish not to shock the system too much….

With that new money, use roughly half to continue paying down the debt, and roughly the other half to start creating jobs.  At which point we hit somewhere near 5% unemployment…. we lift our foot off the accelerator and coast down the highway to a more prosperous America…..

Back to education.   Real good education is something we all want, but higher standards imposed on an unwilling young public won’t magically grow jobs.  Attacking the inequality that even Pope Francis says is the most important problem mankind now faces, will.

Tax, save half, spend half, and let’s get this party rolling….

I for one, wouldn’t mind partying like its … 1999…..