Are Markets Prescient

So, do we really expect a 13 or 14 year old person to peer into the future and decide what kind of job may be available in 10 years when he or she finishes school? With reliance on markets to create jobs as a result of demand that is exactly what we are doing. I can tell you that at that age my future was not on my mind nearly so much as cars and girls, in that order. If I had chosen cars then I would have run into the great GM bankruptcy and consequent bailout but if I had chosen girls then there are several ways that could have worked out and a few that it may not have done so well.

What about one of those people who came out of high school and went to work right away for some big company like General Motors or big steel? When they get 25 years in and are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel the global markets change and they are left hanging with skills that are no longer required and 45 or 50 years old. In this job market being that age, with those skills, a mortgage and two kids in college the prospects are not good. Should that person have been prescient enough to foresee that the automotive and steel production markets were going to change drastically and spurned those high paying jobs for something envisioned to take place in the future?

Even here, in Somerset-Pulaski County we have an aircraft mechanic's vocational training application that, when a student is graduated, still cannot find work here and must move to some other area in order to practice his or her vocation. Is the proper decision here to not attend the aircraft mechanic's school and if that is the case then why do we have it?

When those people hit the unemployment line what should our response be to them. Even if you do not believe that we owe our fellow citizens some kind of assistance it has to be recognized that if those people don't find some gainful employment they will be a drag on the economy and we will have been deprived of what they can contribute to the community.

Here in Eastern Kentucky as well as the rest of the country we have so shortage of parents who have done an abysmal job of rearing their children and training them to achieve the highest level of excellence that they are capable of. These former children become dropouts, are much more likely to be overtaken by drug addiction and to end up in prison where they become a dead weight on our society. How do we deal with such people. It seems evident that locking them up has not worked and won't work and only results in a huge prison population that is such a growth industry that private enterprise wants in on it.

If we do not respond to these people in a collective sense then surely the nation will not prosper and the weight of providing basic services to them will drag us down. Even now, as we have so many unemployed and underemployed, we find the weight to be quite heavy. Unless we are willing to allow those people to suffer and die then we are forced to the conclusion that we must be proactive.

Some of our leaders want to abolish the Department of Education as if to say, “let the markets decide what kind of labor force we need. It is of no interest to us nationally whether or not our citizens have prospects for gainful employment.” It seems clear to me that government is the only entity that has the capability and resources to identify areas in which to prepare workers for the future. What do we do with the displaced worker whose job has been either shipped overseas or no longer exists. Rather than allow that person to remain a drag on society shouldn’t we be able to offer some kind of retraining and hope for the future? If so then not only do we need retraining but we also need for private enterprise to be able to offer that person a job.

In the cases of those who have missed the boat or have been devastated by drug addictions should we allow them to stagger along on the fringes of society all the while depriving us of the benefits of their labor and the taxes they would pay? I think not. We can help these people recover but for what purpose? They have no ability to even seek a job much less find a decent one and become a good citizen. It was never intended that the various Social Welfare benefits would be an unending trip to the trough. It was always intended that dependence would be a temporary stop on the way to self-sustainability. People are quick to point to those who depend on government largess as lazy, shiftless and wouldn't work in a pie factory. The truth is that many of them are just exactly like that but far more would be exhilarated to be able to work and regain the pride of self that comes from that. The point is that the other side of the welfare coin is back to work and for that to happen there must be jobs. For these people to get back to work they may need extensive assistance from a social worker to be able to enter the work force however, it is the social worker who is among the first to get a pink slip when budgets get tight.

The role of government should be and has always been to act in concert with business to anticipate jobs before they happen and act proactively to have people and jobs ready to fill the gap when it opens. For instance, It has become evident to all that for the United States to employ its people there has to be products that we can sell. What we are good at is innovation and technology but we don't have the mathematicians and engineers available to seize the opportunity. We lack the political will to act proactively to encourage students to prepare for these fields while we wait for markets to demand them. What our markets have created are scads of business majors to fill jobs on Wall Street. If we wait for demand to fuel our job preparation then we will be perpetually ten years behind the curve. If we are behind the curve then someone else will not be and will seize the opportunity.

So, I encourage you to rethink the idea of the infallibility of the markets. It is true that our markets have fueled the rise of our nation but not without problems such as the current economic doldrums we find ourselves in and many others. Our goal must be to regulate markets in order to achieve goals but not so much as to stifle them beyond usefulness. It is only through the regulation of markets by government that we are able to sustain a viable and vibrant middle class and it is that middle class that has proven to be the engine of our greatness.