Teaching Men to Fish
“Give a man a
fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime.”
– A Chinese Proverb
The Conservative Right is correct to worry about all the
people on welfare and out of work in this country. They are right to worry
about the flood of illegal immigrants coming into our country demanding goods
and services while taking jobs that should be done by American citizens. After
9/11 we all have a right to worry about the terrorist threat looming in the
world. We have a massive deficit in our country and it is growing. As a nation
we are spending more than we are taking in. To cover this shortfall, like most
Americans today, we borrow money to pay the bills and keep the lights on. To be
fair there are many real things we need to address and be concerned about if
our nation is to survive. Our biggest divide is in how to tackle our many
problems.
Those on the far Right tend to see economic solutions.
Shrink the size and scope of the federal government. Reduce taxes and
illuminate costly social programs for people who do not deserve them. If you cut
the programs the lazy cheats will be forced to go out and find work sooner or
later or starve. As they see it so clearly: The government’s job is not to
support those that can work, and refuse to do so. The government’s job is not
to provide healthcare for its citizens, including the elderly and the poor. These
programs will bankrupt this country. They call on us to allow the wealthiest
among us to do what they do best. Without being tied down by federal rules,
regulations, unions and heavy tax burdens, the wealthy will create the jobs and
put people back to work. This, we are assured, will turn the economy around.
The wealth at the top will begin to trickle down to the masses and America will
once again become the shining example for the rest of the world.
So why is there so much unemployment in America? What happen
to the jobs? Were they all taken by illegal immigrants? How about this…Americans
love a bargain. They demand cheap prices. Big business and Congress were more
than willing to give Americans what they want. The problem, the thing that
stood in the way was unions. Unions… the bane of capitalism, these hard won
institutions became fat, bloated and corrupt over time. They sought more and
more concessions from big business to stoke their own wealth and power and that
hampered the bottom line. Yes, they brought about work place safety, minimum
wage and the 40 hour work week. Yes, they ended sweatshops and exploitation of
American workers, but now they were becoming the problem. Foreign competition,
where there were no unions, was knocking on our door. Cheap labor, just ripe
for the plundering in India and China, were calling to American business like
sirens to sailors. Too bad no one was looking for the rocks just off shore.
Company after company began to move their manufacturing jobs overseas. Soon
whole industries like textiles and steel production were gone from the American
landscape. Small towns and large cities that once had factories that provided
jobs for Americans closed or went out of business. Our folks in Washington
turned a blind eye to this exodus because Americans were getting their cheap
goods brought to them by American corporations like Wal-Mart. Corporations were
making money hand over fist exploiting the cheap labor and a lot of that money
found its way back into politician’s pockets to keep the gravy train going.
As more and more jobs disappeared the cheap goods looked even
better as families adjusted to the new economic reality breaking all around
them. This in turned caused more companies and more jobs to leave our shores.
Our trade deficit was growing, hell it was exploding! The idea of allowing
these American companies and banks to become multinational corporations and “too
big to fail” financial institutions was a disaster. It did not bring the wealth
and jobs back to American shores. Our demand for cheep stuff was financing the
rebuilding of China and India into world powers while America sank deeper and
deeper into debt. It was perpetrated by Washington and American corporate
greed. Nobody was minding the store. Despite getting involved in two “boots on
the ground” wars half way around the world, Washington’s reluctance of imposing
trade tariffs on American goods for fear of a… trade war keeps us locked in this losing cycle with trading
partners like China.
Not only has America lost jobs and whole industries, but
we have allowed American education to fall far below other countries of the
world. As our cities and towns have fallen into decay with unemployment, drugs
and poverty, the task of educating the next generations of children has become
nearly impossible. With so many families living in poverty without job
prospects, it seems that no matter how much money we pour into our schools or
how high we raise the educational requirements, the return on the investment is
more and more dismal. Higher education has almost become out of reach for even
the middle class. Those students lucky enough to secure funding with student
loans are now graduating college with huge debt and few job prospects. Soon,
only the wealthy will be able to afford a higher education, shutting out the
poor and the middle class who will be needed in any kind of rebuilding of
America. We have neglected the one thing that could truly save us in this post
job-exodus America. And in the midst of this growing education downturn, we
hear politicians on the Right calling for cutting back on teachers, promoting
larger class sizes and even the elimination of the Department of Education to
save money. Such a careless move would mean trusting the education or our next
generation to a scattered bunch of local and state school boards all with
different standards. Many of them are today caught up in religion and politics
rather than teaching actual science with world class educational standards.
The point is this, if America is to recover from this downward
spiral and regain its footing in the world, we must be about teaching our children
to “fish.” We must be willing to rethink education in this country. We must be
willing to put more teachers in the classroom and bring crumbling old buildings
back up to world class standards. We must make higher education affordable and
accessible to ALL Americans so that they can produce jobs in America with their
own intellect and ingenuity. That has to be job one, Mr. Romney, not
eliminating “Obamacare.” Our social safety nets need to stay in place, to
provide for these children, the elderly and the disabled. They are not going to
just disappear or go away. Welfare must again be transformed from a government
handout program with no expectations to an education program with the promise
of real jobs. Where will these jobs come from? Just look around. They will come
from new American industries such as solar and wind power. They will come from
rebuilding schools, highways and our nation’s infrastructure. These are all
things the Conservative Right wants to cut funding for. Recovery will come from
hiring teachers, fire fighters and policemen. Our nation needs so many things
and it is time we get busy restoring this once great country of ours. Stop this
talk of not enough, shrinking and cutting back. America should be about growing
and thriving, not austerity. Millions of Americans need to get back to work,
but they need to be educated and retrained for new jobs and new technologies. America
is going to have to invest in its own people again.
We can’t wait for trickle down economics. It does not
work! The rich are only getting richer. Wake up America! We need to learn to
fish.
Food for THOUGHT…
