Everyone has an opinion. Here is mine, and you can tweet this message, says John Vallieres.
retired senior executive, celebrated artist and political analyst.
ON EDUCATION:
What is wrong with our country’s education system? Plenty, but not with the schools themselves. The major problem is very easy to understand, and very easy to fix without breaking the bank – e.g. not spending tax payer funds. We spend too much for the wrong reasons already.
What’s wrong with our educational system? Simply put is the problem of LOW EXPECTATIONS. Fix this and we have fixed 90% of our problems.
Where does the problem reside? First, with state governments and our federally elected senators and congress people who mimic as appose to lead in the case of education. These men and women are appeasers not problem solvers. Next American business that accepts under-qualified and under-educated workers. If you can’t find qualified American works, then import qualified foreign works. This is a talent, not a salary issue.
Finally and most importantly the problem rests with the American family that is living on its own ‘entitlement cancer’ that feeds its acceptance of lazy expectations. There was a time when uneducated parents wanted education and better opportunities for their children. They worked and sacrificed to insure opportunities presented themselves and took personal responsibility for the education of each child. The mother and father, together, assured that each of their children was not left behind. Alas, now the focus is less on child and more on entitlement: more free food stamps, free emergency room drop in, free health care, free pre-k drop in babysitting services; free jobs with or without qualifications, free, free, and free. Since when did the word free become synonymous with entitled? How did we let this happen?
You know how most cancer ends. This relatively new versions “low expectation” and “entitlement” won’t end any differently. It will be the death of our society. That you can take to a federal savings bank.
Want to fix the problem without the need to spend. Here is the little reality pill: Set high standards for every class level from 1st to 12th, then college and NEVER LOWER THEM FOR ANY REASON. Replace the word ‘entitlement’ with the idea of ‘merit”.
ON ECONOMICS:
If you think I have a solution for our educational mess, wait until you read about my solution for this economic mess. Believe me when I say I am not a ‘tea party’ supporter. Here again, rocket science is not needed.
For the love of God and Country forget about all the focus on short-term stimulus and focus on the longer term. No short term pain; no long term gain should be the watch word of the day.
The secret: our country MUST make a major transition from a consumption economy to one that exports more and grows consumer spending more slowly. Those who look to consumption spending to recover its old path are hoping for a past that should not return. When we accepted that we were moving from a manufacturing to service economy we took the first step to our own checkmate. The next was the acceptance of gluttony.
Increased domestic saving and slow consumption growth will help the transition to an export-led economy by reducing foreign borrowing. The transition will not be easy. It will require sustained productivity growth, a higher rate of business investment, much better education of the work force, [see above], reduction of imports – i.e. from China and India, and slower personal consumption growth – e.g. a slower pace of life.
We need confidence in our future. That calls for reducing corporate tax rates permanently to encourage investment (paid for by closing ALL loopholes), and agreeing on long-term reductions in near all entitlement spending. We also need to downsize federal regulatory agencies. Think about it this way: how do regulators survive? By creating regulations that require even more regulators to enforce. Good examples are all these recent federally imposed regulations on energy, environment, health and finance. This has to stop! One sure way is a ten-year moratorium on new regulations affecting energy, environment, health and finance, and deconstruction of these bloated federal agency staffs. Did you ever stop to wonder why the DC area has not seen a drop in housing prices over the past five years, but rather a sustained increase in prices.
Do you think this heartless. It is. So are medical amputations. But, nothing less that these steps will put us back as a nation on a sustainable path to grow again.
We don’t need higher taxes, which historically only support the low productivity growth of the welfare state, delay the transition to export-led growth, and do not reduce future budget liabilities. We simply must do away with this entitlement mentality that is slowly destroying us as a free society. Our future, our long term future, requires painful short term steps, change in attitude and in the long term return to a more mature socially egalitarian national behavior based on the very values upon which this country was founded. Odd to think that the largest amounts of ads on TV are drug related. Actually not odd; factually systematic.
As a nation we have sinned. In a very philosophical moralistic way, we have strayed It is time to confess and pay the penance.
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