The Coming War on American Poverty
With the folding of Solyndra, talk of the UC Regents possibly increasing tuition again, and the general state of both the national and global economy, articles like For Jobs, It’s War are becoming more and more common. There are some pretty basic observations that seem intuitive to the success and viability of job market growth (in my opinion) and of course, they start with education.
A widely-cited 2009 study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” found that the recent American educational achievement gaps — between black and Latino students and white ones; between low-income students and the rest; between low-performing states and the rest; and between the United States as a whole and better-performing countries — not only cost the economy trillions of dollars, they also “impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession.”
I’d like to see data and figures to support this striking statement. Regardless, it’s quite the eye-opener that really ties in the importance of education and its relevance to nation at large.
Furthermore, Clifton points out that 30 percent of America’s students drop out or do not graduate on time. He concludes, “If this problem isn’t fixed fast, the United States will lose the next worldwide, economic, jobs-based war because its players can’t read, write or think as well as their competitors in a game for keeps.”
And, a Rand Corporation study released last week found that “between 1999 and 2009, total spending on health care in the United States nearly doubled, from $1.3 trillion to $2.5 trillion. During the same period, the percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product devoted to health care climbed from 13.8 percent to 17.6 percent. Per person health care spending grew from $4,600 to just over $8,000 annually.”
We simply can’t sustain that sort of growth.
Although it is a relatively morbid take on the current American society as a whole, it describes a very pragmatic summary of the world we’re living in today. It’s a peek at the modern rendition of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty” that our country currently faces. The other frightening statistic was breakdown of the those living below the poverty line: about half work full-time, a quarter work part-time, and the remaining quarter do not work. Translation: 3 out of 4 living under the poverty line work. What? So much for the American Dream. (I’ve heard this a lot lately.)
In other news, I’d really like to get my hand on Jim Clifton’s The Coming Jobs War that’s just been relased. Read the rest of the article, “For Jobs, It’s War” here.
