Krugman’s Economic Fix Isn’t Education – It’s More Unions and Universal Healthcare
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman doesn't believe education is the key to solving America's economic woes. Quite the contrary, in his recent article ” Degrees and Dollars ,” the Nobel Laureate argued that the path to a more prosperous nation is for unions to have increased bargaining power and for everyone to have “free” healthcare: It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that “If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education.” But what everyone knows is wrong. Krugman then laid out the major flaw in this premise: technological advancements are diminishing the value of education. With each new piece of software being created, some workers are becoming obsolete: [A]ny routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress. And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Notably, with production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of U.S. employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. So, technology, in Krugman's view, is destroying the marketplace for well-educated, well-paid, white-collar jobs. The problem is what's left won't be able to make enough money to really prosper. But Krugman has a solution: We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen. The end of that first sentence deserves repeating: “so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages.” And therein lies the real truth. Folks like Krugman aren't interested in prosperity. Frankly, they loathe it. Instead, they want to make sure that the less-skilled in our society make as much as the “superstars.” This is why they advocate unions and shun things such as merit increases and employee evaluations. People making more money because they work harder offend folks like Krugman as does the idea that “ordinary workers” might be terminated for below average performance. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That's what Karl Marx wrote in his infamous “Critique of the Gotha Program,” and Krugman couldn't agree more. Scarier still is that this is how most of the media think as well as today's Democrat Party and White House resident. This should tell you why the Left have made Wisconsin a battleground, for the preservation and expansion of unions is the next step in “solving” our economic problems after forcing ObamaCare down the throats of the citizenry. And they wonder why a movement has formed to take back America.
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Krugman’s Economic Fix Isn’t Education – It’s More Unions and Universal Healthcare
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on March 7, 2011. Filed under