Just about everybody has heard the Chinese adage, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Just about everybody, that is, except the people setting budget priorities in Washington.
As noted in the article “Feds cut workforce funds” on page 2, one area of spending that has been slashed recently in an attempt to control a runaway budget is workforce development and training, cuts that will soon be felt at a local level. The Pennsylvania displaced worker program, for example, will take a substantial 17 percent hit. While we don’t deny the urgent need for fiscal discipline, we do think that these particular cuts represent wildly misplaced priorities.
Perhaps the government thinks low recent unemployment rates mean we can be complacent about the job situation. Even locally, those numbers have been tame. But this data conceals troubling details. In particular, the number or percentage of employed tells us nothing about the quality of jobs available. And that quality is a problem, not only locally but nationally, is made clear by income data.
In 2005, the most recent year for which complete data is available, median income among working-age households was lower, after adjusting for inflation, than it had been in 2001—and this is supposed to be a recovery. From 2004 to 2005, only the top 10 percent of households saw incomes rise. Average income for the bottom 90 percent of the population dropped slightly that year, with the increase, about nine percent in aggregate, accrued only to the top 10 percent.
While there are no doubt a number of factors contributing to this stagnation in middle-class income, globalization is clearly a huge factor. Americans now compete with low-wage earners in countries that do not spend money on decent working conditions or the environment. To compete, it has become vital to identify ways in which American workers can participate in cutting-edge industries and technologies, and see to it that we are trained to do so.
The good news is that local grassroots groups and planning officials seem to recognize this, to the extent that they have engaged in various initiatives promoting areas like green technology and sustainable energy. The bad news is that the success of such initiatives will depend on a re-educated workforce. The recent cuts in funding for workforce development are not a good start.
Fortunately, reducing the federal budget deficit scarcely stands or falls with cutting workforce development funds. According to the non-profit Center on Budget and Policy, 40 percent of the increase in the budget deficit since 2001 has come from tax cuts, and another 36 percent from increases in the budgets for defense and homeland security. Only 24 percent comes from discretionary programs like funding workforce development. For a sense of scale, consider that the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) has asked the administration for about $650 million more than is included in the proposed 2008 budget for dislocated worker funding. That’s only about two percent of $30 billion, the estimated revenues we will lose in the first year of Bush’s extended estate tax—a tax cut that benefits only the wealthiest two percent of the population.
And what about the defense budget? Obviously, funds that go to equipment, training and benefits for troops and veterans should not only be inviolate but, in the light of fiascos like Walter Reed, increased. But there are many huge, boondoggle weapons projects that are all too often ignored. Thought the Cold War was over, freeing up arms-race money? Think again: $6.5 billion was spent on nuclear weapons projects in fiscal year 2004, compared to the average $4.2 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation, it spent yearly during the Cold War.
Then there’s fraud: Halliburton has been paid $20 billion plus for contracts in Iraq, despite the fact that it has been caught red-handed in cheats like charging $100 for a bag of laundry—and is moving headquarters to Dubai, probably to evade taxes and legal vulnerability. Our guess is that competent oversight over thieving contractors alone would pay for NASWA’s request many times over.
Workforce development is one of the last places to start fixing the deficit. If we don’t keep learning how to catch fish for ourselves, a lot of the erstwhile middle class will be reduced to collecting them on the dole by and by. We need to make sure that our representatives in Washington know that, and keep their priorities straight.
Dr. Punnybone
Razing the Bar
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Is there any practical or economic reason for Sullivan West to leave empty and unused two schools that have cost that district between $12 and $15 million in the last few years to repair and bring up to snuff? The district is still shelling out money to heat, plow snow, cut grass and do all other maintenance in addition to supporting that white elephant in Lake Huntington.
With cramped quarters at town government buildings at Tusten and Delaware, couldn’t these buildings be sold to said townships? If not, perhaps they could be sold as private buildings, such as nursing homes or professional offices to once again be on the tax rolls. Maybe this would take another monkey off the taxpayers’ backs—or am I going against the tide? Once these buildings sit empty for a few years, the cost to bring them back to code would be more than building another white elephant.
