Who cares about the children?
by digby
When Business Week starts publishing op-eds like this one, one might think that your average CEO would worry about the future of the American workforce and his or her own company’s ability to hire educated workers. But that would require long term thinking and they only see the “long term” as yet another tool for them to pillage the nation’s wealth in the short term. Still, in a more perfect world …
Politicians who seek steep government spending cuts while opposing a higher U.S. debt ceiling sound a common theme. Slash spending for the sake of the next generation, they say, because the nation’s debt is crippling our children’s aspirations. “The question comes down to this: What will you say to that next generation about what you did to make sure that wouldn’t be their fate?” said Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) at a Republican rally in New Hampshire on Apr. 30.
The problem is that the proposed spending cuts would disproportionately affect the current generation of children. It’s emblematic of skewed priorities that the same Congress that on Apr. 15 approved Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) budget proposal to exempt anyone 55 and older from changes in Medicare had less than two months earlier supported cuts of at least $7 billion in discretionary spending for children’s education. Slashed were such programs as the Even Start Financial Literacy Program, the High School Graduation Initiative, and Head Start. (The eventual compromise budget reached late on Apr. 8 focused cuts in other areas, such as high-speed rail.)
Pressure on education is even more draconian at the state level. The District of Columbia and 34 states have reduced expenditures on K-12 education and 43 states have cut into higher education, according to the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities. Human capital is the key to creating wealth in a modern economy. “I don’t think most people are thinking about the long-term time bomb we’re creating,” says Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. “There’s no question you’ll save some money upfront, but the long-term cost is enormous.” read on …
All this worry about what the debt is going to do to “the children” would be a lot more compelling if they ever gave a damn about the future in any other way. As it is, the country they plan to leave “the children” is a grim banana republic with the vast majority of the people engaged in menial work servicing the super-rich. (Oh, and global warming too.)
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