Leadership In Higher Education Is The Only Way To Solve Our Economic Problems??

This article finds fault with educational leadership in the US. It argues that we have unintentionally developed an economy that requires a much better educated workforce. We learn that access to higher education has been made more difficult by rising tuitions, and reduced financial support at state colleges, which produce the majority of our college graduates. It then goes on to put the blame on educational leaders for our problems. Real leaders would find a way to produce more graduates faster and at lower cost. In other words, educational leadership is like business leadership when revenues decline. Good leaders find ways to reduce costs and increase product quality. In other words, the future of our economy depends upon the ability of educational leaders to do what few business leaders have been able to do in similar situations. If this is true, we are toast.

This is only one of many articles that were published today by one of America's leading newspapers. The front page of today's paper reads like the sports page. However, instead of focusing on the performance of professional athletes, its focus is on amateur politicians competing for the GOP nomination. Its like reading a sports page devoted to the plights of those who should be cut from the team.

Larry Summers Provides His Views On How Not To Solve Big Problems In Europe

Larry Summers is very smart. He is even smarter when he comments on the problems that others face. In this article he does a good job of reviewing important economic problems that we have faced and he provides a scorecard. The bottom line is that one has to fit the the strength of the solution to the depth of the problem. The tendency to make the easier decision, by adapting a weak solution to a big problem, only makes things worse. He is particularly harsh on policy makers who propose austerity measures on countries with debt problems that will slow down economic growth. Slow growth reduces tax revenues and increases deficits.

High Taxes In US Do Not Explain Slow Growth And Low Taxes Contribute To Deficits

OECD provides data that shows tax revenues as a percent of national income and the US is clearly a low tax country. This article reports the data and it explains that it includes all tax revenues, including those collected by state and local government. That will help to defuse the critics who criticize OECD data by complaining about the state and local taxes that they also pay. Two conclusions follow from these data. High taxes do not explain slow economic growth in the US compared to other countries. Moreover, the data show that our recurrent budget deficits are partially explained by low tax revenues.

Does An Education Gap Explain Rising Inequality?

I posted an article by David Brooks earlier that told us that we should be more concerned improving education for the poor in order to improve social mobility than about gains in income by the top 1%. This article shows that most of the growth in income has gone to the top 1%, and that college graduates have done better than those with less education but education level does not explain rising inequality.

Most of us would like to improve access to higher education. That is one of the reasons why pundits like David Brooks and other conservatives like to focus on the education gap. Many liberals will stand up and salute such proposals. Their intent, however, is to deflect attention from our real problem. The growth of income in the top 1% is not explained by differences in education. Fixing education won't reduce income inequality.

Herman Daly Discusses Globalization In Relation to Local Community

Our attention has been focused lately on the efforts of the eurozone to deal with its attempt build an economic community that consists of otherwise sovereign nation states. They are faced with a subset of the broader issue of globalization. Herman Daly discusses globalization in this article.
He raises many questions about the tensions between local communities and the movement toward a federation of local communities. He explores this issue and a host of other issues related to sustainable development at this site. It is a good link for those who are interested in Daly's concept of a steady state economy and the path to a sustainable economy.

Another Voice For A Tobin Tax On Financial Transactions

The European Commission supports a transaction tax that will raise revenue, progressively, and help to attenuate speculation in financial markets. Jeff Sachs describes the tax and the benefits but he does not believe that it will be supported by Obama at the G20 meeting. The UK is not likely to support it either. Limiting the power of Wall Street or The City is not an Anglo-Saxon thing.

David Brooks Tells Us Not To Focus On The Rise in Inequality.

David Brooks has discovered a new twist to deflect the growing attention away from the top 1% which has collected the lion's share of income and wealth over the last 30 years, and has also been the largest beneficiary of tax cuts. This concentration of income and wealth has also increased their political power. This has led many Americans to lose faith in our democratic system. David Brooks believes that we should instead focus our attention on the inequality that exists between better off Americans with a college education and less well off Americans who may not even have a high school degree. We should be more concerned about increasing the social mobility of the less well off than we are about rising inequality and the corruption of democracy.

We should, of course, be concerned about social mobility as well as we are about the concentration of income, wealth and power that is fracturing our fragile democracy. One of the problems is that the top 1% has the ability to focus government resources on their problems at the expense of programs that might improve the quality of life for the less well off. The attacks that we are witnessing on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and public education are not coming from ordinary Americans who may have attained a college degree but are now worried about finding or keeping better paying jobs. They are being funded by a radical element within the top 1% who use their resources to influence public opinion and government policy. David Brooks does a good job on their behalf. He has a talent for deflecting attention from things that matter to things that are less important. He is also well schooled, and more sophisticated in his approach than most who defend the interests of the top 1%.