education is to blame for the economy?

Sadly I initially thought that your question concerned the lack of economics taught in schools. Everyone should learn the fundamental concepts of Econ, I think it’s amazing how we have so many economically illiterate people in this country and how some of them even manage to become public officials but I digress…

I have to boldly disagree with your notion that education is to blame for the economy. Teachers are and will continue to be underpaid, to attribute the minor (and sometimes natural) increases in their salary is completely absurd. Property taxes are associated with the local government, to me it sounds as if you have a personal problem with your local/state school system because the factors that you have mentioned are not consistent from state to state. The Federal governemnt spends very little on education when compared to other expenses. I’d agrue that the Federal government should spend more money on education to promote consistency from state to state, seeing that states and local governments are primarily responsible for education.

Overall if anything, more educated people will contribute a higher amount of human capital thus a bigger economy in the long-run. Think about it, we’ve transformed from a manufacturing base, to a service base economy. Consequently, it is essential that people are educated to work in the various sectors of the service industry. The demand for unskilled labor will never disappear though it is rapidly decreasing because of the high costs for businesses, so to discourage education in our country will create a workforce of unskilled workers that can’t find jobs. Additionally, unskilled workers do not contribute much to the economy so I think we could do fine with fewer of them. Surely their are some short-run costs with everyone seemingly going to school, however the long-run benefits will greatly exceed the costs. We are the United States, and we have to find a way to maintain our edge, and to increase the percentage of college educated individuals in our country would be start. There’s no use in crying over spilt milk, but if you really want to criticize a sector for draining our economy, what the military? There are hardly any economic returns from military expenditures other than our safety.