What is his analysis?
“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “
Yes, Friedman has really touched the salt of the earth here, hasn't he? The comedy continues:
When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”
And there we have it, the mantra we've been hearing since the dawn of NAFTA - lacking the skills to compete globally.
First and foremost, witness the astonishing proliferation of educational resources already in existence, most notably vocational schools and certification programs. All of these, by most counts, are very well attended by eager and dedicated students - many of them taking night and weekend classes in the noble quest for self-improvement. Never has America produced more degree-earners and professional certifications.
Next consider the fact that those who have suffered the most from globalization are not the middle-class and educated, but rather factory workers and laborers. These are people whose union jobs went to Mexico and China, and who are left to make a living shelving the toxic output of Shenzhen factories at the local Wal-Mart. No amount of education is going to help them get their jobs back, because they cannot compete with workers in other countries who - having been raised in poverty and employed without any labor protections to speak of (much less health insurance plans or unions) - can be had for a mere fraction of the cost of their American counterparts.
But Friedman, one of globalization's greatest champions, does not inhabit this world. He is instead hopelessly smitten with the pseudo-liberal stance that we must all be diligently honing our skills for the global job market. His example:
A Washington lawyer friend recently told me about layoffs at his firm. I asked him who was getting axed. He said it was interesting: lawyers who were used to just showing up and having work handed to them were the first to go because with the bursting of the credit bubble, that flow of work just isn’t there. But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables.
In other words, lawyers who take initiative are more valued by their firms than those who don't. This is gripping stuff, folks. Absolutely shattering. And then:
That is the key to understanding our full education challenge today.
What is astonishing about this is that Friedman thinks that the needs of the top 0.1% somehow parallel those of the other 99.9%, and that they must make use of the same solutions.
Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive.
But while corporate lawyers might be able to improve their marketability with another degree or an extra language fluency, these things are not realistic options for the vast majority of workers, no matter how dedicated. There is only so much somebody can get done in one lifetime. And frankly, it is wrong and slightly evil to tell people that they have to hold themselves to such a standard in order to survive.
Ah, but Friedman reveals his true colors towards the end of the piece. Quoting from another member of the aggrieved underclass - a Harvard professor this time - he discloses that:
But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly.
and from this pearl of wisdom concludes, with cunning insight:
Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be.
Hence:
Bottom line: We’re not going back to the good old days without fixing our schools as well as our banks.
Terrific. Let's review here. Friedman, who deigns to address the causes of unemployment in the "global" marketplace, fails to speak to a single American worker of the sort known by you and me and other human beings. Instead, he saves his column-space for three elites from the Empyrean he happened to email on his Blackberry: an international investor, a Harvard professor, and a "Washington lawyer friend." And based on this Studs Terkel-esque survey of the suffering American public, he concludes, in essence, that their woes result from the crime of being average.
I really wish Friedman would just come out and say it - he hates most of humanity that lies outside his social clique, and can only contemplate their well-being when they try oh-so-hard to be more like him and his pals in D.C. and Harvard; whores, in other words, or as Friedman would have it, creative entrepreneurs. The kind of smiley-faced ass-kissers with which the world already teems to the point of breaking. No, thank you.
Oh, and in cases you missed it, Friedman and his Harvard labor guru have no illusions about what public education actually gets you. It's not an appreciation of the humanities, a sense of history and civic responsibility, nor even a love of books and libraries. No, sir. It's..
...the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills [of those] who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations.
Did you catch that? Deal with government regulations. Technocrats, in other words. Professional rule-followers who can "creatively" market for their employers whilst obeying orders.
This is a world that most of us want no part of. It is not the world that most voters of either political party have asked for. It is a world foisted upon us by people like Friedman's cohorts, who routinely speak of the "changing world" as if it is somebody other than they who is driving the change.
Friedman begins his column by observing that our economic boom was driven by Asian debt and financial trickery, and then spends the rest of it explaining why the perpetrators of this mess should be our role models.
