Why the “Skills Gap” Talk Is Offensive

Something wants me to write about all this talk about workforce development and the “skills gap” and how stunningly offensive it is.

When we got in the car for the ride to church, the radio was set to Radio Disney, and the station was in the middle of one of the bursts of talk that break up the stream of banal pop, mainly interviews with young entertainers. As I switched over to the gospel station, I commented that, in the course of a typical day, kids don’t hear much about any other activity as if it’s equally admirable. Young adults who sing, dance, and pretend to be fictional characters are interesting; young adults who fight for freedom in other countries, learn to do amazing, practical things in the trades, or discern calls to devote their lives to some form of economically marginal, socially magnificent vocation… not so much.

Even Governor Chafee’s state of the state address and budget prioritize the arts as a privileged industry in the state.

Then, during his homily, our parish priest made a theme of January’s being pro-life month. He told the story of driving into a city with his father, in their beat-up old car and parking between two luxury sedans. Upon his son’s questioning, the father pointed out that he had chosen his three children instead of an expensive box of metal to ride around in. In our culture, the lesson went, we learn to love things and use people, when it should be the other way around.

During my Sunday brunch, the idea came back around again, as I read John Kostrzewa’s column about Rhode Island’s “skills gap”:

John Muggeridge, a vice president at Fidelity Investments, opened a recent education summit by saying that the mutual fund company is the biggest technology employer in Rhode Island but still needs more candidates if it wants to expand.

He was followed by Carlos Santiago, senior deputy commissioner for academic affairs for the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. He acknowledged the need for curriculum changes in science, technology, engineering and math because of a projected regional shortfall of 50,000 workers in coming years in those fields.

For a moment take away the specifics and markers of worldly priorities, like “well paying,” and what we have here, basically, is this: Local corporations want a particular kind of worker, and the government is now undertaking to make local people fit the mold. Once again, the thinking is reversed from what it should be, pushing Rhode Island toward the hard end of a proven principle: An economy built on dehumanization will fail.

The answer is to facilitate individual freedom — to give people the ability and responsibility to determine where their own lives are going to go.

If Rhode Island weren’t such an oppressive place for economic activity, Fidelity Investments could attract the kinds of people it needs, if they weren’t already present locally. Or take another example from the article:

Electric Boat’s new president, Jeffrey S. Geiger, said last week that the sub builder’s plan to add 3,000 jobs at Quonset Point by 2020 is contingent on the company’s ability to find skilled pipefitters, shipfitters, welders, machinists and those in other trades. He expressed concerns about whether enough qualified candidates will be available when the company is ready to hire.

When I looked into licensing laws for plumbers, back in 2005, I found that, in a dozen years, Massachusetts would produce double the number of master plumbers to meet market needs than would Rhode Island. And that’s if interested beginners can find an in. My experience entering the trades back then was corroborated by a plumber working on my house, yesterday. He said he had more work than he could handle, but the system as it stands (for employers, generally, and plumbers, specifically) doesn’t make it worth his while to bring on new employees.

Partisans for the public sector like any excuse to claim new taxes and authority, but the answer to the problem I describe is not to increase the degree to which the political system resolves the balance of some people’s needs with other people’s wants.

Contrary to the self-promoting emphasis of the Disney Corporate Empire, the vast diversity of humanity produces an almost equivalent diversity of interests. Multiply that by the incomprehensible variety of circumstances in which people find themselves. No government should claim authority to force people to shape their lives — their entire communities — around the priorities of special interests and the needs of corporations.

 

(For explanation of the featured image, see here.)

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