School, Productivity, Inflation

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

            SCHOOL, PRODUCTIVITY AND INFLATION

            When Keynesian thought suggests that if people have
            enough money to spend, (so that demand can match
            supply), forced unemployment will end and sustained
            prosperity ensured, a resounding denial of the whole
            idea may be heard.

            The anti-Keynesian thought is delivered: People must
            first be taught and trained. They must be productive for
            a potential employer to include them in the cycle of
            production, consumption, and exit from poverty (to
            join the lower middle class). Thereafter, thrift and hard
            work may take them higher up the ladder, to greater
            responsibility and a higher standard of living.

            The anti-Keynesian sees only inflation resulting from
            increased demand without first raising productivity.

            One reason the anti's get away with their theory is
            that so many in school fail to succeed in learning.
            Something that might make sene to both the K's and
            the anti's, would be more effective schools.

            Smaller schools and smaller classes. Yes.
            But more concrete approaches to learning too.

            If every hour in school were filled with concrete
            problems -- building and fixing actual things that
            children use every day in real life, the logic of
            such things (most of which are mechanical to
            some degree) would teach them to think. The
            necessary arithmetic would teach them to
            measure. The natural talk that accompanies
            work would teach them to read and write.

            In very short order, we would have changed
            school from a place where children fail to one
            where they learn to do the practical things they
            succeed at.

            With students educated and trained for work,
            Keynesian thought would insist that jobs or
            self-employment are an entitlement they earned
            at achool. The anti's would ask for the money.

            The K's would pump the money from federal
            sources and all that would be necessary would
            be to avoid shortages of sensitive consumer
            needs.
                        That would be possible. It would have
            been one of the concrete things the students
            learned in school.

              John Gelles   jjgelles@xxxxxxxx
                                  http://www.1944.org
                                  http://www.rain.org/~jjgelles/