Steven Rattner, former "Car Czar" for the Obama administration's bail-outs of GM and Chrysler, offers his ideas on how to solve America's economic problems in a Monday op-ed from the Financial Times (behind a paywall).
After recounting the forces he believes that have led us here, chief among them the "relentless forces of global competition that not only depress job totals but depress incomes," he proposes what he calls "radical surgery:"
". . . Major education and retraining initiatives, better incentives for starting businesses in industries where American can compete."
When I think about what we do, I use words such as pathways, opportunities, transformation. I have not thought about education as 'radical surgery.' Yet in an environment in which Pell grants are under attack and the notion that government should play a role in helping its citizen improve themselves through education is viewed as totalitarian intervention, maybe it is time to get radical.
I have always been somewhat conservative in outlook with a desire to break out and do something against type. It appears that my desire is now being fulfilled in leading an institution of higher learning. With the start of classes on August 22, I am aiding and abetting the new radical subversion of the established economic order.
Let the revolution begin.
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