Rising Job Complexity and the Need for Government Guaranteed Work and Training

Abstract

Government, as Adam Smith pointed out over two centuries ago, must provide for certain public goods that would not be provided in adequate quantity by the private sector. He identified education as among these public goods (1981[1776], 651). Until fairly recent times, however, government was controlled by a small elite whose members mistakenly did not generally recognize greatly expanding educational opportunity as in their own interest. Myopically, their more immediate short-term interest blinded them to how, in a longer term, a better educated workforce would make everyone, including members of their own class, richer.

There is no extravagance more prejudicial to the growth of national wealth than that wasteful negligence which allows genius that happens to be born of lowly parentage to expend itself in lowly work.

Marshall 1920, 176

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Chinese Proverb, credited to Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, fourth to sixth century BC

(The) real problem, fundamental yet essentially simple (is) to provide employment for everyone.

Keynes 1980, 267

The authors are professor of Economics and PhD candidate respectively at American University, Washington, DC. Helpful comments from Stephen Rose and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.