Primaries v elections

I am not sure what is going in the Democratic and Republican primary races, but it has me worried.

First the dems. When the race started, I thought most of the candidates were pretty moderate. I especially like Bill Richardson - with all that experience and his history of mainstream policy. But after the latest debates and forums, I have no idea what to think. All of the dems now seem to be playing to the extreme. I don't talk in terms of left and right, but rather good policy and bad policy. Readers of this blog know it is because there are good policy ideas from all parts of the spectrum. All of the dems, not just the leaders, seem to be promising all things to all people. To appear strong on defense, Obama is bombing Pakistan. They are all going protectionist - against the free trade agreements with Latin America. They are also going beyond reality in health care - promising that we can have great quality health care at low cost and cover the uninsured simply by browbeating and jawboning the market. They are correct that there is enough waste in the system that we can have our cake and eat it too, but not in my lifetime. The politics, legal and psychosocial context, and complexity of the health care system makes it very hard to streamline and none of these candidates have a clue about industrial engineering, lean process design, etc. I think that they are just promising x, y, and z to get elected. That is the worst thing a pol can do. It just gets expectations up, leads to disappointment among the electorate, and nothing ever gets done because they don't really have a plan.

Now the GOP. They aren't even talking about policy. I am not even sure what any of them stand for. I respect Guiliani for sticking to his pro-choice position, not because I agree with it (although I do), but because it is unusual for reps to go against the base in the primary phase. But each one of these candidates has so many bad qualities. Guiliani has no cred whatsoever. All he did was look tough after 9/11. He didn't actually DO anything. Romney has a great financial background so I have the highest hopes for him. And he was an effective governor in a state with a huge majority of the legislature in the opposite party. That is impressive. But what does he think about foreign policy, industrial policy, etc? It never comes up. Fred Thompson, if he runs, will be running on image rather than policy. Can't blame him for that, but it wouldn't make me support him. And poor McCain - what happened there?!? Maybe he really is just too old and he ran out of steam. Hopefully, some new people will enter. Maybe Chuck Hagel. I even have some new respect for Newt Gingrich. Even though I disagree with some of his policy positions, at least that is what he focuses on. Often, its better to have a bad policy than no policy at all.

Any - that's my rant for the day.

Public Policy and workforce productivity

My Performance Management course is having its last class Thursday and we are covering how public policy can have an impact on workforce performance. As an instinctive libertarian, I hesitate to recommend that government get involved in the inner activities of a company. But there are definitely places where it can make sense if the government does it correctly and minimalistically (a big and often failing assumption).

One is training credits. I don't want the government deciding what to train former manufacturing workers in when their jobs migrate overseas. But training credits can work. Companies can develop their workforce in skills that will remain in the US. And perhaps research funding can be allocated towards new training models and economy-wide resources. Especially for workers who are already employed, independent training sources can also be supported, although again I would like to see it be private organizations (perhaps professional societies) with some government financial support. I would rather spend government money on retraining than long term unemployment.

There has been research that workers who are afraid to take risks tend to stay in dead end jobs out of fear (of losing health care, pension benefits, etc). They are more afraid to take risks when there is no safety net. Companies don't want employees to stay in these dead end jobs either because the employee is usually not the most productive at that position, but maybe not bad enough to warrant firing.

What we want is to create a balance between stability and mobility. Lets find a way to get workers moving around more and always moving up the skills-ladder. We can then encourage sending lower skilled jobs overseas and bringing in immigrants to do the ones that can't move overseas. All we need is a reliable mechanism to retrain workers in the new industries that the US has been so good at developing. And with an ingrained process to do this, maybe we won't be so afraid of losing our global economic influence and success.

Then on top of this, we can fund a few great futurists to predict the 20-50 year future industries and we can start the basic research and maybe even adjust K-12 education to get our future workforce ready for it. Get rid of the standardized tests in the No Child Left Behind model and start teaching creativity, critical thinking, information literacy etc.

Maybe this is just a pipe dream, but it is MY pipe dream ;-D.