Whine, the Beloved Country!

James Glassman’s article in the June 2004 edition of The American Enterprise, “Whine, the Beloved Country!” is a good read. Consider this excerpt:

And it’s not just outsourcing that brings out the crybabies. Encouraged by trial lawyers, Americans now seek redress for practically every grievance, including the fact that they are fat, or that banks lend them money when they’re not credit- worthy. “Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says. And he’s threatening to sue the cable company,” reported a Wisconsin newspaper recently.
 
The truth is that life in America has improved so much in the past century that we have forgotten what it is to struggle. We hear whines that schools are overcrowded today. Actually, the ratio of students to teachers has gone from 30:1 in 1955 to 19:1 now. We hear whining about pay. Yet total compensation, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since 1947, and the cost of necessities has plummeted. Food in 1950 represented about one third of a family’s total expenditures; today, it’s one seventh.

I agree with Glassman, instead of applauding when flat-world crybabies like Tom Daschle get undeserved press coverage for bashing outsourcing, we should be looking for ways to transform and turbo-boost our own educational preparation system to get students ready for the competitive environment in which we live. We need creative, out of the box thinkers who are willing to take reasoned risks. We need graduates who are articulate communicators. We need digitally literate citizens and entrepreneurs. Are we getting these outcomes consistently as the result of intentional policies governing our educational institutions? I don’t think so. Those results tend to be more incidental rather than intentional. And that should change.

U.S. citizens have it so easy relative to many others in developing countries. And even many in developed countries! Yes we have our problems, but let’s maintain some realistic and healthy perspective here. Thanks to Glassman for helping provide some much needed food for thought on the subjects of outsourcing, economic competitiveness, and economic “fairness” in the twenty-first century.