Perhaps, It’s Failing Basic Skills Help Autocrats Get Public Support?

Perhaps, It’s Failing Basic Skills that Helps Autocrats Get Public Support?

Rising autocrats need “whatever I say” followers. For those who blindly outsource their opinions and perception to politicians promising just about anything, describing their nation as falling apart and demonizing helpless minorities that are all-too-conveniently visible, they lose the ability to understand increasingly complex economic and political realities when they cannot read or research and are thus fact/numbers averse. If your most cherished leaders repeat that the sky is turning red, a beautiful sunset is nothing more than proof that the sky is indeed turning red.

And when South Korea asks the US government why it cannot protect its investment in a US-based automotive factory, unable to find enough qualified US applicants, by beginning with 300 out of 500 employees being trained Koreans… as the US unceremoniously deports those 300 workers for overstaying their visas… as funding for education at every level (state and federal) has become an expendable luxury. Increasing H1-B visas application fees to $100,000 just might force US companies with high-level STEM requirements to locate in countries with no such barriers.

What’s worse is the proclivity of political parties to provide simple, seemingly logical “solutions” that sound good but never really work. Like “incent the job creators” and a “rising tide floats all boats.” It’s just an excuse to lower taxes for the rich, under that “Laffer curve” above, which falsely projects if tax rates get too high, that causes the economy to shrink for everybody. So cut taxes to expand the economy. There is a slight problem with that, at least in all of US experience: when the rich get tax cuts, they do not rush out and hire lots of people for good jobs… they keep the extra money and buyback shares, give themselves dividends, buy companies and layoff workers to make their acquisitions more profitable, simply buy another vacation home… or replace the old luxury yacht with a bigger, better one.

I repeat it has never worked here. NEVER. Using catchy slogans implementing this “trickle down/supply side economics” is a mythological failure that just will not go away, because even moderate Republicans believe it just sounds so good. “When Ronald Reagan attained the Presidency, he did indeed pursue an aggressive program of tax reduction — however, the required corresponding budget discipline was ignored as he went on a military borrowing and spending spree to fight the commies in the Cold War.” Wikipedia. And when Kansas Governor Sam Brownback implemented similar state tax cuts in 2012, the state budget for public education had to be slashed into oblivion, the projected growth just did not happen, and the tax cuts were eventually reversed by a Republican-controlled legislature as a failure… overriding a Brownback veto.

Our students are too willing to let Google or an AI search govern, often leading them to conspiracy theories embraced by people they trust who are themselves the product of a failed educational system. Or simply outsourcing their beliefs to leaders who are completely wrong. Here’s another example: the proclivity of politicians to ignore one of economics’ most basic rules. If you are waging a serious major war or profoundly extended conflict, you have to pay for this usually massive cost with concomitant sacrifice. Think WWII, war bonds, rationing and asking people to cut back consumption… and we still borrowed.

But as Republicans committed to the Laffer Curve tax cuts, during the Vietnam War, our once tamed federal deficits exploded. The theory – guns OR butter – became guns AND butter. Wrong! And even as the Clinton presidency finally turned a budget surplus, the post-9/11/01 wars in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, were accompanied by Bush (W) era tax cuts… and the deficit has been soaring ever since. Trump’s “big beautiful” tax cuts are sending the deficit to untenable places, threatening Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education and the survivability of the American economy itself. DOGE cuts appear to be self-amputations, impairing our ability to function as a nation, domestically and overseas.

You only have to look at year-over-year standardized test scores, especially in math, to see how we are preparing America’s youth for their and our future; as the above graphic illustrates, we are decreasingly globally competitive. Emma Gallegos, writing for the September 23rd Los Angeles Times, tells us: “American students are experiencing a math crisis marked by a decline in scores that began over a decade ago and rapidly accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report shows... Almost 4 in 10 eighth-graders scored below basic in math on the Nation’s Report Card, leading to the lowest scores since the test began in the early 2000s. The gap between high- and low-performing students is higher than ever. Students who saw strong gains in math since the early 2000s — girls , low-income students, Black and Latino students, students with disabilities and English learners — have seen their progress erased.

“‘A plan and a vision for solutions is not clearly happening,’ said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research institute based at Arizona State University, who called the problem ‘alarming.’… But math is an important subject that provides students with the foundation they need to be globally competitive for ‘jobs of the future,’ Lake said, and also just to function in the modern world.”

Meanwhile, to fund his tax cuts for the rich, Trump is shutting down the Department Education (which has administered programs that fund so many state programs for public instruction), sending delinquent student loans out for collection where graduates are facing a contracting college-level job market caused by Trump policies, and attacking those universities that have contributed most to our technological dominance and our job-creating scientific research, using the lame and mostly fabricated excuse of correcting antisemitism. The nation as a whole will suffer for decades from Trump’s priorities, whether we remain a democracy or a Trumpian autocracy… and no one, especially not Trump, can fix this for a very, very long time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Trump claims he has “made America great again,” the numbers and our declining global competitiveness tell us that we are struggling to maintain our position as the greatest power in the world and losing… as China rises by doing pretty much the opposite of Trump educational priorities… how’s your Mandarin?