March
How About Some Adult Supervision
We know well the warnings that the
Social Security system is broke, broken and
needs an overhaul. Relax. What the system needs
is adult supervision. ; The hand-wringers have
focused on trimming and recalculating benefits
and on tweaking tax formulas that finance the
system. ; But there’s a bigger picture that starts
With seven
fewer F- 35
jet fighters,
we could provide a handheld tablet
for every
first-grader
with the fact that there are 125 million Americans under 30. A fundamental question for our
generation is whether we are committed to
providing the quality and variety of education
that prepares the generation of younger Americans for their future—and ours. ; As crushing
ON THE COVER: LEFT: THE IMAGE BANK/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: ISTOCKPHOTO THIS PAGE: GIRL: GETTY IMAGES; KINDLE: COURTESY AMAZON
as the job shortage may be, the real “jobs cri-
sis” is the mismatch between available jobs and
the skills U.S. workers need to fill them. The president
highlighted this in his State of the Union speech: “
Growing industries in science and technology have twice as
many openings as we have workers who can do the job.”
U.S. companies are going overseas to find
skilled workers. Apple, for example, now employs 43,000 workers in the United States, but
as iPhone and iPad sales exploded, the company
restructured its manufacturing process. More
than 20,000 Apple employees work overseas,
and another 700,000 people work for Apple
subcontractors around the world.
Consider how the job and corporate landscape has changed. Fifty years ago, when
manufacturing dominated the economy, the
five largest private employers were General
Motors, AT&T, Ford, GE and U.S. Steel. Today,
when service providers, sales and temporary
staffing firms generate six of every seven jobs,
the largest private employers are Walmart, Kelly, IBM, UPS and McDonald’s. The typical GM
worker makes about $20 an hour more than a
Walmart worker—plus benefits.
This trend makes it even harder to sustain the
nation’s global competitiveness and the Social
Security and Medicare trust funds.
This is where adult supervision comes in. Adults
worry about their kids, the schools they attend
and the education they get. As a nation, we’re failing, even though our federal and state governments spend $519 billion
a year on elementary and high school education. As a percentage of
public spending, that total has dropped three straight years.
At the same time, we don’t hesitate to spend nearly $1 trillion
on the nation’s defense. Here’s a thought. The Pentagon is buying
2,443 F- 35 joint strike fighters, sleek, $133 million supersonic jets
for battling a weapon that hasn’t been imagined by an enemy that
remains unknown. If we bought just seven fewer F-35s, we could
buy a handheld computer tablet for every first-grader in America.
Here’s the point: Old and young, we’re in this together. There’s a
larger context for the Social Security debate. It’s part of a conversation about where the nation is headed, the opportunities younger
Americans must have and our role as adults to make sure they get
them. Their future—and ours—depends on it. —Jim Toedtman, Editor
AARP Bulletin March 2012, Volume 53, No. 2 (USPS Number 002-900; ISSN 1044-1123) is published monthly except February and August by AARP, 601 E St. N.W., Washington, DC 20049 (telephone: 1-888-687-2277). Internet site: aarp.org/bulletin, “The Newspaper of 50-Plus America.” Sales and
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