I posted this article in the SRIOTD thread, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it prolly deserves its own thread for real debate on the idealogies, priorities and realities that the story brings up, and of course of the ensuing issues and/or resolutions that occur. This is a chance to document and observe and comment on a real-world libertarian experiment that is actually happening right now.
The very short version is that the Idaho legislature cut money from education funding recently and the group that pushed for it is planning on pushing to increase the cuts by nearly tenfold. Idaho business groups aren’t thrilled with this because they need an educated workforce and because their employees want their children to be educated, and if they cannot get that in Idaho, the businesses fear that people will move to other places.
And the thing is, Idaho is already at the bottom of the educational barrel:
How far will they go with this before reversing course? Will they ever reverse course? Post what you think the long-term situation will be, because we’re going to get a chance to see this play out, it looks like.
The article notes that even employers with long-standing ties to the area are exploring their options with respect to other locations and/or actually starting operations elsewhere.
ETA: I was gonna call the thread *Idaho and education", but “vs.” seemed more accurate.
You have to understand that for red state governments that are dismantling K-12 and higher education, the exodus of employers that require significant numbers of college-educated workers is a feature not a bug. Red state Republicans used to make a lot of noise about “economic competitiveness” and the need to invest in education (among other things) to draw cutting-edge industries to their states. Every state had a notion to be “Silicon Hills” or “Silicon Plains” or “Silicon Swamp”.
But what Republicans found to their alarm is that their efforts drew in a lot of former blue state residents whose politics didn’t necessarily line up with the GOP. Even worse, their own kids who were going off to college in records numbers started having these fancy-pants ideas like maybe their state didn’t have to be a conservative dystopia and maybe clean air and water and addressing inequality was worth some additional taxation and regulation.
And so the GOP is throwing the engine into reverse. Much better to shed a couple of point of state GDP and promote agriculture, extractive industries, manufacturing and other industries that generally employer larger numbers of blue-collar workers than risk the wrong people with their high-falutin’ opinions gaining political strength.
Idaho did get a mini Silicon Valley in Boise with HP and Micron. However, the state is in a race to the bottom of Stupidity Barrell. Not only are they cutting higher ed funding, but they are also trying to destroy one of the larger regional community colleges from within: North Idaho College. The above article briefly mentions it, but the moronic board picked the wrasslin’ coach (no admin experience) as the interim “president”.
I was just going to mention NIC. The State Board of Education is having to review their accreditation because they fired their president without cause and a bunch of other people left.
Sez who? The Department of Education? Deep State. The NEA? That’s a union!
While I can’t speak to Idaho, some of the people I knew in Montana would prefer that education be restricted to the four Rs (readin’, writin’, 'rithmetic and [their preferred] religion). Anything beyond those would be considered brainwashing.
No, although it’s a standard plank of Republican grievance culture these days to pretend that Democrats look down on blue collar work. A strong, diversified economy needs both tradesmen and tech entrepreneurs. But Republican legislatures are deliberately enacting policies to make their states unattractive to college-educated workers because they fear the political ramifications.
The days when a state could realistically expect to prosper with a small educated elite managing a large resident population of docile minimally-educated manual laborers are pretty much over, ISTM.
But you have to make sure that those blue-collar workers are NOT in a union! Because such union workers were a big voting block for Democrats for decades. And keeping out the unions means giving the workers decent wages, benefits, a safe workplace, etc. – all the things businesses want to avoid.
Plus running a successful farm these days is pretty complicated, and requires more education than before. And the mining or drilling industries use complicated & expensive equipment – you want educated & trained workers operating that machinery.
I’ve heard it said that any job that can be done with only a high school diploma can be replaced by computers o robots. An exaggeration, but getting closer all the time. The holdouts seem to be low-paid service jobs, but even there changes are reducing many of them. Like retail clerks (but Amazon), bank tellers (online banking), waitresses (delivery & take-out), etc.
Yeah, just yanking your chain. I’m not sure why North Idaho has taken over. Not a fan of it. I guess with the state of education in the state, “they” don’t understand the issue. Shouldn’t North and South Dakota be giving up two senators? Or should Idaho be gaining two? That is a scary thought!
