Jobs

ILLUSTRATED: The Democrats need to incentivize job retention within our borders, as well as raising our workforce to meet those jobs.

Andy Grove, the Hungarian-born boss of Intel, has written an excellent article about the importance of keeping manufacturing jobs in the tech sector. He attacks the popular thesis that growth comes from a few geniuses in Palo Alto cafes. Who then get the money to start a company, and then export the manufacturing jobs to Asia. Grove says that innovation does not only come from a handful of Stanford grads. Innovation and business intelligence comes from the workers, suppliers, and distributors in throughout the tech "ecosystem." If the ecosystem is domestic, then the institutional knowledge and relationships upon which business depends will be here in the U.S.A.

Additionally, the same day that frustrating jobs numbers came out, the NY Times published an article about how many jobs there are that cannot be filled due to a lack of talent among the unemployed.

The solution to the skills problem is training, and it is not coming from the belt-tightening private sector. As for retaining the manufacturing jobs derived from the engineering breakthroughs, the Democrats need to be unabashed about keeping jobs in the country, not just conceptually pursuing "growth."