On Solutions: The Great Reskilling

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Here's the 5th installment. There was a time when business had a purpose, a function in society. Whether it was producing a superior product or innonvating a technology to make our lives better or merely providing access to fresh fruits and vegetables to city neighborhoods, it had a place in our everyday lives and had societal obligations. Now, they seem to exist as a brands rather than a product or service, to make as much money for their investors and CEO's --even if the dissolution of the company and unemployment of its employees are the result. Of recent times, mass layoffs and continuation of operations in far off lands where labor is cheaper and more easily exploited has lead economists to crow of the end of receission! only a jobless recession. The measures of economic health no longer serve us. So I ask you to review from my email box, the Great Reskilling:

The men and women of the United States were once builders of boats, weavers of fabric, turners of pots, crafters of furniture, keepers of bees, operators of mills, welders of steel, creators of new technologies, and in general makers of the goods used in America. Entranced by the doctrine of efficiency of scale, bulging corporations merged, closed plants, moved production outside the U.S., and effected a loss of regional manufacturing skills.

We have skipped a generation in the continuity of these skills, but they are still in our cultural memory. Our grandfathers and grandmothers even now relate stories of the local seamstress, butcher, mechanic, mason, distiller, logger, and how together they shaped the complexity of the community. The processes of production were more visible, and young people aspired to fill those positions.

To build stable regional economies in the U.S. and create an example for sustainable development in other countries will require regaining dying skills, especially in production of the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and energy. It will mean rebuilding a manufacturing infrastructure, re-establishing technical schools, and recommitting to the purchase of locally made goods. Jane Jacobs used the phrase "import replacement" when describing this strategy‹smaller batches, more jobs, less transportation, greater complexity, without more goods. A sound goal for a new economy.

In their report "The Great Transition" our London partners at the New Economics Foundation (neweconomics.org) identify re-skilling the work force as a priority for achieving a diverse and sustainable economy (see text at end of this email).

This is the fifth in a series of emails from the New Economics Institute (NEI) drawing on the work of the New Economics Foundation (nef). NEI emerged in 2010, building on the thirty-year history of the E. F. Schumacher Society in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts with especially close ties to nef in the UK. The New Economics Institute also looks forward to introducing its friends to the work and thinking of members of NEI's extraordinary Board of Directors, its Advisory Board, and others who seek to bring about a socially and environmentally just and sustainable world.

At this juncture we especially want to mention Tellus Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, whose core mission is "Advancing the transition to a sustainable, equitable, and humane global civilization -- a Great Transition." This work began in 1995, and since 2005 has been the central theme of Tellus. We encourage you to visit their website, http://www.tellus.org/programs/greattransitioninitiative.html.

Best wishes,
Susan Witt and Stephan Crown-Weber
Berkshire Office and Library
New Economics Institute
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230
www.neweconomicsinstitute.org

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1. Recommend

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2. K & R nt

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3. "reskilling" needed with all the skills recently laid off?

Nobody becomes brain dead in a matter of months or even years. And Rosie the Riveter tooled up with hardly any experience at all. How many earlier software types got their "training" only on the job just by doing?