What Human Capital Will We Have?

Human capital is defined by economists as the amount of skill found in the workforce. It is “measured” as the amount of education and training of everyone. Economists also talk about investment in human capital and human capital theory. Such a “theory” highlights the expenditures made to increase the productive capacity of various workers, either through education or training.

The cost of education and training is usually borne by everyone, but some companies do pay their employees to invest in their own human capital and give them time off with or without pay. Investing in a person’s ability to be more productive is important.

The workforce quality is key to the success of any production endeavor. The west has always had a more productive workforce because of its education and training, among other variables.

Americans are investing less time in technical training and more in college education majors. The vacuum of skilled technicians is filled with labor from immigrants, legal or illegal. Corporations hire college educated employees from India and China simply because they pay them less.

Investment in human capital needs to shift in the direction of vocational technology as jobs are more plentiful in those fields and certainly pay better than the college graduate field. Additionally, college education is getting more expensive, the average college debt is huge and that is not the case in vocational training. College tuition, for example, rose between 1978 and 2006 by 750 percent. (Baumol and Blinder, p. 518, 2007 edition).

When you consider the astronomical U.S. student loan debt of $1.75 trillion, about 44.7 million people, and the average loan debt per graduate is approximately $37,000, it is easy to understand why a vocational training might be more beneficial for individuals as well as for society. Student Loan Debt 2022 Facts & Statistics | Nitro (nitrocollege.com)

There was a time when college graduates earned twice as much as high school graduates, but the gap is closing and compared to some college degrees in arts and education, high school graduates with vocational training earn more.

Additionally, higher education does not necessarily sort people by ability. Students tend to choose easy study fields of higher education in which they have no interest in working or jobs that may be scarce by the time they graduate and do not pay well at all.

Since college campuses have become bastions of woke-ism and Marxist indoctrination in most majors, it is difficult for conservatives to blend in while seeking an education in stem fields. Non-stem fields are teaching students what to think rather than how to think and be creative and unique individuals in their majors.

Human capital has shifted around the world due to the concept of globalization, its implementation driven by the U.N., the World Economic Forum, and other elitist entities that are in the process of breaking down borders around the world and making sovereignty an outdated concept, a world without borders controlled by technocratic corporations and a few elitist billionaires.

What human capital do Europeans have? Two European think tanks, the Lisbon Council and Deutschland Denken classified European countries by measuring the knowledge capital and the increase or decrease in such human capital in 13 countries. They measured capital stock, deployment, and utilization, highlighting their ability to develop their human capital to “meet the challenge of globalization.” The European Human Capital Index - URENIO Watch

The study looked at the cost of all types of education and training at learning on the job, adult education, university, primary and secondary schooling and parental education.

-          The human capital utilization looked at how much of a country’s human capital stock is deployed.

-          The human capital productivity measured the gross domestic product and divided it by the human capital employed, considering how well-educated employed labor was instead of how many hours were being worked.

-          The study also looked at demography and employment in reference to the demographic and migratory trends to estimate “the number of people who will be employed or not employed in the year 2030 in each country.”

The European Human Capital Index in 2006 found Sweden was at the top and Germany and the Mediterranean countries at the bottom. The European Human Capital Index - URENIO Watch

The World Bank measures and ranks a Human Capital Index in 157 countries in terms of what countries are best in “mobilizing the economic and professional potential of its citizens and how much capital each country loses through lack of education and health.” Human Capital Index | DataBank (worldbank.org)

The World Economic Forum promotes the Fourth Industrial Revolution with its deeper investment in human potential as “the most important political, societal, economic, and moral challenges we are facing today.” The WEF’s System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Education, Gender, and Work is pushing an education that matches their vision for the globalist future. The Global Human Capital Report 2017 - URENIO Watch

Investment in human capital is quite expensive, as university tuition has increased at an alarming rate and nobody questions why, and per capita expenditures for public school education have expanded as well exceeding $20,000 per pupil per year in some math and science public high schools.

The quality of education, whether public or private, has decreased due to woke-ism prevalent at all levels of society, to common core standards, critical race theory curricula, the manufactured 1619 Project indoctrination, Marxist indoctrination, and the academic and administrative obsession with pornographic sex education starting in kindergarten, and enforced without parental consent. Sadly, only about 25 percent of high school graduates are proficient enough in English, Reading, Mathematics, and Science to be able to attend college.

American education used to be the envy of the world, but many third world countries have left most American students behind in knowledge, academic performance, and ability to invest that knowledge productively.

Highly educated people whose countries have invested in their college degrees often flee political and religious oppression, war zones, bad economies, high unemployment, and come to countries such as the U.S. that used to offer them more economic opportunities.

If the U.S. has a surplus of college graduates in certain fields, then the immigration of foreign-trained professionals who will accept a lower salary that may still be higher than in their own countries, will cause the underemployment of domestic graduates. The home country may experience a shortage of professionals, or they may have enough jobs to offer those who stayed.

Initially there was brain drain from war-torn countries, from current and former communist countries, from India, China, high achievers who were looking for the opportunity to succeed that America offered. As this opportunity to succeed has dried up, destroyed by the controlling political regimes in the U.S., this brain drain has slowed down considerably.

Investment in human capital has also changed with shifting demographics. As each family in the developed world has less children and the replacement population rate are below the required 2.0, the enrollment in education is dropping.

The quality of human capital suffered with the academic concentration on less marketable and easy college degrees like social justice, environmentalism, feminism, and social studies, and a total lack of interest in vocational training.

There are less Americans seeking degrees and advanced degrees in medicine, science, math, and engineering. The void is filled with foreign students who no longer want to stay and find jobs in the U.S. as they find life in general more restrictive in the U.S. than in their countries of origin. Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay - WSJ

It will be interesting to see how Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset and his vision of the Fourth industrial revolution with its ‘humans as hackable animals’ will play out in reference to human capital in the next fifty years. In 2020, Klaus Schwab said that Covid-19 was a “rare but narrow window of opportunity to rethink, reinvent, reset our world.”

Dr. Harari, an advisor to the World Economic Forum (WEF) said in a speech that a merger of human life with technology “will not benefit the average man or woman so that he or she may improve his or her own future, but that a handful of ‘elites’ will not only ‘build digital dictatorship’ for themselves but ‘gain the power to re-engineer the future of life itself. Because once you can hack something, you can usually also engineer it.’” Klaus Schwab’s WEF: Humans Are Now ‘Hackable Animals that will be Re-engineered’ – Bible Science Forum

 

 

 

Part V Interview on Education with Mircea Brenciu

Thinker and his companion Constanta Museum
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

I asked Mircea Brenciu what happened to the education in Romania as it evolved from communist indoctrination to so-called western style education in 25 years. Although some young people earned international acclaim in science and mathematics, education in general has been a profound disappointment, he added.

Brenciu is a firm believer that the lack of spending in education is a direct reason for the pathetic performance. He explained that Romania continues to place last on education spending, behind countries like Bulgaria, China, and Indonesia.

Despite politicians’ promises to make education a priority, financing it has remained at the bottom when compared to schools’ needs and to allocations that other countries have made in education. He illustrated the dearth of investment in “human capital,” a.k.a. education, with a statistically low 2.5% of the national budget in 2013, 3.2% in 2014, and 3.7% in 2015.

Even though politicians have introduced a benchmark of 6 percent for education, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS), investment in education has never exceeded 4 percent. Yet every government in power and every prime minister have pledged to the voting population that education was a priority. Remus Pricopie, former Minister of Education (2012-2014) reported in 2014 3.2 percent of the budget for expenditures in education.

I happen to disagree with Mircea Brenciu that spending more on education, throwing more money at schools, is going to make a difference in student achievement, performance on tests, or long-term retention and learning.

I don’t think the communist party spent outrageous amounts to indoctrinate the youth yet, in general, excluding the worthless classes of Scientific Socialism, Socialist Philosophy, and other such courses, students received a well-rounded education even though they had no labs for experimentation in physics, chemistry, or biology.

When I arrived directly from the socialist/communist state to the United States, I was shocked how ill-prepared most students and their teachers actually were. The depth of knowledge acquired by most eastern block students was superior when compared to the education of most Americans. It is also true that American students were encouraged to think individually and outside the box instead of emphasizing the collective. Collectivism stunted creativity and inventiveness.

Since Americans have been spending thousands of dollars per pupil to improve achievement and raise test scores, in the face of the fact that test scores do not compare well to other countries, it is obvious that throwing more money at education does not increase student performance or test scores. There are other variables such as parental dedication and involvement in their children’s education and two-parent families that are also very important.

I understand, in many villages in Romania, where the aediles had not used the funds judiciously, or did not receive any funding for education, it was hard to learn in a classroom whose roof was leaking, had no heat, or the school had not been completed or repaired for habitation.

The most adversely affected by unemployment are high school graduates with a rate of 8.1 percent unemployment when compared to those with a college diploma (5.1%). By age, the group of 15-24 year-olds have 23.7% unemployment rate.  Among the 25-34 year-olds unemployment was much smaller, 7.75 percent.

It is obvious to Brenciu that there are special interests at play that ignore the national interest, resulting in diminished education possibilities. Having a Parliament is great, however, the voters, informed, misinformed, or deliberately ignorant, get the politicians they elect. There is no such thing as the best party in power. Romanians and people in general should run like crazy away from a party or a politician who wants to dominate political life. “Did we not have for over 50 years a ‘unique’ party which led us, against our will, to the highest peaks of socialism?”

The content of education has become globalist, emphasizing global citizenship or preparation for such global citizenship.  The elites and the United Nations’ non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working overtime everywhere to institute the sought-after socialist global control.

To me, it was refreshing to see so many churches mushroom around the country, and a comeback of faith after five decades of atheism under Ceausescu’s socialist/communist dictatorship. State funds were allocated to repair and rebuild many churches. But Romanians seemed to resent the church leaders and priests who lived lavish and luxurious lives when compared to most Romanians, while hospitals and schools were not funded adequately by the state and people died as a result.

I noticed many museum and architectural gems in a sorry state of neglect, decay, and rust. Priceless sculptures and mosaics were drowning in dust at Tomis and marble Etruscan sarcophagi were used as trash bins outside the Tomis Museum in Constanta.

Educators have told me that the curriculum is not teaching students so much about their national heroes anymore. History and national pride have been definitely marginalized in the quest to become “European citizens” as quickly as possible. The dumbing down of education has showcased depravity and immorality, denigrating good moral values, pride in national identity, and Romanian-ness. The noble ideals of love for their country, of patriotism, of respect for historical facts and for their ancestors, have disappeared from the curriculum, replaced by defeatism and shame for one’s ancestry.

Many well-educated and average Romanians sought employment elsewhere in the EU “openness” where the pay was commensurate with education, training, and experience, leaving a huge vacuum in Romanian key sectors of labor. Why work for 300 euros in Romania when you can get five times the pay (1,500 euros) for the same type job in the European Union and the cost of living is similar?

TO BE CONTINUED