Inspiring America - Bypassing Ideological Roadblocks
People are now removing long-time acquaintances and even family members from their social media "friends" lists. They rail against vitriolic posts attacking their politics (while often themselves posting the same kind of material). Any hope we might get some post-election political healing has been doused by conservative and liberal orthodoxies that seem immune even to disconfirming, objective evidence. We seem headed for another four years like the last eight. The only difference is that the Democrats now assume the part of saying "no."
Amidst this state of affairs, the film Hidden Figures offers a case study in how things could be different. It is an uplifting story about three black women who worked for NASA in segregated Virginia during the early years of the "space race." Despite their astounding gifts in mathematics and engineering, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson were barred from using their full talent by hundreds of years of illogical and immoral ideology. Yet their determination, applied to a clear, compelling national goal, turned these barriers into inexcusable roadblocks.
NASA did not change the ideology that had condoned racism and sexism; NASA managers just ignored it. Perhaps one way to make progress in our own ideologically-frozen society is to find a comparable national goal. If something matters more, perhaps partisanship will matter less.
Two candidates for such a goal are the need to dramatically recreate the American economy to find jobs for all those who will lose them to technology and the need to bring America's infrastructure up to world-class standards.
Within the next two decades, an Oxford University report projects that up to 47 percent of American jobs may be lost to computerization. What can be automated always has been, but advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will have an escalating impact on jobs long immune from technological threat. The lower the educational level and pay of the job, the greater the danger. Just a sampling of the jobs at risk includes fast-food and counter workers replaceable by self-service kiosks and robotic order filling (3.6 million); stock clerks and order fillers replaceable by robots (1.9 million); truck, delivery and taxi drivers replaceable by self-driving vehicles (2.8 million); and financial clerks replaceable by AI programs (3.4 million). Jobs already lost among auto workers, postal workers, telephone operators, machine tool technicians, and coal miners illustrate what is to come. Just a few weeks ago, Amazon tested a grocery store concept that needs no check-out lines, cashiers, or baggers. We are approaching a job-endangering tipping point, yet there is no plan to create twenty-first century jobs that provide a decent wage and self-respect. Nor is there a way to prepare people for them.
The sad state of America's infrastructure is already known, if still ignored. The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its latest (2013) quadrennial "report card," gives the nation's infrastructure a GPA of D+. The worst grades go to levees and inland waterways (both D-), Railroads, aviation, roads, wastewater, schools, transit, and hazardous waste facilities all get a D. The extent of lead contamination in water is now widely understood in places well beyond Flint, Michigan. Gas line explosions in neighborhoods, weakened or failing levees and dams, and rail accidents preventable by Positive Train Control continue. Traffic congestion in and around cities costs not only lost productivity but diminishes the quality of life of tens of millions. The Society estimates that the cost to upgrade all these systems by 2020 would be $3.6 trillion, and that does not address the need for expanding and upgrading the fiber optic and technology infrastructure serving America's homes, schools and businesses. Failure to do so will have direct and damaging implications for economic growth, competitiveness, and of course human life.
We have responded largely to these two needs with band-aids. Unemployment insurance cushions job loss but does nothing for the creation of meaningful, decently-paying work. Schools and training programs are not integrated with the emerging job market. Repairs do little to replace failing systems with modern, safer, and more economically robust infrastructure. There is nothing inspiring in such approaches. They keep us looking down to fix potholes when what we need is to look up, excited by the equivalent of moon shots.
National visions for twenty-first century work and infrastructure are complementary. The need for both is already accepted and is nonpartisan. They both serve a nation still driven with the need to compete globally, which we should recall is what led to the NASA space program. What's lacking is not a way to proceed but the will and leadership to do so.
Photo Credit: Nicholas Canup
