Given my longtime aversion to sponsored content, I was pleasantly surprised – make that thrilled- to read a sponsored piece that was published in a recent edition of one of America’s most respected magazines because it was thought-provoking and completely aligned with the work Michigan Future Inc. is doing to help boost prosperity in Michigan. The piece sponsored by Bank of America in The Atlantic, perfectly explains the need for American schools to shift from an over-emphasis on test-driven instruction to teaching and learning that gives students access to the broader skills that employers are seeking in modern employees.

The most competitive countries and companies already place great value on such intellectual agility. According to a recent survey of 291 U.S. hiring managers, creativity, critical thinking, and the social skill required to work well in teams were the top three criteria for job candidates today. And as industries become increasingly automated—the number of industrial robots used globally is roughly doubling every five years, from 69,000 in 2002 to 229,000 in 2014, to a projected 400,000 by 2018, according to the WEF—the need and market will grow for the people whose intelligence, interpersonal skills, and social conscience form the basis for strong corporate and national-economic growth..

While I’m impressed that Bank of America sponsored an article about this critical issue in the Atlantic, I wonder how much of the bank’s annual lobbying budget is dedicated to promoting these ideas among lawmakers or how many of its philanthropic dollars are dedicated to efforts that support 21st century education initiatives? If Michigan’s corporate community is any guide, likely not much. I’ve long wondered why our state’s employers – obvious stakeholders in the imperative to boost Michigan’s education fortunes – continue to be eerily mute on education issues. It’s certainly not because corporate leaders believe our schools are producing enough well-educated students to lead their businesses in the future. Michigan consistently gets low scores for educational attainment:

• Education Week’s 2016 Quality Counts state report card gives Michigan an overall score C- grade. For K-12 educational attainment, the report card gives Michigan a score of D.

• In its 2015 report “Leaders & Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness,” the United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation gave Michigan an overall “D” grade as well as “D” for academic achievement among African American students. The state earned an “F” for its educational progress since 2007.

• The 2016 Kids Count report from the Michigan League for Public Policy and the Anne E. Casey Foundation ranked Michigan 40th of 50 states in education.

Meanwhile, Michigan’s corporate community has been reluctant to engage in efforts to modernize and strengthen education in our state.

This is not to say that some business leaders haven’t tried to influence education in Michigan. The Detroit Regional Chamber has several education-related initiatives; often hosts meetings and seminars to discuss education innovations and has partnered with the City of Detroit to manage its Detroit Promise scholarship program. Business Leaders for Michigan has consistently pushed for more state money for higher education. The Ford Motor Company Fund has many education initiatives. And while I don’t agree with much (or any) of Betsy DeVos’ education agenda, I do give her credit for putting her time and money where her mouth is when it comes to influencing Michigan’s educational landscape. But these are the exceptions. Many business leaders have done little or nothing to help policy makers and educators understand that when they hire employees, they seek the broad skills that aren’t included in the curricula of most Michigan schools.

The bottom line is this: It’s not enough for only politicians, journalists, teachers unions and organizations like Michigan Future to engage in thinking about the state’s education agenda. Too many lawmakers in Lansing take their policy cues from business leaders for their voices to be muted. If companies want Michigan schools to turn out students who are collaborative, creative, critical thinkers and great communicators, they need to speak up.

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The article describes the consequences of an unregulated education marketplace with little or no quality standards. You end up with too many schools chasing too few students. Which leaves all education operators unstable––both public school districts and charters. And that instability contributes to low quality teaching and learning.

As the article explores this is the status quo that opponents of the proposed Detroit Education Commission want to maintain. That version of a reset for Detroit is at the core of the bill the state House of Representatives has passed. The Senate version of a reset includes the Commission as a mechanism for matching supply and demand and increasing quality standards.

If you listen to the advocates for an unregulated marketplace model for Detroit education you hear two arguments. One ideological: markets work better than government. And two that charters in Detroit are outperforming district schools. They contend the system of authorizing charters is working.

Its hard to imagine anyone reading the Atlantic article and concluding the current system is working. The Atlantic writes:

The scope of the problems plaguing Detroit schools—both traditional district schools and charters—is almost unfathomable. According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 4 percent of Detroit’s eighth-grade students can read and perform math at grade level, the lowest rate among the nation’s big cities. Schools aren’t located where families need them, and campuses often open and close with no coordination or notice. Over the last six years, most schools in the city have either opened or closed—or both. In one neighborhood in the city’s southwest quadrant, home to a large Latino population and a number of industrial zones, a dozen schools opened or closed in the span of 18 months. And when a parent shows up to find a child’s classroom abandoned, good luck finding a new one. There are more than 200 schools with roughly 50 different enrollment processes and almost no standard for performance.

As we have explored previously (most recently here and here), the data on student achievement in Detroit charter schools also does not support the claim that the current system working is for charter schools students.

As the Atlantic article makes clear the notion that charter school students in Detroit would be disadvantaged by the creation of an entity that has responsibility for balancing supply and demand and for imposing higher student achievement standards on all school operators is not supported by the evidence. Both charter school and public school students––and their parents––are being served badly by the current system.

Around the country the urban charter school networks that are getting the kind of student achievement at scale that we all want are almost exclusively operating in states and cities with far more regulated marketplaces than Michigan and Detroit. Most in places with a single, or very few, authorizer(s) that balances supply and demand and with higher quality standards that guide opening, closing and expansion decisions.

Every time I write about charters I feel the need to remind readers that Michigan Future, Inc. is a long time supporters of charter schools. Our Michigan Future Schools initiative provided funding to help launch nine new charter high schools in the city of Detroit. And we continue to support six Detroit charter high schools.

We continue to believe that charters offer the best opportunity for breakthrough gains in student achievement. But that potential is largely unrealized in Detroit. Its become clear to us that the current policy environment––where no one is responsible for balancing supply and demand and with very low quality standards––is a major impediment to getting the kind of breakthrough gains in student achievement that are occurring in cities across the country, but not in Detroit.

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Terrific article in the Atlantic entitled The Unexpected Schools Championing the Liberal Arts: Military academies and chef schools say the humanities are essential to their graduates’ success. How can that be you ask. Aren’t the liberal arts useless skills that lead to crushing student loan debt and low wage jobs? Don’t we need to get colleges to stop teaching the liberal arts and instead teach occupational skills? That certainly is the story we are told repeatedly by too many of political, business and media leaders.

Turns out the folks that are preparing people for real jobs don’t agree. The Atlantic writes:

“People without a liberal-arts background really have no place to go with their skill sets,” said Frank Guido, a Culinary Institute student from Rochester, New York, sitting in the campus café and studying the Mayan Indians for a course he’s taking in history and culture. “They lack an overall knowledge, and an ability to relate to people and make educated decisions, and not jump to conclusions.”

… “It’s important to develop in young people the ability to think broadly, to operate in the context of other societies and become agile and adaptive thinkers,” (Brigadier General Timothy) Trainor said. “What you’re trying to do is teach them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. They’re having to deal with people from other cultures. They have to think very intuitively to solve problems on the ground.”

That’s what employers say they need in their new hires, too. Three-quarters want more emphasis on critical thinking, problem-solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge, according to a survey of 318 corporate leaders by the Association of American Colleges and Universities—exactly the kinds of skills advocates for the liberal arts say they teach. Ninety-three percent agree that “a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems” is more important than a job candidate’s undergraduate major.

The New York Times explores the skills needed in the 21st Century workplace in an Upshot article entitled Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work. The Times writes:

For all the jobs that machines can now do — whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food — they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills.

Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work. Occupations that require strong social skills have grown much more than others since 1980, according to new research. And the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.

The ability to think broadly, to operate in the context of other societies and become agile and adaptive thinkers, cooperation, empathy and flexibility. These are among the essential skills required in the workplace of today and, even more so, tomorrow. They may be even more essential skills for each of us to put together successful forty year careers in a world where occupations increasingly come and go.

And yet they are the very skills that too many of our policy makers, often times supported by the business community, are trying to drive out of our schools. Not smart!

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The New York Times in its Upshot section has provided extensive coverage of three new research studies that provide compelling evidence that one of the most powerful levers in realizing the President’s goal that each of us ” has the same chance to succeed as anybody else” is class and race integrated neighborhoods.

In articles entitled An Atlas of Upward Mobility Shows Paths Out of Poverty and Why the New Research on Mobility Matters,  the Times provides an overview of the findings from two new Harvard reports. Both articles are worth checking out. The Times writes about the findings:

“The data shows we can do something about upward mobility,” said Mr. Chetty, a Harvard professor, who conducted the main study along with Nathaniel Hendren, also a Harvard economist. “Every extra year of childhood spent in a better neighborhood seems to matter.” … These places tend to share several traits, Mr. Hendren said. They have elementary schools with higher test scores, a higher share of two-parent families, greater levels of involvement in civic and religious groups and more residential integration of affluent, middle-class and poor families. 

The third study comes from Stanford and is summarized in an Upshot article entitled Middle-Class Black Families, in Low-Income Neighborhoods. Also worth checking out. The Times writes about its findings:

Even among white and black families with similar incomes, white families are much more likely to live in good neighborhoods — with high-quality schools, day-care options, parks, playgrounds and transportation options. The study comes to this conclusion by mining census data and uncovering a striking pattern: White (and Asian-American) middle-income families tend to live in middle-income neighborhoods. Black middle-income families tend to live in distinctly lower-income ones. Most strikingly, the typical middle-income black family lives in a neighborhood with lower incomes than the typical low-income white family.

So the good news is we have identified a powerful lever to reverse the decline in income mobility: integrated neighborhoods. The bad news is that fewer and fewer Americans––particularly African Americans––in the bottom quintile are living in those neighborhoods.

And to make matters worse in many cases public policy, rather than encouraging race and class integration, is a barrier.  The Atlantic explores this topic in a distressing article entitled How Housing Policy Is Failing America’s Poor: Section 8 was intended to help people escape poverty, but instead it’s trapping them in it.  The Atlantic also provides some hopeful news in an article entitled Where Should Poor People Live?. It explores a Massachusetts law that overcomes local opposition to integrated neighborhoods.

Finally on the good news front is the recent Supreme Court decision that upheld the 1968 Fair Housing Act as a tool to combat policies that restrict the poor and minorities from finding housing in more affluent neighborhoods. (See this New York Times editorial for details on the court decision.)

It should go without saying that it is time we develop housing policies that give those growing up in poverty a chance to live in class and race integrated neighborhoods.

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“Yes, you can find exceptions. But most of the time, when you’ve got a downtown district with a self-sustaining combination of retail outlets (especially nonchain stores); restaurants and bars and brewpubs and music sites (to draw people downtown at night); art or festivals or live events (to give people a civic sense-of-self); and, crucially, residential spaces (where people who don’t have children or whose children have grown up live in second- and third-story apartments above stores and restaurants, providing street life through the evening and a general sense of bustle in downtown)— when find a place with those things, it’s very likely that all the other economic, cultural, civic, and educational indicators of local well-being will be positive too.”

Exactly! Vibrant central city downtowns are a critical economic development asset for cities and regions. Driven largely by the preference of many college educated Millennials to live and work in dense, walkable, transit-rich, amenity-rich neighborhoods. That most characterize downtown and near downtown neighborhoods.

More evidence of the economic development power of vibrant downtown comes from a terrific new report from Smart Growth America in collaboration with global real estate advisors Cushman & Wakefield. The report is titled Core Values: Why American Companies are Moving Downtown. Worth reading! 

Cushman and Wakefield identified five hundred companies that have recently located in an American downtown. Smart Growth America interviewed them to find out why a central city downtown. Here is what they found:

Companies across the country want to be in walkable, downtown neighborhoods. This report highlights just some of the many companies at the forefront of this emerging trend.

This trend is happening with companies of all sizes—from just a few people to many thousand. They represent a diverse variety of industries, and include everything from startups to some of the most successful companies in the country. They are moving not just to big cities on the coasts, but to mid-size cities in nearly every state in the nation.

Companies’ motivations for these moves are diverse. Many chose downtown to attract and retain talented workers. Some want to reinforce their brand identity or to create a dynamic company culture. Some want the creativity and opportunity for collaboration a downtown location provides. Some want to be closer to customers or partners or to centralize operations. And some want to use their sizable investing power to support a city’s renaissance and other triple-bottom-line business outcomes. The companies included in our survey see competitive advantages in each of these. Other companies considering where to move would do well to consider these points when deciding on a new location.

Though their motives are diverse, common themes emerged about what these companies looked for when choosing a new location. Nearly all opted for vibrant, walkable neighborhoods where people want to both live and work. Some companies emphasized having a range of transportation options, with easy commutes for employees living in the suburbs as well as downtown. Great office space was another important factor, and many companies highlighted unique and inspired architecture that dovetailed with a broader company emphasis on creativity. A warm welcome from the city also factored in to many companies’ decision making process. And finally, companies explained that a clean, safe downtown was a fundamental requirement for their choice of where to move.

Municipal leaders can learn important lessons from all of this. Many towns and cities already have walkable, downtown neighborhoods that are well-positioned to attract the companies discussed here. Those that do not can take proactive measures to create these kinds of places. As this research hopefully makes clear, creating great-quality neighborhoods is an economic development strategy that can attract jobs and new businesses—in fact, it already is.

These are important lessons for Michigan policy makers to learn. State, regional and city leaders all need to pay heed to this trend. By and large Michigan political and business leadership is behind the times in understanding the importance  of placemaking to economic growth. If we want to retain and attract businesses, particularly high-wage knowledge-based businesses, we need to create the kind of neighborhood attributes Fallows writes about at far greater scale in our cities––particularly Detroit and Grand Rapids.

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For the details check out our two latest reports: State Policies Matter and The New Path to Prosperity.

The main difference between Michigan and Minnesota is the performance of its big metros: Minneapolis compared to Detroit and Grand Rapids. The growing and high wage knowledege-based sectors of the economy are concentrating in big metros. As are college educated adults which is the asset that matters most to economic success in the knowledge economy. Metro Minneapolis is a top tier big metro, metro Detroit and Grand Rapids are in the bottom tiers. End of story!

Successful big metros are anchored by vibrant central cities. Where college graduates––particularly Millennials before they have children––are increasingly concentrating. The City of Minneapolis is one of the nation’s most successful central city.

Articles by the Atlantic and Issue Media Group explore why Minneapolis has become so prosperous. The Atlantic story is subtitled: “No other place mixes affordability, opportunity, and wealth so well”. They write:

Only three large metros where at least half the homes are within reach for young middle-class families also finish in the top 10 in the Harvard-Berkeley mobility study: Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis–St. Paul. The last is particularly remarkable. The Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area is richer by median household income than Pittsburgh or Salt Lake City (or New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles). Among residents under 35, the Twin Cities place in the top 10 for highest college-graduation rate, highest median earnings, and lowest poverty rate, according to the most recent census figures. And yet, according to the Center for Housing Policy, low-income families can rent a home and commute to work more affordably in Minneapolis–St. Paul than in all but one other major metro area (Washington, D.C.). Perhaps most impressive, the Twin Cities have the highest employment rate for 18-to-34-year-olds in the country. 

Derek Thompson, the author of the Atlantic article, credits metro Minneapolis’ business tax based sharing as the prime driver of the region’s extraordinary success. (We explored that policy in our State Policy Matters report.)

The Issue Media Group article is entitled: Why Minneapolis is the new capital of ‘The North’. Brian Martucci, the article’s author, credits the city’s focus on quality of place as the chief driver of its success. Particularly in becoming a magnet for young talent. He writes:

Homegrown success stories include: accelerating business and population growth in Summer in the City, downtown Minneapolis core neighborhoods; a comprehensive, goal-driven vision for the future; cutting-edge models of community-building and place making in formerly disinvested neighborhoods; and a wholesale embrace of arts and culture in the public planning process.

… Minneapolis policymakers have taken (former Mayor) Rybak’s directive to heart, progressively amending the city’s Plan for Sustainable Growth to encourage higher-density development around the University of Minnesota, the Lake Street corridor and the Green and Blue METRO light rail lines, and making small but important zoning changes like the Granny Flats Amendment, which permits self-contained rental units on owner-occupied lots zoned for single- or two-family use.

Like New York City, Minneapolis is more evidence that the low cost/small government places have the best economies conventional wisdom is wrong. Minnesota is the highest tax state in the Great Lakes. Minneapolis––the city and region––are so successful because they have used public resources to create a place where talent wants to live and work.

Talent––not low taxes––is the key to economic prosperity. Minneapolis has learned that lesson, we haven’t.  They are prosperous. Its almost certain we won’t be until we learn that lesson.

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As heartbreaking as Robertson’s story is, unfortunately he is not unique. Metro Detroit is filled with lots of folks like Mr. Robertson. Hopefully his story will jump start a larger conversation about what can be done for all those like him who want to work but find it hard to do so and when they get work the pay is too low to be able to cover essential expenses including transportation.

One lesson for metro Detroit––and particularly its suburbs–-to finally learn is that it is unconscionable for the region to have such a horrible public transportation system. Or more accurately non system. It almost certainly the worse of any big metro in the country. We all should be embarrassed and outraged!

Stephen Henderson in a Free Press editorial entitled “Awful transit policy fails everyone in metro Detroit” compellingly makes the case that the region is paying a heavy price for our unwillingness to invest in a quality regional transportation system. He also deals with the underlying racism––”we don’t want them to come here”––that has a lot do with why we don’t have quality regional public transportation. Its a must read editorial. Also worth reading is Transportation Riders United’s take, entitled “Extraordinary Commute Story Highlights Transit Failures”, on the broader lessons we should learn from the Robertson story. As they write: “As much as this is a story of incredible personal drive, it is also a story of the failure of our region to provide essential public services.”

Another lesson we need to learn is the new reality that manufacturing plant floor work is now predominantly low wage work. Mr. Robertson earns $10.55 an hour as an injection molder. Gone are the days of high paid, low education attainment factory jobs that were the backbone of Michigan’s mass 20th Century middle class. If––as our policy makers seems to want––Michigan is going to be a factory-driven economy going forward we better be prepared to deal with lots of James Robertsons. For those wanting to learn more about manufacturing wages check out:

• A terrific Nathan Bomey article for the Detroit Free Press on Michigan manufacturing wages 
• the excellent report from the National Employment Law Project entitled “Manufacturing Low Pay: Declining Wages in the Jobs That Built America’s Middle Class”.
• a 2012 Atlantic article entitled “Making It in America”. Its the best article I have read for understanding the new reality of working a factory.

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The basic facts: “In 2000, the economy had about 121 million non-health-care payroll jobs. Today, on a seasonally adjusted basis, there are 120 million non-health-care jobs. Meanwhile, the health care industry has added about 3.6 million jobs in that time frame, growing about 33 percent (14.5 million health care jobs today versus 10.9 million in 2000).”

Its no wonder that health care occupations end up on all the “hot jobs” lists. And one of the reasons there is such a big push for education to emphasize math and science. But that is all based on the assumption that health care will continue to be sheltered from globalization and technology. That health care will be delivered largely face to face by professionals serving patients.

In a facsinating article entitled The Robot Will See You Now the Atlantic explores the revolution that may well be around the corner in how health care is delivered. Which if it comes to pass will substantially reduce the need for health care professionals. (And the article claims is likely to sustaintially improve the quality of heath care. Which, of course, is far more important that what jobs are likely to available in the sector in the future.)  They write:

But according to a growing number of observers, the next big thing to hit medical care will be new ways of accumulating, processing, and applying data—revolutionizing medical care the same way Billy Beane and his minions turned baseball into “moneyball.” Many of the people who think this way—entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, young researchers from prestigious health systems and universities, and salespeople of every possible variety—spoke at the conference in Las Vegas, proselytizing to the tens of thousands of physicians and administrators in attendance. They say a range of innovations, from new software to new devices, will transform the way all of us interact with the health-care system—making it easier for us to stay healthy and, when we do get sick, making it easier for medical professionals to treat us.

…  Specifically, they imagine the application of data as a “disruptive” force, upending health care in the same way it has upended almost every other part of the economy—changing not just how medicine is practiced but who is practicing it. In Silicon Valley and other centers of innovation, investors and engineers talk casually about machines’ taking the place of doctors, serving as diagnosticians and even surgeons—doing the same work, with better results, for a lot less money. The idea, they say, is no more fanciful than the notion of self-driving cars, experimental versions of which are already cruising California streets. “A world mostly without doctors (at least average ones) is not only reasonable, but also more likely than not,” wrote Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in a 2012 TechCrunch article titled “Do We Need Doctors or Algorithms?” He even put a number on his prediction: someday, he said, computers and robots would replace four out of five physicians in the United States.

Will machines eliminate 80% of doctor jobs? Who knows?  But probably unlikely and certainly not soon. But it also almost certain that smarter and smarter machines will dramatically change the way health care is delivered and with it both the demand for health care workers and the occupational structure of the sector. (The article speculates that along with fewer doctors the sector will need more IT workers as well as nurses and para professionals.)

The article adds to the evidence that predicting job needs into the future is getting harder and harder. And that we need to resist calls to alter our education to prepare people for specific occupations that we believe will be in demand in the future. That kind of narrowing of education is almost certainly not good for either the student’s career or the economy.

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At the core of Michigan Future’s work, from our founding twenty years ago, has been the conviction that globalization and technology are mega forces that are continuously reshaping the economy. That by orders of magnitude they are more powerful than politics or public policy. And that the places that will do the best economically are those that align with – rather than resist – what now is described as a flattening world.

In no sector of the economy is that more true than manufacturing. Globalization, of course, means that more and more people across the planet will have the skills to compete with Americans for work. And technology increasingly invents new machines that also compete with Americans for work. Not to mention creating new industries that make obsolete old industries. The two articles do a terrific job of describing how those mega forces are reshaping what factory work can be done in America competitively and for that which remains how it will be structured with fewer workers and more machines.

As the Atlantic article describes the basic facts are:

We do still make things here, even though many people don’t believe me when I tell them that. Depending on which stats you believe, the United States is either the No. 1 or No. 2 manufacturer in the world (China may have surpassed us in the past year or two). Whatever the country’s current rank, its manufacturing output continues to grow strongly; in the past decade alone, output from American factories, adjusted for inflation, has risen by a third. … Yet the success of American manufacturers has come at a cost. Factories have replaced millions of workers with machines. Even if you know the rough outline of this story, looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data is still shocking. A historical chart of U.S. manufacturing employment shows steady growth from the end of the Depression until the early 1980s, when the number of jobs drops a little. Then things stay largely flat until about 1999. After that, the numbers simply collapse. In the 10 years ending in 2009, factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs—about 6 million in total—disappeared. About as many people work in manufacturing now as did at the end of the Depression, even though the American population is more than twice as large today.

Both articles are terrific at describing the realities of global manufacturing. If you care at all about the future of factory work in America they both are must reads. Both articles explore the calculus companies go through to decide whether to make a product in American or places like Mexico and China. The Atlantic concludes the products that will continue to be manufactured here are precision products and those made in small batches. Clearly many industries – like consumer electronics – are never going to make their products in American again.

The Atlantic article adds a description of the calculus that goes into deciding when to invest in machines to replace American workers. And makes clear that there are machines today that can do even more of the work that American factory workers now do, but for the moment are too expensive to replace relatively  low wage American factory workers. But as the price of the machines go down, more jobs will be automated.

What does all of this mean for factory floor employment in America? The Atlantic article sought answers in a fuel injector plant in South Carolina. As they explain there are two types of factory workers there. Quoting the plant manager: “Unskilled worker,” he narrates, “can train in a short amount of time. The machine controls the quality of the part. “High-skill worker,” on the other hand, “can set up machines and make a variety of small adjustments; they use their judgment to assure product quality.”

The unskilled workers in the plant make $13 an hour. Their job is to work with “machines that can work in only one way and require little judgment from the operator. … Computers eliminate the need for human discretion; the person is there only to place the parts and push a button.” These jobs are still in America as the article describes for two reasons: “First, when it comes to making fuel injectors, the company saves money and minimizes product damage by having both the precision and non-precision work done in the same place. Even if Mexican or Chinese workers could do Maddie’s (a low skilled factory worker) job more cheaply, shipping fragile, half-finished parts to another country for processing would make no sense. Second, Maddie is cheaper than a machine.”

The skilled worker’s job is much different. The article describes a worker that went through two years of education at a community college that included learning algebra, trigonmetry, calculus and computer programming. That prepared him for a job that pays around $19 an hour (50% more than the unskilled workers) and involves overseeing “several machines, performing on-the-spot quality checks and making appropriate adjustments as needed.”

The inescapable conclusion from these articles is that the number of low skilled factory workers in America is going to continue to decline. And what remains will pay around than the $13 an hour that Maddie earns or lower. At the same time there is a need for more high skilled factory workers. Products will still be made here in factories which are increasingly machine driven and staffed by far fewer and higher skilled workers who will make decent incomes.

America faces the twin challenges of too many workers with the skills to do low skilled factory work and too few workers with the skills to do high skilled factory work. Our ability to tackle either challenge is hindered greatly by an unwillingness to accept these realities. Rather we continue to search for how we can recreate the high paid, low skilled, mass employment factory-based economy of the past. Not possible! Factory work in America is going the way of American agriculture: highly productive, with few, mainly higher skilled, workers.

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• Probably the most important education article I have read in a long time comes from the New York Times Magazine by Paul Tough. It deals with the essential question of what skill set students need to succeed in college. And suggests that character – actually performance, rather than moral, character – may trump academics. Built around the common learnings of an elite private school and a KIPP middle school.

• The Atlantic’s Can the Middle Class be Saved is highly recommended. It provides a good overview of how a changing economy is eliminating or lowering wages of formerly middle class jobs. Core to all of our work at Michigan Future is the belief that globalization and technology are mega forces – far more powerful than public policy – which are fundamentally changing our economy. This article raises all the right questions about winners and losers in that transition.

• A disturbing Yahoo News article deals with the widening wealth gap between the old and young. Now the widest it has ever been. The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

• Another disturbing and thought provoking article comes from Bloomberg Businessweek. Its title and subtitle say it  all: Why Americans Won’t Do Dirty Jobs: In the wake of an immigrant exodus, Alabama has jobs. Trouble is, Americans don’t want them.

• A terrific Ron Dzwonkowski column for the Free Press entitled: Forget taxes and regulations, Michigan must build it so they’ll come. Based on the Michigan Municipal League’s new book The Economics of Place. (I am one of the chapter authors.) Read the article, better yet if you have time, buy the book.

• Last, but certainly not least, another Yahoo News story. This one an interview with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the authors of the new book Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. More on the constant change being driven by technology. Specifically the ability of machines to do more and more of the work humans used to.

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