Governor Dennis Daugaard says it’s the state’s job to supply workers to business. In his latest column, the Governor says government, education, and business need to work together to expand our workforce. He lists the following actions toward that goal:
- Educate the youth—obvious and sensible… although Governor Daugaard’s reference to our dual-credit program as career preparation seems a little stretched, since almost every class offered for dual credit in Spring 2015 satisfies general requirements, not specialized career exploration.
- Fund local initiatives to help recruit and retain workers—the Governor points toward a million dollars in state matching grants for housing, internships, English as a Second Language courses, and training programs.
- Standardize the terminology and improve the data in the state jobs database—the Governor’s explanation gets a bit esoteric, but who am I to complain about more searchable data online?
Governor Daugaard tells us what government and education need to do, but he doesn’t mention the role of business. True to his response to last year’s workforce summit, the Governor remains monumentally mum on what any good economist would identify as the most important factor in the labor market: wages. We can’t legislate every wage, and we shouldn’t need to: the market should make that happen all by itself. But if employers keep complaining that they can’t find enough workers, it seems only logical that the Governor should use his bully pulpit to say, “The state will do what it can, but you guys have to pull your weight and offer better wages.”
But as evidenced by his latest column and his comments at Aberdeen’s new A-TEC, Governor Daugaard appears to be so soaked in the pro-business worldview that he sees everything else—government, schools, people—as means to business ends. He apparently cannot see—or at least cannot say—the failings of business itself to meet the just demands of labor and the community.
Your last paragraph is an excellent summary Cory. Business has lost its community focus, lost site of the stakeholders, the people who actually make the business successful. The bigger the business the more distorted its view. Greed has overridden any values they may have had.
Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders get this right. Many small business owners do too. Rather than paying their biggest asset, their people, the very least they can (MalWart, Delta Airlines, ExxonMobil), many small businesses pay the most they can, taking the best care of the workers possible.
So it’s now government’s job to supply workers to business. Via which constitution?
It seems the last time that a government took on the job to supply workers to business was Germany, circa the 1930s-to mid 1940s: that ended well. From where do these clowns come?
Vladimir Daugaard needs to put ole Marty to work paying back South Dakota taxpayers for his pee poor arguments on gay marriage. We are at $300,000.00 with no end in sight on our worker bee for the Daugaard cabal.
“Disputing the bill could enlarge it for South Dakota, a state that continued to fight same-sex marriage even after the Supreme Court ruled in June. Newville said the tab is about $300,000 — and the meter is still running.
“They’re doubling down to try to get out of paying the fees,” said Newville, who settled with North Dakota for far less because that case didn’t make it far in the courts before the matter was taken up by the Supreme Court. “That’s only going to add to the final cost.”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/10/states-that-fought-same-sex-marriage-charged-millions-in-attorney-fees.html?utm_campaign=wklynewsletter091715&utm_medium=email&utm_source=editorialnewsletter
Republicans cannot govern, they can only dictate like their hero Putin.