Opinion - Letters to the Editor

Thursday, Jul. 02, 2009

Viewpoint: Education crucial for business

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If the impact on business is to be the determining factor for state budget decisions, then public education is the last place to cut.

In fact, it is where we should invest to build our state’s future economy. The proposed cuts to education are huge and ongoing.

The recent editorial decrying the closing of state parks as bad for business was appropriate.

Decimating the public education budget is even worse for business. The numbers tell the story. The worse the education, the less people earn; the less they have to spend; the fewer taxes they pay.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, dropouts earn the least, averaging $18,900 per year. They have less to spend. They contribute less to Social Security. They are more likely to need social services. They pay fewer taxes.

High school graduates earn a little more, $25,900, and have more to spend.

College graduates earn lots more, $45,400, and have more to spend.

Those with advanced or professional degrees earn even more, $99,300 and spend even more.

Education is good for business.

It is where the Silicon Valley boom came from. It is where the green boom will come from. Well-educated men and women will be the inventors, researchers, business owners and entrepreneurs of the future.

Public education is the research and development department of society. In the 1960s California spent 120 percent per pupil more than any other state in the nation and that generation of students created the digital, electronic world we live in. Now we will spend less than any other state. The result of that is easy to predict.

There is another benefit to business from public education. Public education is among the largest employers in the county. Those employees represent a huge spending force. Cut them and you cut business and local sales tax.

Write your legislators and convince them to restore education funding, or wait for this generation of children to grow up and then write checks to support the increasing need for publicly funded social services in a state stuck in an economic crisis.

Even during the Great Depression, public education cuts were never as steep as those proposed by state legislators today.

Mark Buchman is a member of the San Luis Coastal Unified School District board of trustees.