Any longtime Seattle resident driving around town today can easily point to the number of cranes and other building machinery as evidence that we are in a big-time boom cycle. At the same time we can point to our schools for evidence of poverty in spite of the wealth accumulating all around. To say that this discrepancy is upsetting is a bit of an understatement. How dare our leaders claim scarcity when it is clearly artificial?
Scarcity. Part of the most rudimentary economic equation. Supply and demand. But we are fully into the swing of the 21st century with its huge technological advances and the economic equation at this point is far from rudimentary. Economic laws have been studied, researched and experimented upon. We are in an economic stage completely infused with the ideology and programs of Neoliberalism, an ideology that recommends privatization, deregulation, free markets and personal affluence and overlays and blends in with the economic objectives of both the Democratic party and the Republican party. We have greater productivity than ever before, markets flooded with product, unmanageable piles of consumer waste, many signs of historic abundance. So how else can it be true that there is scarcity unless it has been manipulated to appear so?
I for one am (We are) tired of hearing the same claims over and over; I’m fed up and unwilling to accept them anymore. This seems to be a sentiment shared by many, which has been expressed by the State Supreme Court in the McCleary decision. There is money and there is a way to get to it and the State is obligated to fulfill its duty of providing adequate education to the state’s citizenry. Let the taxing begin. The one percent have more than enough personal wealth, it was produced by the people in the first place and only ended up in their pockets because they were in the right place at the right time. They own the organs that crank out the myth of scarcity but they don’t own the minds of the people. Minds are more important than money. It’s time to invoke a new mantra: mind over money.
Minds are supposed to be nurtured in school. Minds that will ultimately mature and be set to the task of creating new wealth. With our multi-tiered educational system many minds will benefit from school. The wealthy have the best shot, since they have the best private schools and are advantaged in every possible way. Many students in public school have a very good shot but far too many do not and the poor have the least chance of all. Money can help nurture minds and lift up the poor. This is money well spent because innovation comes from well nurtured minds, especially those from lower stations because they simply have farther to go and come up with bigger schemes. This is a major source of new wealth.
Though money can nurture minds it cannot make new minds while minds are the only source of wealth since wealth is a construct of the human mind. This means that when we do not spend enough on education we are selling ourselves short by limiting the potentialities of all available minds. We need them because we will be facing increasingly more difficult problems and Neoliberalism is blind to the most pressing problems confronting us now and into the future.
The best way for Seattle to maintain its trajectory of prosperity is to put the money where it will be most effective. While building new office towers and apartment buildings all over town has some justification, it pales in comparison to spending more on education. There is a fountain of creativity, innovation and new wealth bubbling through the corridors of our public schools. It’s a lot of work tapping into it, it takes a lot of money to gear up and create an environment that is capable of teaching everyone but don’t tell me the money isn't there. Be honest and tell me someone just doesn't want to spend it on the poor. I won’t even ask why because I already know. Our prosperous state and our wealthy city can and should provide for the education that our students deserve.
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