Improving America's Competitiveness

January 3, 2008, revised January 15, 2008

American business now faces stiff competition from abroad, where labor is often far cheaper. This has resulted in the loss of many family-wage jobs. In order to recreate these jobs, our government needs to do whatever it reasonably can to reduce the cost of doing business, especially the cost of employing workers here in the United States. For example, we should cut employer-paid payroll taxes so that they no longer discourage hiring. Also, addressing the health-care crisis would help competitiveness, as long as the new plan results in savings to the employer rather than imposing any new mandates on American businesses.

In addition, we should revise the high-school curriculum so that it offers marketable skills for those students who are planning to enter the work force immediately upon receiving their diploma. The Department of Education should team up with the business sector to devise rigorous high-school courses (in computer science and health sciences, for example) that would train the skilled workers needed to compete in today's global economy.

The same technical curricula could be offered, in modified form, to retrain adults for new careers. Rather than requiring displaced adult workers to return to college, they could attend night classes at their local high school at a lower cost and obtain a certification of expertise in their chosen field of study.