Investing in the Future

Scary times today. Over and over again we read news accounts of budget impasses and program cuts. Again and again financial support is withdrawn from programs that matter. We could talk about a long list of these programs. But the ones I’m most concerned with are the ones that represent an investment in our future. Let’s take a look at those.

            Public Education, Kindergarten through High School.

            Public Universities

            Space Research

            Public Health

            Infrastructure

            Environmental Protection

There are others we are concerned about, too. We just don’t have the time and resources to address all of them all of the time. We have choices to make. Some of the topics listed above are building blocks for other programs that will further our advancements into the future. So we make discerning selections now, and plan for future ones a little later.

For now let’s drill down a bit into each of the above topics:

Public Education: the building blocks of social life and culture is education. Pre-school, kindergarten, elementary grades, middle school and high school. Each and every grade is an important developmental phase for each student. They learn about themselves. They learn about capabilities and talents. They learn, too, how to get along with one another. This is not a one and done lesson, but one that is accumulative over a life-time of experience. In that sense we never cease being a student! We are always learning – or ought to be.

Public schools are the bed rock of a society’s ability to continue its trajectory. It teaches values, facts, science, logic, history, emotions and how to handle them. These are the socialization and acculturation years of life. Doing it during early years of life is when the human brain learns the most and how to learn in and of itself. Later it is able to continue learning because it learned how long before. Life long learning is a goal; it is also a value of principle of long standing. Never cheat the public schools; doing so only cheats us.

Public Universities: these are where dreams are made, nourished and developed. Students come with basic educational skills and learn to delve deep to acquire skills that support understanding of life sciences, logic and theory. Career development emerges from this mass of learning. Core interests are identified by students in the process. Self sustaining life plans come about, life plans that are capable of regenerating themselves into new paths of understanding and accomplishment.

Public universities pass on previous known facts and history. They do this in a way that allows new discoveries to merge with the past and build toward a larger understanding of our environs. Future possibilities come from these efforts. More important, universities pass on our collective social memory. We have context for our thinking and understanding of the new. We are not inventing the wheel at every step. We are outfitted with building blocks.

And, too, public universities are the laboratories of discovery. We invest public dollars – and private corporations, too – in expanding the boundaries of understanding. Theory is written, then tested, then refined and finally conclusions are drawn; later these conclusions are tested and refined, too. Over time we invent new things, discover the workings of the planet and the universe. All of these become assets from which we benefit.

Space Research: the Space Program fueled enormous advances in human understanding. Products, too, and technologies that continue to fuel expansion of technologies yet again and again, emerge from the reach into space. The benefits are many. Yes they were costly but they also benefited us in so many ways. Stretching the human brain to consider new things, strange things, and enormous problems, is the most important part of the Space Program. We should continue to push back the frontiers of space for our own good, now and long into the future.

Public Health: The National Institutes of Health coordinate major research projects into health concerns and methods to address most of them. From this work comes progress in battling cancer and genetic mutations. Also addressed are common standards of health care that reduce many problems later on. Many advances have come from the NIH and its research programs involving partner institutions, laboratories and universities. If we pull back our investments in this work we only stunt ourselves and increase the financial cost of the health problems left unattended.

Infrastructure: All of public life, and private, too, relies on basic infrastructure: water delivery systems; safe water sources; sewage treatment and processing systems; dams, storm water controls; roadways, bridges and highway systems; power grids and energy support systems. All of these and more support the very fabric of our lives – alone or in society. Not maintaining this infrastructure or replacing it with new efficient designs is another stunting behavior we can ill afford. The future relies on it. The present, too.

Environmental Protection: Protecting the planet gives us a healthy place in which to live. If we don’t pay attention to it, all the other investments shown above are for naught.

Investing in ourselves – you and I and all the others – is a belief in the future. Together we must make the sacrifices to yield a fruitful future. Invest in America.

July 21, 2017