How To Get There?
Where do you want to be in 5 years might seem like a difficult question or even trite but if you know the answer then it is about figuring out the path.
I was watching an Amazon ad this past weekend noting all the happy people who get excited about shipping someone an item when they pack a box. The same ad with a different twist is about people who work on the car assembly lines. Perhaps they are happy with these jobs but the future reality is these jobs will be held by robots. We could easily get there in 5 years.
If we know that the future is that robots will take over certain manual labor jobs what do we do in the next five years to help all of these people shift gears so they can continue to make an income? We don’t need laborers of these type of jobs like we did in the 1950’s because technology has got so that smart.
Education is the key to our future. We are watching the shifting winds of education pick-up speed with COVID-19. Education is using technology to do things differently starting with distance learning. We can point to coal and oil too, are we really going to be using those resources with gusto in 5 years? I doubt it. We know they are terrible for our environment and we need to take care of our planet now more than ever. How do we move all those jobs into the next generation into renewable energy? That is an education in itself.
Let’s start making education for everyone a priority. We have not given education the money that it needs over the last couple of decades. It has to change. Someone told me that there is plenty of cash to make these changes, it isn’t about raising taxes as much as it is about changing where the cash is spend.
One thing is for sure, we need to prioritize education in a broader way for jobs that are going to end whether people like it or not. We need to put our resources into education for the people who are too young to cast a ballot. It is time to think about where we really will be in 5 years and start planning for that future vs holding on to something that financially makes zero sense to continue.