Investing in Our Human Infrastructure

By Riane Eisler

Over half a million people lost their jobs last month. There’s no question we need a job-creation plan. The real question is what kind of plan will most quickly stimulate the economy and at the same time provide the best long-term investment for our nation.

President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Job-Creation Plan should be used to massively invest in our human infrastructure. Study after study shows that when our nation invests in its people, starting in childhood, the economic benefits are enormous.

By creating, subsidizing, and providing training for jobs in childcare, early education, healthcare, eldercare, and other “caring industries,” as well as supporting caring work in homes, we quickly stimulate the economy, help families, radically reduce poverty and violence, reward women’s economic contributions, save billions in crime and prisons, and develop the “high quality human capital” needed for our post-industrial economy.

Our economic crisis is an opportunity to lay foundations for a sustainable and equitable economic system instead of just trying to patch up an economy based on unsustainable consumerism, consumer debt, and environmental practices. The current economic meltdown is not due simply to the globalization of unregulated capitalism. The problem goes much deeper -- and so must the solutions.

The financial return on investing in caring jobs and home activities is huge. We need a new economic system that really works -- both in the short and long term. To make the job creation plan more effective we must consider that:

• America and the world are in the midst of a sea change as we shift from the industrial to the knowledge/information era. Many of the jobs being lost in manufacturing and other fields will be gone for good as we move toward more automation and robotics. Our most effective investment is in human capital development, starting in childhood and continuing all through life.

• A job-creation program component that focuses on the work of caring and caregiving will stimulate economic recovery and develop high capacity human capital capable of pioneering new frontiers of innovation across the board in every sector of society: culturally, socially, technologically, and environmentally.

• Neuroscience shows that the quality of childcare directly affects the development of human capacities and potentials; caregiving produces what economists call “public goods” and should be economically valued as civic work.

• The hi-tech green jobs and infrastructure construction jobs proposed by the job-creation program as currently formulated are still largely “men’s work.” Yet the time has passed when male “heads of family” were the sole breadwinners. The majority of families are two wage-earner families or woman-headed families. An effective economic stimulus program also provides jobs, training, and subsidies where the female labor force is concentrated: childcare, education, healthcare, eldercare. Studies show that women buy 80 percent of household goods: the food, clothing, and other essentials that keep the core economy going.

• Support of “caring work” will radically reduce poverty and violence, and their enormous economic, social, and personal costs. In the U.S., as in most nations, the poor are disproportionately women and children.

• As the Baby Boomers age, demand for eldercare is rapidly exceeding services available. The job-creation program must address this urgent need by supporting good eldercare in both the market and household economies.

• Millions of Americans are going uncared and undercared for. We have a huge caring gap from cradle to grave. A more broadly defined job-creation program will help close this gap at the same time that it stimulates the economy and trains both women and men for the work that is most urgently needed for a healthy economy and society.

• Creating a new cabinet post or advisory council for high capacity human development will facilitate the reordering of social priorities and the implementation of a new economic agenda appropriate for the post-industrial era -- and a more equitable and sustainable future.

The economic stimulus plan should be a bridge to the kind of economy and society we want and need: one where caring for humans and the planet is the primary economic driver. Good care and education for children is an essential investment in our nation’s future work force, and hence our future quality of life.

Investing in human infrastructure will not only rapidly stimulate our economy; it will lay foundations for a new economic era where our most precious resources -- people and the natural environment -- are nurtured, sustained, and thrive for generations to come.
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Eisler is author of The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 23 languages, and most recently The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. She is president of the Center for Partnership Studies. For more information, see www.rianeeisler.com
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the American Forum. 1/09