What's the single best idea to jumpstart job creation?The single most important step the United States can take to create jobs is to do what we've always done in times of necessity: invest in ourselves.
At the close of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was confronted with the challenge of what to do with millions of veterans returning home from the battlefield. The response was the creation of the GI Bill which offered vast new educational opportunities to veterans. Not only did it fuel post-war economic growth by helping to create a strong middle class in America, the legislation forever altered the nation's attitude toward higher education, taking it from the domain of the wealthy and making it available to the masses. Researchers have concluded that the GI Bill also made possible the education of fourteen future Nobel laureates, two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices and three presidents of the United States.
Throughout our history, Americans have proven capable of doing everything from mass producing the automobile to reaching the moon with the proper education and training. In San Antonio today, the unemployment rate is nearly 1.5 points below the national rate. We can thank our diverse economy and steady housing prices. But, perhaps more importantly, we can attribute it to our demographic profile, which is increasingly young and entrepreneurial.