recently-seen interesting things

[twoeleven]

or, slowing the doomscrolling

i read an article talking about the skills gap in the great plains. as usual, people want to earn more, but lack the skills companies want; companies in turn can't find enough trained people.

but a few states are doing something about it:

Earlier this month, Montana announced that 12 of its colleges would establish more than a dozen “micro-pathways” – stackable credential programs that can be accomplished in less than a year – to put people on a path to either earning an associate degree or immediately getting hired in industries such as health, construction, manufacturing and agriculture.

“Despite unemployment hitting record lows in Montana, [...] many low-income families lack the time and resources to invest in full-time education and training,” the Montana University System announced in a release with its partner on the project, the national nonprofit Education Design Lab.

That same week, Wyoming held a “student-centered learning” kick-off event focused on developing educational programs that are more responsive to residents’ needs. In July, Kansas announced it was expanding its grant for apprenticeship programs.

The legislature here in Idaho created an $80 million annual fund in April to give high school graduates up to $8,000 to attend community college or receive workforce training. The program, called Idaho Launch, promotes in-demand careers in fields such as agriculture, construction, healthcare and transportation. Similarly, the College of Eastern Idaho [...] has started offering construction clinics in rural areas, hoping to expose more high-school students to the trades.

it's a good first step.

ideally, i think we – both citizens and companies – need to recognize that providing people with additional training and education after they start working benefits everyone, and set up a system to make that happen. i envision something like unemployment insurance, with both people and employers contributing, and people drawing against "additional training insurance" every so often to pay for classes and get a stipend to have the money to work less/not at all while studying.

=•=•=•=

the beeb has a short article on why only the US government shuts down. shortened further, we find the key difference:

America's federal system of government allows different branches of government to be controlled by different parties. It was a structure devised by the nation's founders to encourage compromise and deliberation, but lately has had the opposite effect.

That's because in 1980, the Attorney General under President Jimmy Carter's administration issued a narrow interpretation of the 1884 Anti-Deficiency Act. The 19th Century spending law banned the government from entering into contracts without congressional approval; for almost a century, if there was a gap in budgets, the government had allowed necessary spending to continue. But after 1980, the government took a much stricter view: no budget, no spending.

That interpretation has set the US apart from other non-parliamentary democracies, such as Brazil, where a strong executive branch has the ability to keep the lights on during a budget impasse.

right: it's not a constitutional requirement, nor even a law, but merely a previous attorney general's opinion. which means, as far as I can tell, the current attorney general could simply change it back by saying he has a different opinion.