August 30, 2010 4:22PM # Economic Problems Won’t Be Solved by Education Stimulus, Either By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Mark Calabria does a [fine job dismantling](https://www.cato.org/tysons-keynesian-confusion/) Laura Tyson’s argument that we need another stimulus to spur private demand and revive the comatose economy. I would just caution against the one thing he could be construed as implicitly supporting: more federal funding for education. I don’t dispute that there are mismatches between employers’ needs and potential employees’ skills, but the solution to the problem is not [still more money going to education](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11852). As I and others [have argued ](https://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-21.pdf)– especially the Pope Center’s George Leef, in a [deft takedown ](http://www.popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2388)of a recent workforce study — lobbing sacks of taxpayer dough at education will mainly enrich schools and their employees while making our resource-blowing education system even less efficient. Indeed, we already have far more bachelor’s degree holders [than we have jobs for them](https://www.cato.org/obama-on-education-ho-hum-and-hold-on/), and the Labor Department projects that the [greatest number of new jobs ](http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm#occupation_d)in the next decade will require only on-the-job training (see Table 2). And skills retraining? There are [big problems there, too](http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-06-04-retrain04_CV_N.htm), with people often training for jobs that for numerous reasons they cannot get. Putting more taxpayer money into “education” is one of those sweet sounding ideas that few people can ever resist, but which produces [continually rotten outcomes](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9939). So even when it comes to education — [shrill objections](http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1572832112) about “de-skilling” and being “anti-education” notwithstanding — the [best thing to do for the economy](http://www.mackinac.org/8175) is to let money stay with taxpayers and allow them to consume education as they would anything else: according to their individual priorities and abilities, which they know better than anyone else. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).