By Dab Lenard
Buffalo, NY – It has come down to Albany taking control of Buffalo. The control board, an amalgamation of politicians and business leaders, is nothing more than a band-aid on a gushing wound. The politicians in Albany and City Hall have played the game of political answers to financial problems for too long. While a control board may help the hemorrhaging for a while, it is not the answer to the fiscal woes of Western New York.
It is the people that are the strength of the area, not the political hierarchy. The future of Buffalo is not in the hands these power-hungry politicians. Our future is with our children, and it is our children that are leaving in droves. How do we stop that hemorrhage? What the people of Buffalo and Western New York have to do is make a huge shift in thinking. A paradigm shift of attitude and philosophy with what we teach our children about the nature of making a living.
In his recent series of books "Rich Dad-Poor Dad," Robert Kiyosaki explains how the old myth that we teach our children about getting a good education to get a good secure job with high pay and benefits is no longer valid and probably never was. It is this philosophy that has taken Western New York and its working class mentality to where it is today. We get up, go to work, earn money, pay our taxes, pay our bills and if there is anything left, we buy a house, a pool and a boat. We work from January to May just to pay our taxes. We have become slaves to the government, our jobs, and to many public and private laborers, slaves to our unions. None of these entities recently have done squat to make Western New York a better place. The government squanders our tax money because of inefficiency and fat union contracts, and private companies have no loyalty to a community that taxes them out of profitability. This insane cycle goes on and on and on because those in power maintain their power through it.
Our public schools are part of this cycle. The true philosophy of schools is that of what is called "Economic Reproduction Theory," that the role of schools is to create economic replacements for parents. In other words, workers that will continue the cycle. Our schools teach nothing about finance and the use of money. While I was teaching in the public schools, I met few teachers who could explain to students how the stock market works.
What we and our schools need to teach our children is "financial literacy." Children need to learn basic accounting and understand the difference between an asset and a liability. They need to understand how money works and how to effectively accumulate capital for college and retirement without relying on their employer, their union or the government.
We also need to teach our children about what makes America great. Entrepreneurship and individual initiative. Our free, capitalistic society provides opportunity for anyone, anyone who looks outside the box for opportunities. There are no limits to what the individual can come up with to produce personal income.
When you have a society of free-thinking, entrepreneurial, risk-takers, you have a society that produces vibrant economic growth.
There's an old adage that says, "If you do what you have always done, you'll get what you have always gotten." Western New York lives by a creed of this cycle of dependency. When we cast off the yoke of dependency on government to solve our economic problems and put our future in our own hands and the hands of our children, Buffalo can return to the greatness it had in the early 20th century. Back then, Buffalo was a city of risk-takers, of tremendous wealth production. When we became dependent on industry, unions and government, Western New York fell into a slow decline that has now almost reached rock bottom. If we don't teach our children financial literacy now, they'll be no one left to turn out the lights.
Looking outside the box,
I'm Dan Lenard.