New Mexico's Place in the New Global Reality:  Part II 

Putin and Xi at the Olympics Last Week:  The US Official Presence was Conspicuously Absent

 New Mexico suffered a major downturn in governance and quality of life during the nationally touted--by Clinton, Bush, Obama, Mainstreet news media, and both major parties--heyday of the New Global Economy (also called The Washington Consensus).  During that period (mid-1990s until 2017) a good portion of the non-war-driven cruelty suffered by marginal areas (including New Mexico) was due simply to the doubling--and globalization--of the world's labor force, exploited efficiently by the world's major money-makers taking advantage of the globalization of manufacturing toward low wage countries.  Less developed countries  (and, in the US, states and regions) with low-skilled workforces and economies simply could not compete with the super-low-wage, compliant workforces in India and China.

New Mexico's state government did little in response to these new conditions, except, under bipartisan rule, to protect entrenched interests.  A prime example is education.  While experts told us we needed a much more targeted, well-trained workforce to compete effectively in the new environment, our public education system simply closed political ranks, refusing to retool.  Teachers' salaries under Richardson doubled in order to have the NEA declare him "governor of the year," as part of his presidential fantasies.  But the scores of students continued to drift downward compared with the rest of the country.  The same failed formula appears headed for another heavy investment this year, as teachers' salaries, with much less accountability than before, are about to go up.

Higher education continued to supply New Mexico with unneeded social workers, two-year nursing graduates, and criminal justice majors, and recruitment of the largest (and under-educated) ethnic group in the state--hispanos--into higher education was not enough to move the needle.  Young people voted with their feet and a brain-drain began as our higher education institutions were no longer among the best in the surrounding states.  The proportion of persons in New Mexico with PhDs continued to drop, as older or retired New Mexicans who already had them were simply not replaced by younger cohorts.  By 2016 Mississippians could for once say, "thank God for New Mexico," as quality of life measures here continued to decline.  In spite of the rapidly unfolding global political environment, there seems to be no movement today to make our higher education institutions more responsive to statewide needs.

The global edifice created by the finest generation in the 1950s is under severe assault from China, Russia, and major sections of Europe, and by the most serious internal divisions since the Civil War.  While talking about our decline as a global power is still a taboo subject (it should not be), our internal divisions are fueled gleefully by our corporate-driven media institutions, which now include Facebook and other high-tech money-makers as well as Fox, CNN, and MSNBC.  To make matters even more complicated, the global pandemic has underscored weaknesses in US occupational structures in low- or medium-skilled occupations such as farming, meatpacking, tourism, construction, and sales.  All of these issues are relevant to New Mexico, which has wallowed in recent decades precisely in these sectors.

After squandering an entire generation of possibilities for the state in the now-defunct New Global Economy, this would seem like an appropriate moment for New Mexicans to have an honest conversation about our economic possibilities in the forseeable future, and to make plans to adjust to the new, harsh, realities we face as a nation.  A nation can be sloppy about things when it sits on top of the global pyramid and can create the rules of the game for others to  play.  There are serious advantages to being Numero Uno.  But when the Top Dog starts slipping these advantages quickly disappear.  The US is in that "quickly disappearing" phase, and New Mexicans need to think clearly about how to adjust.

I will offer some suggestions about moving forward, but this conversation should involve all sectors of our society, including the poor, the rural forgotten, and each of our different regions.  Gerrymandering the East Side into three separate congressional districts, as our legislative and executive branches did two months ago, was not a step in that direction.  If New Mexico as an organized state is to have any future meaning, we need to work together.