At one time in my life, I worked for The Coca-Cola Company as a computer programmer. During a training course, we toured a bottling plant. I was amazed at the small number of workers needed to operate it.

Over the years, inventions from tractors to bottling machines to computers have revolutionized our ways of making a living. The days are long gone when most workers earned a living on a farm or in a factory. Even white collar jobs like paralegal work may be performed by computers.

Nothing in our postmodern lives presumes to take the place of parents for teaching life skills like self-discipline and curiosity, but our educational system bears the responsibility for teaching vocational skills.

Michael Moritz, a successful investor in many Silicon Valley enterprises, has donated much of his fortune to educational institutions. In an interview for Foreign Affairs (January/February 2015), he talks of government’s responsibility “to provide a fantastic educational system so that people have the skills and wherewithal to be able to make a living for themselves in a world where manual labor is no longer valued.”

Such education requires funding. Are we willing to pay for it? Or do we want to see more aimless, unemployed citizens? Your call.