“By 2040, the Chinese economy will be at $123 Trillion.  China’s share will be 40%, America’s share will be 14% and the European Union’s share will be 5%.”   – Robert Fogel, Nobel Peace Prize winner

Since the recession of 2008, there has been a new global war taking form.   If you were to query the billions that live on our planet what is the #1 thing they all want from their government leaders, the answer would be an economy that provided good jobs.   Everyone in the world wants a good job.

Today, the war for jobs around the globe has trumped all other leadership activities.  If countries fail at creating jobs, their societies fall apart. Countries, and cities will experience suffering, chaos, and eventual revolution.  This is the new world that leaders confront. This can be seen as much at city level as it is at the country level.  Look at post-recession Detroit, MI; or Cleveland, OH.

Photo Courtesy of CNN

Consider the recent “Occupy” Protest movements that sprung up in New York and major cities across America and the globe.  Basically these protests came down to jobs and the ability for folks to provide for their families, it came down to hope for the future.  The fact is the majority of people around the world want jobs.

This is a change from the past century, where the number one thing citizens expected from their leadership was food, shelter and security.  Today that number one desire is simply good jobs. These protest movements, which were for the most part peaceful, are just a sliver of what is to come for countries and cities whose leadership fails to understand this new economic reality and this new global war for jobs.   Folks around the world want and expect their leadership to make the right decisions, which allow for economic growth, job creation and stability in their countries, cities and communities. Take that away to a high degree and the recent “Occupy”  protest movements will seem like a walk in the park and instead government leaders may experience widespread havoc, violent protests and even attempts at overthrowing their entire government leadership.  Similar to what we have witnessed recently in many of the Arab countries, like Egypt, Syria, Libya, where entire government leadership was forcibly thrown out.  Or Spain, where youth unemployment is also rampant.

This new leadership problem faced by many countries, including America, is stemming from an increasing number of people in various cities and around the entire globe that are miserable, suffering, and are dangerously unhappy because they have a dismal future and no sight of a job or hope.

Joblessness is the core drive for national hopelessness.

Photo Courtesy of Mario Tama/ Getty Images

Take away a person’s hope for the future and you risk revolution and revolt, violence and chaos.  And if this happens to a collective high number of people in any given city, state or country, government leadership will likely be changed through force or other means.

The global war for jobs is similar to WWII, where competing countries were fighting for, basically, world leadership.  But this new global war will not be won by military might, it will be won by jobs and GDP.

The global war for jobs (and GDP) will determine the leader of the Free World. 

Estimate for largest economies in 2050. Courtesy of PricewaterhouseCoopers study on January 2011

If the U.S. allows China or any other country to out compete it, out innovate it, out job create it, out GDP it, that changes everything. This is America’s next war for everything.  It is happening now and it will continue to unfold for the next 30 years.  By 2040, a winner of this war will be determined. Wherever the world’s most talented brains, entrepreneurs, and shakers-n-movers choose to migrate, is where economic empires will rise.  These explorers migrate to cities that maximize entrepreneurship opportunities, innovation and skill.  Areas like Silicon Valley, Seoul and Singapore have become colossal global successes in entrepreneurship and job creation.  When the talented explorers, entrepreneurs, adventurers of the next generation choose your city, or country, you become the “holy grail” of global leadership, attracting new brains, new talent, new entrepreneurs, thus job creation.

Note:  While 52% of Americans believe China has better economy than the U.S., this is mistaken.  The U.S. has the highest GDP in the world at $16 trillion (25% of the entire global GDP.)  China is still at $6 trillion (10% of global GDP.)  However the gap is closing fast.  While post recession U.S. GDP is growing at only 2%, China GDP is growing at 10%.

GDP is the biggest determining factor of future jobs,  tax base, brain gain/drain, spending and everything else, including future global leadership. If these growth rates did not change China would be the leader of the FREE WORLD in approximately 30 years, around the year 2040.

China will reign the Global GDP, without ever using its military.

The golden rule will then apply.  He who has the gold, rules the world.  And that will be the end of the great American Democracy.  History books will say it lasted from 1776 to 2040 and then it was overrun by Chinese “market-based” communism.

America will be overrun by China unless there is a big, bold economic miracle!  But there is a solution, one big, bold idea that will turn the tide for America, if acted upon right now.

We need to create more Entrepreneurs in America. Let me repeat that.  We need to create more Entrepreneurs in America. 

When there aren’t enough start-ups, or when too many small businesses (entrepreneurs) fail, job creation fails.  And when job creation fails, a country fails.  If you have an “undersupply” of Entrepreneurs in a country’s population, you will then have an undersupply of jobs. So, the question is, how do we create entrepreneurs and more jobs so that we can sustain our GDP growth and sustain our global leadership position?

 Very few Americans are aware that it is small businesses (Entrepreneurs) that create 75% of all new jobs, the other 25% is from medium sized companies.

Large corporations almost have ZERO contribution for new net job creation in America.  In fact most large corporations will actually continue to decline in any new net job creation as globalization continues to attract moving jobs overseas.  This trend will not reverse.

Entrepreneurship and invention, is what drove America to be the global leader in GDP in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.  This is the one blind spot that current economic models, politicians and government education leaders are overlooking, yet it is so obvious. If it’s jobs our country is looking for, America needs to create an Army of Entrepreneurs!

Entrepreneurs are responsible for 75% of all new job creation in America. Creating a new generation of Entrepreneurs will spark new products, services, new technologies, entire new industries, new exports, vastly increasing the growth rate of our current GDP, and this will also create new types of jobs and opportunities for America.

So how do we create a new Army of fresh minded Entrepreneurs across America on a massive scale, and thus more job creators, job creation, and save America from China? We need to create more Entrepreneurs.  And they’re sitting in our K-12 schools today.

We need to pave a way, a roadmap, in our K-12 public schools that creates hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new entrepreneurs by 2020.  We need a new curriculum that exposes them to the traits of Entrepreneurship, the option of Entrepreneurship, and the concept of Innovation.  We need to create a massive synergy of entrepreneurship and invention on a grand scale, and we need to do it NOW.

“If Entrepreneurship is the engine of our economy, creates jobs, determines GDP and puts food on tables, and ultimately determines global leadership, why aren’t we teaching it in our K-12 schools, as a required core curriculum, no different than Math, English or Science?” - Anthony Delmedico

Wake up America.

America will need 21 million new jobs added by 2020 in order to return to full employment, this is only going to happen by launching a massive entrepreneurial education effort in all American public schools immediately, or at a minimum by 2013.  We cannot afford to wait any longer.   This momentum and energy of new entrepreneurs will allow America to increase it’s GDP, winning the global war for jobs, sustain its role as the global leader, and put China in check.

This new, bold plan for Entrepreneurship Education has a name and a brand:  E2 (entrepreneurship education) as required core curriculum in our K-12 schools (4^th -12^th grade). Teaching E2 (entrepreneurship education) and exposing our youth to entrepreneurship activities starting in the 4^th grade and expanding to the 12^th grade will create generations of new Entrepreneurs across America and in full swing by the year 2020.   This new raw human and American burst of energy will spring thousands of new entrepreneurs, new products, new technologies and even entire new industries which will infuse our economy with 21 million new jobs by 2020, returning America to full employment.

The true momentum of this effort will be felt from 2020 to 2030, where America will experience growth to such a magnitude, I can only compare it to what America experienced during the Industrial Revolution, except we will call this the Entrepreneurial Revolution.

America retakes the World and the global war against China by taking our country’s entrepreneurship and innovation up several notches. Perhaps we’ll even experience exponential growth due to the immeasurable magic that will be unleashed in form of imagination and willpower from a new Army of Entrepreneurs across America.

Fact:  One of the toughest, most difficult, and scarce supplies of talent in the world to find is Entrepreneurship.

We simply do not have enough to fight in the coming global war.  In many schools, cities and communities around America, Entrepreneurship is still a mystery or “black box” to so many young adults and now millions of baby boomers exiting corporate America.

Fact: We have a “brain-drain” occurring on a massive level across American public schools and it is going to have profound effect on the future of America.

Yes we are getting dumber folks!  Financial literacy is actually worse today then it was 20 years ago.  In 1997, the average score on a 31-question financial literacy exam was 57%.  In 2008 the average score was 48%.  Surveys show that only 16 states require testing in economics and only 13 require a personal finance class.

The result?  Most high school seniors (adults) don’t know how to balance a checkbook, pay off debt, how to choose the right mortgage, many don’t how to financially fend for themselves.  Students around the globe are surpassing America students in many areas such as Math and Science.   And the often-ignored statistic is, most American students don’t even know what the word “entrepreneur” means.  And our country was founded on Entrepreneurship and the American Dream!

• Today’s twenty some-things hold an average debt of $45,000 which holds everything from credit card debt to student loans to mortgages.
• There are roughly 60 million students enrolled today in our K-12 school system (grades 4^th grade to 12^th grade).
• 30% of that 60 million will drop out before graduation.
• Roughly, 1.2M teens drop out of American schools annually, most drop out due to subject matter not being relevant to real life, which basically means they don’t have hope for the future.   75% our nation’s growing prison population are high school drop-outs.

They simply have not connected the dots.

E2 reduces teen drop out rates, thus reducing incarceration rates, and provides a path to the American Dream to all students regardless of a college degree.  Let’s face it, only 25% of all high school grads go on to earn a college degree. Some are not cut out for college academia, some simply cannot afford it.  Providing E2 will provide an alternative path to success, thus allowing students at a young age to truly “connect the dots”.

The picture doesn’t get much better for those that go on to pursue a college degree.  Today, there are 2.4 million college grads whom can’t find jobs in their fields of study.  They are broke, in debt and many are living back at home with good old mom and dad.  And they are pissed off.  Many participated in the recent “Occupy” protest movements across the country.

“As important as reading and math and social studies and science, I think today more than ever financial literacy has to be part of that. To continue to have a population that is relatively illiterate in these matters I think has real negative consequences to our democracy.We have a long way to go as a country. There has been a devastating cost to a lack of attention, urgency and seriousness of taking this on. “- Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the Presidential Advisory Council regarding K-12 Financial Literacy test results, noting that the recent housing crisis, low savings rate and poor retirement planning on all flow out of the financial literacy issue.

While world leaders and America’s leaders and politicians are spending and pouring billons of dollars into Innovation, they are “missing the boat” on creating and developing Entrepreneurs.

Secretary Duncan should have been more blunt and stated that America is experiencing a brain-drain on a massive level and our education system needs a complete overhaul. Our government is completely missing the boat that the Army of Entrepreneurs that America needs to save our future, create financial literate adults, and future generations of savvy innovative global competitors is sitting in our K-12 schools today.

Innovation without Entrepreneurs is like a bowl of cornflakes without the milk.  Not many folks would eat those dry cornflakes.  The rare value is the connection the Entrepreneur makes between innovation and the customer.

The Entrepreneurs create and drive the business model that allows that innovation or invention to reach the customer, which then creates sales and profit. America needs to create an Army of Entrepreneurs!

Case in point, Henry Ford. He didn’t actually invent the automobile.  He invented a better way to manufacture automobiles and sell automobiles to the middle class. Without Ford’s entrepreneurship, cars would be useless to most people. America needs an Army of Fords, Gates, Zuckerbergs, and Jobs today.  That Army is sitting in our K-12 schools today. America needs to focus on creating new generations of world-class Entrepreneurs.

It is interesting that an educational psychologist can rank an auditorium full of students on their ability to learn and get good grades with nearly 100% accuracy.   But they are clueless in how to rank those same students as successful entrepreneurs or how well any individual student would do in the world of Entrepreneurship.  While our education system has nailed the process for developing the best learners, America is still in the dark about how to cultivate the best entrepreneurs.  We have forgotten about teaching the thought process that drives innovation.

Thus, we have a massive “undersupply” of Entrepreneurs in America which is leading us to a massive undersupply of jobs, slower GDP growth and thus on track to lose our place as a global leader to China.

The only way for America to reverse this trend, this “brain-drain”, and launch an Army of Entrepreneurs that will win this new global war and save America’s future is to launch E2 (Entrepreneurship education) in our K-12 schools. Government leadership must require from the top down that entrepreneurship education become a required core curriculum in our (K12) public schools, a course no different than Math, English or Science. Teaching entrepreneurship education (E2) and exposing our youth to entrepreneurship activities starting in the 4^th grade and expanding to the 12^th grade will create an Army of new Entrepreneurs across America and this new Army will be in full swing by the year 2020.   This new raw human and American burst of energy will spring thousands of new entrepreneurs, new products, new technologies and even entire new industries, and will infuse our economy with 21 million new jobs by 2020.

The true momentum of this effort will be felt from 2020 to 2030, where America will experience growth to such a magnitude, I can only compare it to what America experienced during the Industrial Revolution, except we will call this the Entrepreneurial Revolution.

In summary then my friends, this is precisely why teaching kids entrepreneurship in our (K-12) public schools will ultimately determine the next global leader.

Wake up America!  Sign my E2 Petition for Entrepreneurship Education.  We can still make this a reality, but we must act now. Every signature matters! Your signature matters!  Repost and ask others to do the same.  Let’s do this!  America’s future is at stake.  Want to learn more? Click here for more information on the E2 Petition for Entrepreneurship Education or visit http://www.e2petition.com  

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