When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed.
This is a value-added college education if I have heard one described. And what is the most remarkable about Delaware State University graduates - is they just keeping giving back.
We targeted five industries for growth, industries where we have natural advantages in North Dakota: value-added agriculture, advanced manufacturing, technology-based businesses, energy and tourism. We worked very hard to grow all those businesses, and that's what's happening.
One of the things that we're all struggling with is how to judge the quality of the value-added experience of an educational course or year. I don't think it's impossible to do that, but it's difficult.
Accountants, machinists, medical technicians, even software writers that write the software for 'machines' are being displaced without upscaled replacement jobs. Retrain, rehire into higher paying and value-added jobs? That may be the political myth of the modern era. There aren't enough of those jobs.
Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it's operating in.
But you take a four-year state college, with a broader range of admission, and what happens during those four years may be an even greater value-added educational experience. I don't know.