Author Douglass Rushkoff blogged at The Huffington Post on Why Johnny Can't Program.  His title is, of course, a glom of Rudolf Flesch's book Why Johhny Can't Read.  Flesch published that book in 1955 and followed almost thirty years later with Why Johnny Still Can't Read: A New Look At The Scandal Of Our Schools.  Now over fifty years after the first book, with the cost per public school student skyrocketing, the problem Flesch described has worsened, not improved.

The answers to the can't read and can't program quesions are similar.  In both cases powerful lobbies exist which have steered government decisions in disasterous directions.  Johnny can't read because the National Education Association - by far the largest, most powerful union in America - puts its own interests above those of the student.

Johnny can't program because the moguls of the digital age are greedy.

Between 2000 and 2005 - at the request of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and their running buddies - Congress bumped the H-1B quota from 65,000/year to 250,000.  2000 also marked the bursting of the dot com bubble, the completion of Y2K-induced migrations to package software, and the first wave of outsourced overseas software development.  The combined effect of contraction in demand and expansion in supply was just what the Gates/Ellison crowd wanted - the cost of hiring a software developer in the US dropped precipitously.

But people aren't stupid.  Why would anyone sign up for a computer science degree when - at least in America - it's a profession in decline?  So interest in computer science and software development ground almost to a halt.

Lest anyone think I'm anti-immigrant; nothing could be further from the truth.  I wouldn't be an American but for immigration and likely you wouldn't either.  And I greatly enjoy the variety of cultures and traditions brought in by the various immigrant populations.  I'm hardly anti-immigration.

What I am against is the rich and powerful using their influence to shape policies to take advantage of the rest of us.  It's a problem as old as human society, but the US Congress is supposed to thwart it, not facilitate it.