On the door of a kindergarten classroom in Juneau, I saw a sign that read “Graduating Class of 2025.” What will 2025 be like? I don’t know. But as a school board member, I consider it a sacred public trust to prepare our kids for it.

Much has been written about the investment required to attract development of our natural resources. But very little has been written about the investment required to develop our most important natural resource — Alaska’s young people.

The migration of women from the workforce into business ownership is one of the great economic realizations of the American Dream. The U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce has grown to more than 500,000 members. Most of our members are small business owners. And we aren’t opposing an increase in the minimum wage – we’re supporting it.

How the Norwegians have become wealthy from their North Sea oil fields deserves further attention in the current legislative debate about Alaska’s oil industry taxation. I’m impressed with how large Norway’s national oil revenues “savings account” has become when compared to ours. I did some limited homework about Norway‘s oil history by searching the Wikipedia (the free on-line encyclopedia) and I’d welcome some expert answers to the following questions:

Congress has cut the annual federal deficit by 49 percent since 2009. Congress and the President have cut $4 trillion from the projected federal debt since Obama took office. Yet Alaska’s state operating and capital budgets have exploded over the same time period. And, we’ve stopped making payments into the state Budgetary Reserve. The biggest untold story of the last four years is that the federal government is making progress to reduce deficits and the debt while Alaska’s Governor and state Legislature has lost all sense of fiscal restraint.