Morning Advantage: Why Business Can't Save America

From Jim Koch's Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream to Andrew Yang's Venture for America, there is a wave of initiatives focused on funding small businesses in the name of economic revival, job creation, and general social good. Indeed, writes Aaron Hurst in a Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, there is an increasingly popular perspective that supporting business is a charitable act. But here's the rub, Hurst says. While job creation is important, there is a much greater need for employee creation. By 2016, four out of ten jobs will require advanced education or training, and many hiring managers are already finding that the talent they need is hard to find. "If we want to see more Americans gainfully employed — not in jobs, but with living-wage careers," he writes, we need to invest more in the nonprofit sector and in government programs like our educational system to advance science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outcomes. STEM skills are marketable and will lead to sustained employment. While these investments don't create the short-term gains that business leaders have been trained to seek, they will create the supply of talent needed for our economy and society to thrive.

WHAT IT DON'T GET, I CAN'T USE

The Olympic Sports Where Money Matters the Most (The Atlantic)

In the Olympics, as in life, the rich get it all, writes Derek Thompson. The countries that bring home the most gold medals have historically been the countries with the most wealth. But which sports have the rich countries of the world particularly dominated? Goldman Sachs found the association between GDP and medals was strongest, by far, in cycling, followed by judo, rowing, and swimming.

AFTER ROBOT-DRIVEN CARS, WHATS LEFT?

Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt Square Off Over Google's Mound of Cash (Marginal Revolution)

In a conversation with Google's Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel argues that tech companies are sitting on so much cash because they don't know what to do with it. And Schmidt really has no response. An exchange worthy of reading for yourself.

BONUS BITS:

Actually, It Probably Will Be Televised

Don Tapscott: 7 Imperatives for Successful Business Revolutionaries (The Globe and Mail) A Roadmap to Combining Paid, Owned and Earned Media (Holtz Communication) An Inside View Of Corporate Responsibility (Fast Company)