Americans, in turn, are worried that Europe is not just stagnating but is on a trajectory of permanent decline -- with dire consequences for the entire Western world.
The most immediate way that New Mexico lawmakers can expand access to health care is by joining all the interstate compacts for health care workers, which would make it easier for health care professionals who are licensed in other states to care for patients here in New Mexico, including via telehealth.
For example, 18 years ago, I quit newspapers to help found New Mexico’s first online newspaper, the New Mexico Independent. A few years after that, I co-founded the state’s first digital nonprofit media outlet, New Mexico In Depth, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse.
During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Texas and Oklahoma farmers who lost everything headed west. Before they joined the great exodus to California chronicled by John Steinbeck in “Grapes of Wrath,” they were hoping to find work picking cotton in New Mexico or harvesting beets in Colorado.
Today New Mexicans, who buy gasoline as a needed fuel to get the kids to school, go to work, or to get their loved ones to a doctor, pay 17 cents per gallon on gasoline purchased.
In a study published earlier this year, we highlighted the fact that New Mexico was the only state in the US to have lost economic freedom since 1981. We now know that it is worse than we thought.
Distance education must be part of New Mexico’s education future, but only if programs meet or exceed state standards, operate transparently, and accept responsibility for results.
