People ... human capital and the driver of progress

The most important asset on the planet is the human resource ... the people.

In many ways, the story of the USA is all about people having opportunity and working to build happiness and prosperity. American prosperity built on work and wealth creation, and not built on relief and development welfare. The opportunity to work ... the space to work ... made the success of the USA. Countries where there is little prosperity also are countries where people have not had economic opportunity ... and it is very difficult to break this cycle.

The future of poor communities will depend on how the people of the community can be integrated into surplus producing economic activities. If people can be organized to engage in surplus producing activities, there can be a paradigm shift in the profile of poverty and prosperity in these communities.

Most socio-economic planning is done around money budgets that aim to balance expenditures and funding available. This is part of the process, but the way the resources are used should be to optimize the impact on the society. It is imperative that relief and development includes everything needed to have surplus producing economic opportunity for the people

Community Analytics (CA) has the value of people central to socio-economic analysis. When a person is healthy and well educated the value of this person is high ... both to society and to him or herself. The value will be realized through surplus producing employment if the employment is available ... the value will be wasted if there is no employment.

The value of a person changes with education, with changes with an individual's health and changes with age. These changes are not simple and easy to quantify ... but what is clear is that the threesome of education, health and jobs together produce value that is way more just two. Relief and development that has a focus on health and education without the jobs component is going to be high cost and unsustainable.