What's on Your Agenda?

Martha Farnsworth Riche

Job: President
Org: Farnsworth Riche Associates
Place: Washington, DC

There's a new demographic reality changing the social and economic landscape: For the first time ever, the U.S. population has roughly equal numbers of people in each age bracket. Tectonic plates are shifting, and it's my job to warn the world about what that means.

In 1935, when the age for getting Social Security was set at 65, the average life expectancy was 59. If we adjusted for current life expectancy, the age of eligibility would be about 81 by now. One effect of this overall trend is that old ways of thinking won't work in the new consumer environment. In the past, businesses could assume that the preferences of 18-to-35-year-olds would drive their market. But people in older age groups are gaining rapidly in market power.

Politicians from both parties are absolutely horrified by this new reality. They think, We couldn't possibly raise the Social Security age. For me, appealing to businesses is easier, because I can focus on the bottom line; I can say, "Look, you're losing market share."

My challenge is to be clear about how I spend my time and energy. I'm in the early-warning business, not the implementation business. I need to get the right people to adopt my language. Change is happening faster than ever before, and we can't afford to let it just happen.

Martha Farnsworth Riche was director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1994 to 1998. Farnsworth Riche Associates is a demographics-consulting firm that she founded two years ago.

Angus S. King Jr.

Job: Governor
State: Maine
Place: Augusta, Maine

I want to make Maine the most digitally literate society on Earth. To get there, I'm focusing now on a very simple idea: Let's make a laptop available to every school kid in the state.

In terms of average personal income, Maine ranks in the bottom third of all states. So economic development is my main priority. Here's the good news: Thanks to the telecommunications revolution, your economic destiny is no longer determined by where you live -- and Maine has the advantage of being a wonderful place to live. But we need to push hard to create a great telecommunications infrastructure and a highly educated workforce. Incremental change isn't going to work for us.

Last year, I put forth a plan to distribute a laptop to every seventh-grader in Maine. This is digital equity with a vengeance: If you have a good education and access to the technology, you have an infinitely better chance of finding opportunity and good pay.

Selling such a dramatic proposal isn't easy. In fact, this is the greatest challenge that I've faced as governor. I've met with nearly every member of the legislature to build support for the idea, and now I'm talking to the public. Meanwhile, we have set up a technology task force, which has refined the idea: Instead of giving laptops to kids, the state would give them to schools, and kids would borrow them for the year, as if they were library books. The proposal is scheduled to come before the legislature this spring.

I'm working on other things too. Even as we focus on improving Maine's high-tech prospects, we're not giving up on our traditional economic base: blueberries, potatoes, lobsters, forest products, and so on. In fact, one ambition of mine is to hook the Chinese on blueberry muffins. If every person in China had a blueberry muffin every morning, we'd be in great shape.

Angus S. King Jr. (governor@state.me.us) is now serving his second four-year term in the Maine statehouse. Before entering politics, King founded Northeast Energy Management Inc., a company that developed energy-conservation projects.