Common man policies

This is a continuation of my "Achademiarchy" blog from a couple of days ago. When one considers the potential power that a politically unified academic community would have, one wonders what this group should do besides promote lower tuition costs and increased funding for the sciences and arts. Since the 1950s is been generally assumed that science itself has no place in making moral judgments. However, it'll be a cold day in hell before I let some arts students call the shots. Ok, so science can't make moral judgments, but there is nothing saying that scientists can't. After all, the statement that science shouldn't make moral judgments is itself a moral statement.
The first and most natural policy for this political group to make would be to support primary and secondary education as a tool to prepare students for University. But not everybody is university bound. Unfortunately, a lot of schools make the assumption that they should prepare everybody for university and therefore leave a lot of less academically inclined people without a skill set. I really think that technical schools should be supported by the academic group. Another reason why a lot of attention should be paid to non academics is that unfortunately, stupid people seem to comprise the majority demographic. It would be shortsighted for the acamemiarchy to seem elitist by ignoring the common man. I'm not saying that this group wouldn't be elitist. It's just not a very politically friendly appearance to keep up. Another measure to reach the common man would definitely involve measures to improve the economy. Frankly, a lot of money gets spent on totally useless things. For example five congressmen agreed to spend 86 billion dollars of taxpayer money to fund the war in Iraq. Independent auditors and efficiency experts could have been called in and a large portion of that could have been saved. For example, instead of Americans bringing in truck loads of bottled water, what they should have done was set up and water purification system that the Iraqi people could also use. This would go a long way to fostering peace and saving money. The Canadians in Afghanistan did that and only two Canadians have been killed by enemy forces (the other 4 were killed by friendly fire).
Another way to improve the economy is to instigate measures to lower the unemployment rate. The distribution of people in North America is not even with the distribution of jobs. In Canada, one often sees images of the shanty towns built in Vancouver and Toronto; monuments of poverty. These people have very little in the way of skilled training. That's Perfect! In Alberta and Saskatchewan unskilled labor is really needed. It doesn't take a genius to work on the Oil Patch or on a farm or ranch. People just flock to cities because they think that it's the place to be an that they will get hand outs. For the cost of feeding and sheltering the enormous homeless population, the federal or provincial governments could bus these people to sites of primary production and set them up with jobs and possibly even low income housing. Granted, this year the ranching community took a big hit from the closing of the US border to Canadian beef, but that won't last forever. The academic party could even start an advertising campain; a "go west young man" sort of thing. If this sort of thing were instituted in the US, unemployment rates would drop and other economic indicators such as consumer spending and the construction industry would rise. Hopefully this would stimulate a stronger US dollar.