Parenting & Family Quote by Jon Huntsman, Jr.

A politician reaches for the word "inexorably" when he wants to take something debatable and make it feel like physics. Huntsman is fusing two crowd-pleasers - jobs and kids - into a single causal chain: if you care about growth, you must care about schools; if you care about schools, you can justify spending as "investment" rather than "government". The line is engineered to be hard to oppose without sounding either anti-child or anti-prosperity.

The intent is coalition-building. Conservatives can hear "economic prosperity" and think competitiveness, productivity, a lean justification for reform. Moderates and liberals can hear "quality education" and think equity, funding, and opportunity. By binding them, Huntsman sidesteps the moral argument (education as a right) in favor of a market argument (education as the engine). Its subtext is mildly technocratic: the state should behave like a strategic planner, upgrading human capital to keep pace with global rivals.

Context matters because Huntsman is a pro-business, comparatively pragmatic Republican who’s often positioned as a counterpoint to culture-war theatrics. This line lets him talk about education without wading into partisan minefields like values curricula or teacher unions; it frames classrooms as infrastructure, not ideology. "For our children" supplies the emotional shield: any policy shift, test-based accountability, STEM emphasis, even budget reallocations can be cast as generational stewardship. The elegance is also the tell: by making the link "inexorable", it smooths over the messy truth that prosperity depends on wages, industrial policy, and bargaining power too - not just better schools.