This Is The Same 2008 Crisis
Don't get confused. This is the sane crisis. Everyone is trying to figure out if this is a repeat of 2008. It is not; it is a continuation. Our government, including both the Bush and Obama administrations, did a spectacular job of reacting and pulling us quickly out of the grasp of a depression. The reaction was so quick we did not notice we were in a depression.
This quick fix is now coming back to haunt us. Government is not focusing on a core issue needed to to solve the problem: job creation. It is like the world cannot handle two problems at once when in fact they are part of the same crisis. We need more jobs and we need to correct our over leveraged balance sheets. They are interdependent. One cannot be fixed without the other.
We need to fix the debt crisis; however; we have time. The Tea Party has done this country a big favor by waking us up to the problem. What we need to do now is to take a deep breath and develop a well thought out plan to overcome what we are facing. The time to plan is now and the plan includes a timetable for implementation
A major part of the deficit plan is job creation and economic growth.If we cannot put people back to productive work our debt problem will strangle us. This is no different than a household. If a family has insufficient income it cannot pay its debts. We can create productive jobs by investing in our future.
The world today is competitive as it has ever been. Geographic and political barriers that in the past allowed a country to be self contained no longer exist. If we don't meet the demands of the people of the world, some other country will. We have allot of investing to do in order to compete with the rest of the world. The time to do it is now.
Our leaders better start leading. As we are fighting among ourselves the rest of the world is snipping at our butt. The remainder of the country must learn from the Tea Party. All of us need to get involved and demand Washington do its job. If we sit back all we will have is politicians that are accountable to their big money contributors. .
For that lesson, thank you Tea Party, even though the big bucks of Murdoch, Koch and others have helped you along the way.
This quick fix is now coming back to haunt us. Government is not focusing on a core issue needed to to solve the problem: job creation. It is like the world cannot handle two problems at once when in fact they are part of the same crisis. We need more jobs and we need to correct our over leveraged balance sheets. They are interdependent. One cannot be fixed without the other.
We need to fix the debt crisis; however; we have time. The Tea Party has done this country a big favor by waking us up to the problem. What we need to do now is to take a deep breath and develop a well thought out plan to overcome what we are facing. The time to plan is now and the plan includes a timetable for implementation
A major part of the deficit plan is job creation and economic growth.If we cannot put people back to productive work our debt problem will strangle us. This is no different than a household. If a family has insufficient income it cannot pay its debts. We can create productive jobs by investing in our future.
The world today is competitive as it has ever been. Geographic and political barriers that in the past allowed a country to be self contained no longer exist. If we don't meet the demands of the people of the world, some other country will. We have allot of investing to do in order to compete with the rest of the world. The time to do it is now.
Our leaders better start leading. As we are fighting among ourselves the rest of the world is snipping at our butt. The remainder of the country must learn from the Tea Party. All of us need to get involved and demand Washington do its job. If we sit back all we will have is politicians that are accountable to their big money contributors. .
For that lesson, thank you Tea Party, even though the big bucks of Murdoch, Koch and others have helped you along the way.
Yes, clearly this is a continuation of 2008.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there seems to be a disconnect with the rest of your post.
On one side, you're thanking the Tea Party for the "wake-up" call on fiscal responsibility.
The Tea Party has done this country a big favor by waking us up to the problem...
On the other side you're asking for greater investment in order to make us competitive.
We have allot of investing to do in order to compete with the rest of the world...
But the Tea Party does not want to incur further deficits and it does not want to increase taxes. So where does the investment come from?
If we don't meet the demands of the people of the world, some other country will.
Right now, most of the unemployment is centered around the under-educated or low-skilled labour.
The US doesn't have millions of PhDs running around without a job. it has millions of people with low to mid-range skills running around.
The US has the highest quality of existence basically anywhere in the world. If we want to continue to be worth that, we have to justify this on an international scale.
So where do we put the high-school dropouts? The automotive spot-welders? The paperwork shufflers? The call center people?
Look at what happened to call centers. 10 years ago, they were "good" jobs. Then they got shipped to India until the salaries started getting too high for the quality. Now some of those jobs are moving back, but they pay less than they did 10 years ago.
And then, there aren't enough of these jobs. Even a call center job requires the type of skills you get from high school graduation and a couple of years of college.
So where do we put the high school dropouts? The people who can barely read this blog post?
What we need to do now is to take a deep breath and develop a well thought out plan to overcome what we are facing.
Agreed.
Any suggestions? How do we fund them?
Good Comments and I don't have all the answers, but here are some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteTea Part: We need to show them the wisdom of investing now. They are wrong on this point,; however,they did do the country a favor by awakening it to our deficit problem. They need to stop thinking of it as a "stimulus" and think of it as investments including: education, repairing infrastructure, demolishing vacant and dilapidated buildings, high speed internet similar to what Netherlands is doing, high speed rail where appropriate, upgrading airports, drilling for oil, alternative energy sources and others.
These things will need to be done sooner or later. Do them now and put Americans to work.
Education: This is the biggest problem and the biggest opportunity. There is no short-term solution. We have no greater resource than the minds of our citizens. In many cases we are wasting this resource and we need to be willing to invest time and money to solve it as best we can.
I sometimes think the country gets hung up with the fact that this is another citizen and they should want to do this themselves and it is not up to society to address the issue. This is myopic thinking. Everyone is not created equal and everyone does not have the same opportunity. Further, we should do it for selfish reasons just as we justify building a new road. We all will be better off for it.
I just proved I do not have all the answers. I do know we have things that need to get done and built and by doing this it will help reduce the deficit in the long run.
So I started jotting down ideas, starting with the easy stuff. Ideas and feedback welcome:
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