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| What is the next president supposed to do? |
| Monday, February 11, 2008 |
This election is extremely significant. The previous two elections were extremely significant. The jury need s to remain out on the quality of the decisions that were made by the Bush administration and certainly book after book will be written about the man and his time in office. The authors however should wait until they can see the results of the his work. But, since they won't neither will I.
Overall, this administration has made many decision that to me seem to be non-sensible and the stated logic for those decision often does not seem to match with my personal review of the situation. Nonetheless, there is good that can be taken out of this experience. The level of discomfort that many are feeling now will hopefully stimulate the general population to make serious changes to how we live, work, and educate ourselves.
It is troubling to see an economic stimulus package designed to encourage more spending and considering how much the average family purchases from producers abroad. This planned stimulus and the disturbingly low interest rates creating "free money" seems like a flawed strategy for anything other than delaying the slowdown in growth and allowing large investors more time to survey the landscaped and select a new asset location strategy. For most folks, they will still be left holding the same bags they presently have.
It would seem that the next president will need to do a lot of work to get the economy back together, but there are some factors that are really out of there control. This time around we definitely need an administration with strong management skills and it would be nice, if folks went ahead a voted for their best interest as opposed to against it. It is mind boggling social conservatives (nationalist and patriots) and seem to line up in droves to vote for candidates that liberalize the market in ways that place there jobs, cultures, and lifestyles more at risk.
So, in this election season we will have a choice between socialist policies that encourage the development of a welfare state and corporatist policies that without a doubt will encourage capital formation -although the benefits of the increased capitalization will continue to move abroad faster than they stay at home.
McCain and Romney spent time in Michigan telling the prospective voters there about how each would bring the auto industry jobs back to Detroit and restore it as the center of the automotive universe. This is the equivalent of a farce. It is possible that jobs will return to Michigan, but it is unlikely that they will be able to return those jobs to the state without developing some isolationist policies and damaging the US ability to export.
There has been a huge amount of job loss, by percentage of population, in trades and manufacturing over the last 30 years, the same way there was loss in the percentage of the population employed in agriculture to manufacturing before. The reason those jobs left agriculture was because of technology and reason there is diminished opportunity for lathe operators and item sorters is also because of technology. Those who were educated and those who choose to become educated in the new technologies (of which there are many) have the ability to benefit from any change in the market. There is probably more opportunity overall on the table today than there ever was before, however, many people are left out of the employment process and unable to secure high paying jobs because of the overall shift in what constitutes a high paying job.
Welders and mechanics can still earn excellent money as long they work in areas where it is critical that they be on site to perform the work. There is still a demand for trades work, but people have to be willing to move to where the work is and it is not in the auto industry in the US, because the companies have to pay too much for the employee. The unions in many cases receive much of what they asked for and a result there members find themselves out of a job. They bargained themselves out of position to negotiate in many cases, because the union focus, typically raised the costs of the employer and the increase in price acted as a wedge between the employer and the consumer.
On McCain's elect me for president website, he presents an economic stimulus plan the is focused around cutting taxes, he also has a position page regarding education. Now, it would be unfair of me to suggest by visiting these two pages one could come to an easy conclusion about the feasibility of the plans, so I won't and encourage everyone to visit the site of all the remaining candidates and draw there own conclusions. It would be nice though to see education as the central component of the economic stimulus plan, because the money will be spent and lost to inflation, but education continue to keep paying dividends for everyone. Jobs are not going to China, India, and Korea simply because the people work cheap. The jobs are going to where the brains are and apparently other countries have found that it is not nearly as expensive as American think to raise a brain.
In any case I am not fan of McCain and it is extremely difficult for me to understand how he came out of the pack ahead. The field of Republican appeared strong initially, but the more I watched the weaker they seemed. The candidates the appeared to represent the best of conservatism - Tancredo, Paul, and Hunter were consistently considered outsiders when they represented some of the better ideas in the campaign. The folding of Romney (who looked extremely presidential) as he attempted to morph into a new form and be the values and family candidate that should be support by the Christian right was quite sad. By the end he seemed to be dishonest. It would have been better to seem him run as an Independent on the same platform that allowed him to gain the governorship of Massachussetts. The economy is a much bigger issue than Iraq. The US could reasonably be out of Iraq and still secure in less than year, however, an economy left untended or allowed to forced to overheat by pumping unearned money into the system will be a problem 20 to 30 years down the road.
The Paul campaign was very enjoyable and he was the only straightest talker in the bunch. It is sad to watch candidates on stage pander and help us to become as stupider population. The fact is the country is more poorly informed as a consequence of the presentation of the candidates. In the amount of time that the major media source have flashed images before the US audience, the major networks could have provided American with one 2-hour programs per week on healthcare, how it works, and what it costs. So we could better understand the issue and what it means to change the current industry.
Well, that makes me think of the Democrats. they have problems as well. They talk about job creating and restoring the economy and energy independence, healthcare reform and and balanced budgets and it seems unlikely that too many of the goals (which are as poorly defined as the republican goals) will be met. There was so little difference between most of the candidates that the debate boiled down to nearly pure politics. By the end only the lawyers were left standing. With the exception of Edwards, one would imagine that the Obama and Clinton could have used the time to work across party line with other senators and get legislation started today. At least Biden and Dodd went back to work.
The greatest problems in this presidency may not have been the president. It seems that a great deal of the burden of responsibility to needs to rest on the shoulders of the senate. The senate failed to function in our best interest. And, now we get to choose among the Senators -- two of which were complicit in bringing us to the state that we are presently in. All they can say is give people money, give businesses money. They need to admit that the problem is with the American people and the ambition of the next generation.
to be continued....
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posted by Domesticated Dog @ 8:21 PM   |
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