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| Would You Want To Be President For The Next Eight Years? |
| Wednesday, February 20, 2008 |
I am really interested in finding out how other people feel about the prospects for the next eight years. Would you want to be president of the United States of America from 2009 to 2017?
I think that this is actually a very trying time coming up for whoever the next president is. Decisions need to be made and fights that will be had.
Iraq and Afghanistan:
There are currently two major active military theaters in the Middle East (Afghanistan and Iraq - for the Rip Van Winkles out there)? The US will either need to extricate itself from those matters or further entrench itself. Keep in mind, we still need oil (crude is presently over $100 weak dollars/barrel), the current vehicles on the road still burn on gasoline and cannot be replaced without the use of more credit, and the cars that are traded in will not be junked they will be sold to another market until they are useless - Which means the net change in carbon emissions in the near term would be minimal at best. Which candidate or party has really presented a viable transition plan that has positive economic consequences and also reduces "green house emissions".
If you happen to be one of those folks who believes that Saddam Hussein had a huge stash of WMD that were shipped to Syria or buried in a secret cave in Iraq, or, if you happen to believe that the greatest threat to American liberty is Al Quaeda, then you have even bigger problems. There is no indication that Osama has been found. If you can't find people or hit them with a bomb in their hideouts, you really can't say you have them on the run, because they could just as easily be standing right next to you. You will have to operate and run a command and control structure based on the absence of evidence as opposed to the presence of it, which essentially means that benchmarks and milestone are of no use, because the metric is based on the specter of the subject rather than on the subject itself.
Afghanistan and Iraq will in all likelihood remain natural resource based economies. These types of economies are not the hotbeds of invention and have a great deal of incentive to militarize and will always have suitor vying for their favor. There is much more conflict to have in these regions. The Middle East is still very much in the middle ages the same way much of the southern United States would still be quite happy to stand below the confederate flag. The governments in those countries are far from legitimate. There have been elections, but elections to not make legitimate government and apparently have not produced stable states. the unfortunate truth is that much of the region is of more value to most of the world without the people who live there being alive there. That is a sad truth. The business that will run and maintain the resource operations in those countries will be headquartered in other nations and the offices immediately in the country will be proxy offices.
So the next president needs to be able to accept the empire role and extend the influence of the United States or leave the resources in the hands of illegitimate rulers, who will trade the resources for weapons and arm themselves to the teeth as soon as possible to keep themselves from being invaded again. Which means that there will be incentive to raise the price of the valuable raw material and the shipping rights associated with them.
Additionally, Iran is a Shia state and now so is Iraq. The potential alliance there is quite probable, because the leaders of the nations (if Iraq continues to have these open elections where everyone votes for the own tribe and sect) sit on the same side of many cleavages and have many common perceived enemies (i.e. Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and all Muslims that are not Shias - for example the Saudis). These countries still have some bones to pick with Western Europe and the British and folks that will fight the same battles for hundreds of years like immortal Klingons, without a doubt remember the slights of the last century and the fact that the US was a supporter of the despot regime of Mr. Hussein.
This is a very complicated situation.
To make it more complex there is the issue of the US as a reserve currency, which is addressed in the next presidential problem.
The Weakened U.S. Dollar:
The US dollar is weaker and as long as the interest rates stay this low and as long as the public and private debt is not being rapidly retired, it will continue to get weaker. Those countries in the world that are building reserves of our currency have little incentive to continue acquiring it, which means that as they develop markets and trading partners that accept other currencies there will be more difficulty selling US treasuries abroad and, therefore, more difficulty retiring debt by issuing debt, which will accelerate the cycle.
This is probably a good reason to stay in Iraq. It would be pretty costly for Iraq (and to a much lesser degree Afghanistan) to switch to the Euro or the Yuan or even the Canadian Dollar, because these currencies have been better managed. The US Federal Reserve has spent the last 8 years, loosening credit when it should have been tightening the credit and letting the market perform or faulter as necessary to strengthen the integrity of the currency without issuing new debt. The recession is here and the next president should be honest and start preparing people for it.
The Healthcare Debate and Civil Rights:
So, we won the cold war and now we look more like a socialist police state than we we did before. Is the next best step to have a mandatory state healthcare system or some form of nationalized healthcare. This is a moral decision and an economical matter at the same time. What does the national healthcare have to do with the creation of new jobs. New jobs can be created where there are sweat shops. This is not to say that sweat shops are the way to go, but access to healthcare does not automatically equate to improving ones financial condition. The United States has a very large and old population and old people get sick and injured quite frequently - sometimes they even die.
The mortality rate of Americans between the ages of 5 and 60 are not incredibly high. People are receiving an adequate amount of healthcare, however, they want medicines and medical advantages and all of the advantages of the latest technology delivered to them at their convenience. Well, that is going to cost some money. Our current employment laws, the legacy of the unions, and the profiteering of the drug companies has made it has made it almost a no brainer for many industries to simply leave the US and go places where people don't ask for quite as much when you are giving them money for labor so that they can make there own decisions.
I do feel that quality affordable healthcare is what the nation needs and who wouldn't. The Democrats in the legislature and the executive branches have something to offset the galvanizing power of the social conservatives. Perhaps, Kerry should have rolled out a healthcare plan to help put him over the top with Bush in '04.
(I actually voted for Bush on 2000, figuring he was the lesser of the two evils and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell seemed to be like good common sense, nuts and bolts guys. Wow, what a disappointment. I really don;t have two many problems with many of the decisions that were made, but I do have a problem with backpedaling, revisionism, and lying. It is one thing to make a tough call it is another entirely to be dishonest. As long as "Rummy" is in the mix here, he gets a bad rap for what he has done to the military. The military did need to be modernized and streamlined and to be provided with new technologies to attack smaller targets. Be honest, are there really any big targets out there that have any reason to come across the Atlantic or the Pacific to get the asses handed to them. )
Nations in Space:
More devastating, in my mind than the prospect of nations developing nuclear missiles, is the prospect of militarized nations, whether they are nuclear states or not developing satellite technology. That is one of the great advantages that was in the possession of the Superpowers in the prior era. The ability to see into the heart of the enemy and launch any object that can travel with a degree of precision anywhere in the world is a a sophisticated technology. If you can put a satellite in space you can put anything in space and land it anywhere - it's after satellites that nukes get scary because anyone who can get satellites up can deliver their packages like the reaper.
Additionally, nations that can put satellites in space can conceivably attack or disable satellites that are in space and that (although we have a lot of satellites) represents the ability to diminish our strength in an are of key comparative advantage.
The Wave of Retirement:
The US is going to undergo an unprecedented wave of retirement and some of the most productive and highly educated people in our society will put it on ice. Meanwhile, our educational system is not replacing them in the categories that we will need them most and the savings are in the hands of the retirees, who will have a great deal of incentive not to spend to unwisely. Many seniors with investments that I know are investing out of the country, which means investing in jobs for people who who are not paying directly for their benefits. The entitlement spending already promised means that the next president will need to do more with less. This will cause less experience professional to advance rapidly into decision making positions, by default. That is not necessarily a good thing.
Education of the Next Generation:
Face it, pop stars, actors, athletes, and video game heroes are not the best role players and video games in particular have not proven to be the best exercise for the mind. The teachers have not been failing the students have been failing. The school district keep buying "new books" like that is going to solve the problem. For most subjects, the old books are just fine for developing the mind. There is almost no reason for a new math book to be published for K-12 students. The books that are available have all the questions that are needed to learn math. An explanation of how the government "is supposed to work" should be find from 10 years ago and an internet based class could be run to cover current events. The students are not learning the basics and, for that reason, are incapable of learning the advanced. The problem in education boils down to parents and students. Anyone who wants to learn can learn and parents who require their kids to learn are more likely to have kids that learn. It is not the job of the teacher to please the kid or the parents, it is the job of the teacher to FAIL KIDS THAT FAIL TO LEARN. The injury their young egos will take will be better than the ignorance they will be forced to endure, when they find out that there are less and less good jobs left for people who are stupid and mentally lazy.
The Crisis in Lending and Credit:
There are way to many credit cards and loans out there for people without assets. This encourage bankruptcy and resultingly underutilized capital. The will be empty strip malls piling up and homes getting boarded up, kids who need to, but can't afford to go to school and pursue the advanced degrees that we need to replace the retiring educated professional and specialists. This also works against the dollars and the secondary markets and makes it more difficult for people to relocate at a profit.
Immigration Reform:
Lou Dobbs love to talk about the war on the middle class. There is no reason for a middle class to exist, but uit is one of the things that made America a great country by being a consuming engine. Illegal immigrants are not an assault on the middle class, in fact they actually help to keep people in the middle class by taking the jobs at the bottom and forcing americans to get other jobs. Many of the jobs that illegal immigrants take actually pay fairly well. Better than Wal-Mart, because the immigrants are allowed to make what they are worth and are less inclined to sit in on place with no work. They will move to where the money is: call it common sense. Nonetheless, undocumented workers in the US do represent a problem that a has a very few real solutions - and most of them involve increase government intervention, which is typically something Republican abhor and Democrats love. The free market is speaking, there is a place in the economy for anyone who want to work at a fair rate (the cheaper the better, right?) This is what the next president needs to do:
- Secure the Border or Open It (Why lock us in if you won;t lock them out?)
- National Id Card or Reduce the Requirements for ID (so Americans get the advantage too)
- Amnesty or Deportation (anything that is not deportation is amnesty - let's have some straight talk.)
- Free Healthcare for All or Only for Undocumented Workers.
- Any program initiated will raise your taxes or cause you to lose something else that you need-- watch and see.
One advantage of the huge influx undocumented labor in the multilingualism this country is developing. the children of these immigrants will be be able to buy and sell product with people who live in other countries. This is good, trade is generally good. Hopefully, the countries we trade with send us some cheap medicine. |
posted by Domesticated Dog @ 9:32 PM   |
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