I’ve been pondering how to resolve the mess we’ve made and I’ve come up with some ideas. This is not a complete vision, but a plan that would get us on the right track.
Stop lending tax payer money to banks and use funds to help our economy.
Incentives for small businesses and young people to help the next generation have opportunities and education.
Regulate financial institutions so they cannot ever use leverage to manipulate the economy.
Use any stimulus packages to create jobs here in the US to make sure we have a strong future.
Focus on green energy / energy independence so we can stop exporting our wealth. Invest in solar/wind/geothermal energy infrastructure and natural gas for transportation.
Reinvigorate our manufacturing of basic items to support the new infrastructure. Revive the “rust belt” so many can regain their livelihood supporting America’s new economy.
Create other jobs by upgrading both schools and the Internet to increase the capacity and usability here and abroad. At the same time provide protection for the US Internet from attacks originating from foreign nations. Schools would benefit with a computer in every classroom that has direct access to limitless amounts of information (without the games, porn and other nonsense).
Clawback bonuses and other frivolous expenses from banks and/or bank executives that have received any tax payer money that then issued bonuses, stock options, vacations, etc. Cease projects such as Citi stadium and others that are essentially funded by tax payer funds and start bidding process to public interests (that are not being bailed out) to buy out projects.
Slowly withdraw troops from various active and inactive war zones (Iraq, Japan, Germany, UK, eastern Europe, etc). Shut down inactive bases. Reduce scale of missile program in Europe if not completely eliminate. Stop all unnecessary offensive military spending. Examine relationships between government agencies and contractors.
Create higher quality restrictions on imports and natively produced products such as food, clothing, electronics, etc. The quality would be defined as how harmless it is to both the consumer and the environment. Higher quality products would be subject to less tariffs or taxes. This would both reduce environmental burden of bad products by making them more expensive and provide incentive to companies to improve their manufacturing / farming / etc standards.
Stop the boom bust cycles by allowing open governance by markets or otherwise of interest rates rather than allowing them to be set by committees behind closed doors.
American ingenuity and common sense can get us out of this mess eventually, but if we keep using lemon socialism that rewards the corporations that succeed and robs the tax payers for the ones that don’t, we’ll be in a very long recession.