Mr. President if you really want to invest: Let’s go to Mars within a Decade!

                This might come across as glib, however under some basic analysis, it is far more sound than throwing money into the financial black hole of insolvent banks and attempting the stimulate the reckless consumption that got us in the mess to begin with. Why? America has not invested in new technology for a long time.  If we are going to spend like mad, let’s get something for it!  Let’s DO something. Let’s develop some stunning new technology and shock the world with our wizardry. Like the development of the internet and other advances resultant from military and NASA spending, it will pay long term dividends to all Americans. It will lay the foundation for long term American economic growth based on American technological supremacy.For those worried about the environment, I’m sure we’ll have to come up some new energy technology to make it out there and back.  Regarding our slipping in math and science, I can imagine that the huge number of jobs generated by this initiative will lead to an adjustment of majors away from marketing and philosophy towards the hard sciences.  The trickle down from this spending will be immense of long term benefit, and which is more, America needs it.The economic growth under George Bush was of fatty, consumption based sort that left America LESS competitive vis a vis our economic rivals. We built houses we could not afford, guzzled $4 cups of coffee and bought fairly worthless gizmos from China on borrowed money. This is not a virtuous economic cycle.  It’s junk food growth.   This Wednesday, on his first formal day as President, Barack Obama will convene his team of economic advisors to develop a plan to attack our paralyzed economy. Foremost among the problems they will discuss is the seizure of the credit markets and our broken banks. Putting aside the laudable principal that bankrupt institutions should be allowed to fail, we have “injected” hundreds of billions into our financial institutions so that they might once again lend.  THIS HAS NOT WORKED. We’ve already largely spent $700 Billion dollars of money borrowed from China. We have assumed these real liabilities and bought phantasmagorical assets in return.  In addition to encouraging this recklessness going forward, we are barreling down a road financial ruin.                 I am resigned that our government is going to drop us ever more deeply into debt for the moment, and we might need to prime the pump a bit, however we must NOT resign ourselves that this money should be squandered.                    Let’s go to Mars! It will be a stimulus plan that will keep on giving. At this time when America is under global pressure from every side, we need a new trick. We need some good old American ingenuity and boldness. This found fit the bill.                GoAmericaGo!

A Real American Recovery Plan

The time for window dressing is over. America needs a real recovery plan to avert long term economic misery and the rotting of the American Dream. From the federal government down to Mr and Mrs. Smith, the national directive is simple and urgent: Stop borrowing and consuming and start saving and investing!

Our national finances are beginning to look like the folks at the Friday night all-you-can eat, mid-night buffet special: grossly fat and unfit. It does not take a genius to recognize that debt and consumption lead to dependence and poverty while savings and investment, though much less immediately gratifying, lead to long term wealth and prosperity. It is true of nations and of individuals.  The obviousness of this requires no further explanation.

Despite the predictably dire repercussions, our nation is going deeper and deeper and deeper still into debt – soon we will reach the point of no return. All the while, we are told by our national leaders that we had better get used to the era of trillion dollar deficits.  It is simply disgusting – like a morbidly obese person supersizing a value meal – and we should not stand for it.

Our budget deficit alone, now estimated for 2009 at a staggering $1.2 trillion, is greater than the ENTIRE budget George Bush senior submitted to Congress twenty years ago ($1.16T) Think about that for a moment.  In the span of just twenty years, we run a deficit alone as high as what used to keep our entire government in operation.

The long term impact of all this debt and consumption will be effective national bankruptcy and a fire sale of American assets to our creditors. It really is that simple. When you borrow beyond your ability to pay, you go broke, and the bank (in our case China) takes everything you own. In effect, the Americans, in a staggering act of gross negligence and fickle indulgence, are selling their children and grandchildren into financial serfdom to Chinese masters.

Now, to delay the pain of having bought more than we could not afford for too long, we are borrowing money from future growth and gobbling it up now. Now, some might argue that we do not have a choice – and they are simply wrong. We do have a choice, and we are choosing poorly.

Yet we still have a window of opportunity, although it is closing quickly, to break free of our addiction to buying and borrowing – and here are a few steps to break free from the spiral.

1)      National Sales Tax (NST): The government should tax only what people spend, not what people make. This will strongly encourage savings, and can be used on investment in new technologies that will keep America ahead for another generation. The needy will be exempted from paying the NST.

2)      End Imperialism: Putting aside that we should have never gone into Iraq in the first place, despite a million-man army on paper, we are straining mightily to maintain less than 170,000 troops to Iraq. This is called imperial overstretch: too many troops garrisoning bases around the world. We can ill afford our world-wide military operations – and it return we purchase the perception that we are greedy imperialists.  This is unwise, unsustaintable and actually undermines American power and prestige. If Russia and China start acting up - all the better – the free world will need us again, and we will have harbored the strength to put them in their place.

3)      Make things again: China alone owns more than $2 trillion of our dollars. The rest of the world owns another $3 trillion. These dollars can come home and be redeemed in the form of goods and services made by us or they can actually BUY our means of production. I prefer we sell them high technology made in the USA. The government should actively seek to deunionize all manufacturing and export businesses and allow the union bosses over to Wall Mart and the retailers who sell all the imported baubles instead.

4)       Focus on Hard Sciences:  All government aid to higher education should be focused on math and the sciences. America does not need more philosophy, marketing or psychology majors. We need people who can answer precise questions and help advance our technologies, our children can contemplate the meaning of life later.5)      Renew the concept of Personal Responsibility:  Though this is listed last, it is actually the most important. To achieve the critical steps outlined above, personal responsibility and grit will be required more than anything else.  We the people must lead in our own lives, we cannot be national of consumption crazy debtors and expect our government to reflect something different. To get out of this mess will take a long time; we will need to live below our means for a while to pay for living above them for so long. We will need to feel some pain, but without it, there will be no gain.  

In conclusion, many will reflect that the above is impossible, and that America must cozy up to decline.  These people should go to Europe for an extended vacation. They will feel right at home. If Americans do not force discipline and common sense upon our fat, bloated and incompetent government, the naysayers will have been proven right.

We are a strong nation, and, despite all our worries, nobody even comes close.  We have all the means at our disposal to reclaim our future and our freedom for both are at stake. Let us demonstrate the will to right our nation and ourselves, and let us make this the Second American Century!  

 

Go, America, Go!