In: General

Barack Obama on the Economy

Today president elect Obama made his views and plans for the economy known in a press conference. I have to say I’m presently surprised that it all seems to make sense.

Now before I get “you’re not even an American” comments. No I’m not, however my wife is, my cats and all my possessions are in the US and I consider it my home, I feel I have the right to comment. So there.

I have said all along, since the beginning of this whole economic debacle, that, if companies are going under because they either are a) already in debt or b) have horribly bad management, that we should let them go.  Some companies are so tightly entwined within the country that their demise would cause catastrophic meltdown, yes. But these are a very small minority. And that’s a whole other issue.
Why should we let them go under? Simple and already stated: they were either already failing or were terribly managed. That is the type of company we do not need.

So if we’re not saving the old, what do we do?

Save the new.
Think about the future and the people who’ll live in it. Work with them, listen to them, help them. Most importantly don’t alienate them. If the new coming through just see old out of date systems, systems that wont embrace them or help their new ideas flourish, we’ll lose them.
That means we need more money to technology, science, space and to keep those resources ‘in-house’.  That also means biting the bullet by taking some of that money you were going to use to prop up failing business and giving it to people with ideas.
The old systems don’t work, I’ve seen many examples of that in my own lifetime – and I’m only thirty.  So if they don’t work, stop listening to the people who say they need fixing. Start listening to the people who give you new, imaginative, ideas.

Improve infrastructure.
Providing for new and future businesses is one thing, but what about the huge manufacturing worker base we have out of work?  The administration should, as was done in the depression, start and start quickly to improve existing infrastructure and build new better projects for future generations.
These new public projects should, as far as is possible, be only staffed by skilled out of work people. The sheer amount of manufacturing jobs lost over the last year shows just how much of a workforce is available to such projects. And from some of the events over the last few years it’s clear that the US could do with an infrastructure update. Hell the US is one place that does need a high speed link right across it. I’m not even going to go into what that would do to slow the coastal migration.

Moving swiftly back to my main point: Obama made sense.
He talked about creating jobs, my guess is those will come from public projects. More importantly he talked about money for technology and science projects. Such projects should help provide for the countries future, while keeping its upcoming talent within the US.

The thing America, and all countries of this planet, has to do now is think about the future. Where do we go and what do we do. Forget about fixing old antiquated systems. Let the chaff fall away and build a better system.

Evolution does this all the time.

Posted: Thursday, January 8th, 2009
Tags: economy, future, infrastructure, jobs, obama