America is like an old dowager beset by dreams of her maiden days when she was
young and beautiful. Her closet is full of faded gowns of her youth, but
her present raiment is threadbare and decrepit. Only illusion keeps her from
seeing her own countenance as it is.
The content of our nation's closet, our infrastructure, is also decrepit. Our bridges and tunnels are collapsing. Our aging water supply systems break down and flood everywhere, and can't guarantee drinking quality. Highways designed for 1930's traffic are collapsing
under present day demands. School and municipal buildings everywhere are obsolete
and dangerous. Our state mental hospitals resemble the BEDLAM in English novels.
Our inter-city mass transit systems have almost disappeared. The National parks have
been allowed to deteriorate and state parks have closed for lack of personnel.
To renovate all of those would take money, lots of money, which we don't have,
and won't try to get by taxing those who can pay. So to address the problems would require us to go further into debt. Understanding the role of debt would be helpful
at this point.
Taking on debt which is used to acquire permanent and income producing assets is
not debt--it is investment. Debt used for non-productive purposes such as wars,
pork projects, a bloated military, huge salaries and bonuses for executives of
failed enterprises which were bailed out by public borrowed money, is destructive.
It depreciates the currency, weakens our ability to invest in productive projects
increases interest rates, and promotes inflation.
Suppose we were to embark on a massive public works project, similar to those
used during the great Depression, to put millions of unemployed to work restoring
our infrastructure. It would increase our public debt enormously but pay dividends in the form of wages, which would increase consumption and keep people in their homes.
It would translate into improved infrastructure and facilities thus increasing
efficiency and earning power. Just the savings in oil consumption alone would
make a big dent in our unproductive spending. Such debt would be INVESTMENT, repaying
itself over time. It would rejuvenate a dowager America.
If, along with that we were to rationalize the income tax laws and regulations,
and ask those at the peak on the income pyramid to accept a period of additional
marginal taxes, impose strict austerity on the bloated federal government, change
the reimbursement method for Medicare and Medicaid to rewarding outcomes, not procedures, withdrawing from foreign wars, slimming the military, within a decade
America could be in the black and ready for a new blossoming of the American Dream.
Do we still have the capacity to dream big?
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2 comments:
In the post “Renewing America” we read: “Suppose we were to embark on a massive public works projects…” . and immediately the failure of the Recovery Act of Feb 2009 comes to mind.
Our economy needed another WPA (Works Progress Administration) which within a year of its founding had put three and a half millions people to work. Alas, independent analysts conservatively attribute less than two million jobs to the Recovery Act when it would take eight million new jobs to reduce unemployment to pre-recession levels.
More money should have been given to local governments for infrastructure projects. It has been a mistake of the President and his economic team to believe that rapid job creation is best achieved by the private sector.
How about now using the money paid back by the Banks from their bailout toward creating new jobs for this summer construction season!
Jacques
Alas, any program that would help
the struggling middle class would be labeled by the Republicans as Socialist, un-American, and another gov't give away, and blocked.
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