New Detroit bailout plan

[catchacab]

Our country is in this predicament for a number of reasons:

 

1. There has been a dramatic change in our culture. 

      a.  People would generally stay with their employer for a very long time.  In recent time, everyone is always looking for the better job or company.   Today everyone has to have the best of everything: exotic vacations, expensive cars, large houses, TVs, Home Theater systems, clothes, jewelry, and expensive meals.  Today we all must live like moguls.  We used to be happy, with just living within our means.

       b.  Corporations would make decisions based on long term projections and expectations.  They invested their company's resources back into the company.  Today, executives are looking to maximize this quarters profit.  Get the result today, we will worry about the next decade when we get there.

       c  Years ago, when some one bought a stock they would receive a stock certificate and keep that stock until they needed the money for retirement, education, illness, etc.  Today, stocks are traded like we traded Baseball cards in elementary school.

 

2.  We have exported our industrial base.  It is our industrial base that enabled us to win WWII, and become the dominant power in the world, economically, militarily, and politically.

     a. Unions were necessary when there were not laws that mandated worker protections and practices. Today, in my opinion, many unions are there to support the union, not the worker.  Many unions have made demands that resulted in manufacturers being unable to profit while using union labor.  Why with a wonderful convention center does Philadelphia not attract many large conventions?  It is the union contracts and ridiculous work rules that steer convention planners elsewhere.  The day of the union's purpose as an organization that protects workers is over.

     b. Environmental laws have made doing business cost prohibitive in our country for some businesses.

3. Our government has become grossly inefficient and too large.  It has also ignored the country's infrastructure, and has not fostered long term planning, failed our education system, and caters to a small vocal minority of special interests.

In the past two decades we have artificially inflated stock prices, home prices, and land prices.  The time has come where the economy is adjusting prices to realistic levels.  We have avoided truly bad economic times for 27 years, through means that would for the short term, improve the economy.  However, we are at the end of usefulness of these artificial means (adjusting the money supply, stimulus checks and interest rates). 

OPEC is not our friend, the manipulation of oil prices has contributed to this crisis.

So how do we fix this situation:

1. Create an environment that fosters manufacturing and export.

2. Repair, improve and properly maintain our infrastructure.

3. Make education a priority.  We need the world's next Einstein or Edison to be an American.  American ingenuity with our industrial base will again make us the greatest and most powerful country in the world.

4. The government must give up the idea that they can support all senior citizens through Social Security and Medicaid.  Limits must be placed on the dollars that are spent on the health of our non-working members of our society.  No one wants their parent or grandparent denied medical treatment based on expense, but we only have so many dollars, and we need to invest those dollars on those who will lead, and produce the future of our country.  Our priority must be on the young!

5. Create alternative energy technology, and make it affordable to all Americans.  Today even with tax credit and the limited grant programs, alternative energy (solar especially) is more expensive for the consumer than fossil fuels.  Larger tax credits and improved and larger grant programs must be instituted to allow for more citizens to be able to afford these technologies, and in the end reduce the per unit costs of these technologies, and simultaneously eliminating our need to import energy.  These programs should also be available to business.

6. Reward those who invest for the long term.  Create capital gains exemptions for those who invest funds with out reallocating them.  If you buy stock X and keep it for 10 years then you will be exempt from taxes on those gains.  If you sell a stock that you own for less than 10 years, then you will be taxed (This applies for corporations also).

7. Learn to live with in our means!

8. Pay executives based on long term performance, not how profitable the company was this quarter.

9. Demand excellence and productivity from all workers (from the lowest level to the CEO)

10. Reduce the size of government, and hold those who have government jobs to the standards of the private sector.

11. Outlaw out sourcing and short term short term labor.

12. Reform our legal/court system.  Reduce annual law school class size by 75%.

The time has come for us as a nation to stop pushing paper, now we come to the end of the paper pushing economy, it is time for us to push steel, composites, energy and technology just to name a few.

Let the poorly managed companies fail.  Take the best and brightest our country has to offer and reinvent our failed industries.  Think outside of the box!  Don't be happy with the status quo, improve upon everything you see.  Become involved!

This is just the beginning........