It is all about jobs

 This is what we are up against:

We can't stimulate the economy for several reasons.

1. Banking and too much housing. 

2. Jobs are gone and there are no jobs to go to.

3. You cannot create jobs if jobs are going overseas.

4. 2 billion cheap laborers will put pressure on the middle class and jobs. 

5. The tax cuts was for the here and now and is spent money. The tax cuts do not have the stimulative effect that it had before.

6. We have had low interest rates for a long time, and the interest rates do not have the stimulative effect that it had before.

7. Supporting small business does not work in my town with factories closed down. You need traffic and employed people provided that traffic.

8. Putting tax cut money into the hands of the consumer does not have the effect that it once did, because half the products are made overseas.

9. What widgets can be built in America and not in China or some other country. 

10. The 50 year old generation will have a tough time to retrain as companies replaced them with automation.

11. We have not invested in our country, in our people, and in the future. 

12. We have seen ideology used by political parties to run the country and that is a failure. Again, you have to do what I said on number 11.

13. The politicians are controlled by interest groups and lobbyists and that leaves out the little guy.

14. Tons of mistakes through the years and the ignorance of what globalization/free trade is doing to our country.

15. There is no upward movement for the middle class, as we lost the jobs and the jobs that do exist pay lower wages and it is just one competitor against the other. There is no new industries to go to.

16. Companies have learned to have less employees through automation and lean management and lean principles. (one person doing the job of two or three people)

And here is what the country has to do:

1. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.

Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine? | NewAmerica.net

2. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.

3. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.

Hudson Institute > Promoting U.S. Worker Competitiveness in a Globalized Economy

4. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research. 

Is America Losing Its Mojo? | Print Article | Newsweek.com

5. Consider an "American job elimination tax" on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.

6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.

7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.

8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future. 

9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.

10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.

11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming. 

12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.

Home | Report Card for America's Infrastructure

13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.

14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.

PBS - STORE WARS: Sprawl

YouTube - Rocky Mountain PBS: What is Denver Living Streets?

15. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be a president for a couple of years. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.