What Needs to Change

We must, as during World War II, return to a state controlled economy to stabilize a situation that’s rapidly hurtling into something worse than the Great Depression. The stakes are in fact much higher than they were then; America has a lot more to lose. An aging population, high debt levels, and a more competitive international environment all conspire to make our prospects dire, if a free market solution is allowed.
Let me be frank, this is about maintaining US supremacy, not about ideology, fairness or economic theory. Once a national emergency is declared, the American economy will have to completely re-made. It’s relatively clear the changes that need to be made. Our economy is far too reliant on finance and consumption, and our manufacturing base is negligently enfeebled. But how can America be a manufacturing nation again? How can we compete with the likes of China and India with their far lower cost structure?
America has in the past and could in the future compete effectively, while still paying higher wages. The keys to this golden path are achievable. Making better products, making more innovative products, and most importantly emphasizing technology in every aspect from concept to ultimate delivery. Ford, in its heyday, paid far higher wages than the average wage and competed effectively because their overall production system was more advanced, more productive and produced better products.
America needs to return to this ideal. How can we? It seems hopeless in some ways, but it needs to start from the ground up. For far too long, an irrationally high percentage of wealth in this country has passed to the most wealthy and to wasteful government spending. The technical reasons are numerous – from the tax structure, to the types of businesses that have benefited from the past irrationality, to an overly aggressive foreign policy, and so on – but the justification for their perpetuated existence are both a sort of intellectually dishonest. As to the wealthy, it’s a sense of fairness and social Darwinism; with wasteful government spending, it’s a failure on too many fronts to succinctly describe.
But in other words, those with the most worked the hardest, are the most productive, and deserve the fruits of their accomplishments. While this may be a true statement – its utterance at present ignores a foundational element needed for it to be true now. It assumes that the amount of money distributed by our economy for each person’s contribution is fair from the outset. To these people, any graduated taxation destroys the perfection of the free market system. When the free market system is functioning properly, perhaps they are right, however, it’s clear that it’s not right now.
Ignoring my digression, America needs to return to fundamentals. What are these fundamentals? The top three are (1) Education; (2) Stimulation of Technology; and (3) Decreased Military Expenditures.
Education should from the elementary to the graduate level be completely overhauled. Our present system dates to the early 1900’s and John Dewey. It’s dated and does not provide the skills our people need to succeed. What we give them now is a one-size fits all approach to education, without any really rational reason as to why they would ever need to know much of what they’re taught. As such, many of the students today don’t take their education seriously – because there’s not much there for them worth knowing.
I propose that elementary school be privatized. There’s simply no need for governmental standardization. Of course, some kind of net for the poor will have to be present. As for middle school, this system needs to be completely nationalized. At this point, by the end of that 3 year period, each student will be on a track, either basic, technical, scientific, or liberal. By high school, for the higher levels, college level courses could easily begin being taught. In our current miasma, with students of all types lumped together, the lowest common denominator leads to many years of education being a process of treading water for those more gifted. By college, students will be pursuing their practical degrees and entering the work force afterwards. Graduate school will become the exception as opposed to the norm that it has now unfortunately become.

More on Technology and the Military when I have time...