OK - It's been a month since I last blogged, and I'm bothered by what I am seeing in America. No, I'm not going to talk about issues such as abortion, "gay marriage", or the war in the Mideast. But I will discuss something important to me - America's lack of seriousness about preparing for its future.
Years ago, we had an elite that practiced a form of chivalry. Couple this with "the Protestant Work Ethic", and America had a recipe for success. The elite considered itself fortunate to be in its position, and didn't try to extract the last penny of wealth from the less fortunate. Today, many in our elite feel that they have no responsibility to those less fortunate than themselves - they extract every penny of wealth and expect that the golden goose will keep laying eggs.
America has made a big mistake. We have pursued the mantra that cheaper is better. So we cut costs by using cheaper labor - and quality suffers. Over time, we no longer have the money to buy slightly lesser cost goods with lower quality, as workers can not amortize the expense of a good education. Does this make sense? Trying to remove all the slack from the system has made us all poorer in one way or another.
We are moving into an age where knowledge workers won't just be those who manipulate abstract ideas. But it will include those workers who know how to design physical processes, and the products that result from those processes. And yet, we do an extremely poor job of educating those future workers because we assume that we can fix our schools in isolation from the rest of society's ills.
Take a disadvantaged family (either from a rural area or an urban area) and you'll find people who often have poor communications skills, poor education, poor social skills and behavior, and are barely one step ahead of the creditors (if they are that lucky). How can we expect to educate the children from these communities if we don't take care of the problems affecting the family?
Should government be the employer of last resort? Progressives will answer YES, while conservatives answer NO. But, when businesses ask the government for help, shouldn't that help come with strings attached? Why should we have bailed out the banks, unless they could find work for a given number of unemployed people?
What about health care? If we want to get the government out of mandating health care insurance, shouldn't we relieve the hospitals of the responsibility of providing emergency care to the indigent? This would provide the market force check and balance to hospital prices that conservatives claim they want. If we consider health care as a right, shouldn't we make this a government function - and go further than Obamacare has done? Let's have an honest discussion of these issues, and stop shouting partisan rhetoric which drowns out serious talk.
Of course, we have an extreme debt problem in both state and federal governments. I expect to see the states (most of them) go bankrupt in all but name, and be bailed out by Uncle Sam. But will the federal government take to the printing press? I hope not. But when the public is polled, they refuse to allow defense or social welfare (including social security and medicare) to be cut. Does it make sense to cut grandpa's blood pressure medication to allow your daughter to live life without paying the debts of two or three generations of deadbeats? Does it make sense to cut G.I. Joe's ammunition ration, and have him come home in a body bag? Of course not! But what do we do? Again, we need honest communication which is not happening.
So it's no wonder why the Tea Party movement is gaining in popularity. But they do not have enough focus to get things to change. They need real solutions, not rhetoric. Give me examples of social spending changes and defense budget changes they propose before we take them seriously. Yet, the Tea Party movement is valuable simply because it upsets the apple cart of politics. The thought of them winning brings an old Wile E. Cyote/Roadrunner cartton to mind - where Wile E. catches the Roadrunner. Below the scene (where Wile E. is holding the Roadrunner's leg) is the statement: "You've always wanted this. Now, what do we do?????"
