Maybe Now Is America's Time to Enter:

eNTER: 

The New-Technology Energy Race

America Needs to Focus on the severity of the “good jobs” issue in relation to America’s future. In a sense, the two sides of the political divide are like a couple of vicious canines, and the size of the bone that we are fighting over is shrinking dramatically.

This Is a Systemic Issue, in that none of the cures seem to be within the reach of corporations, and corporate competition makes it tremendously challenging for individuals or small groups to make the difference, even as we Americans, as a people, refuse to use our biggest tool—government—while what we are competing against is the entire economies of other nations.

The Speed with Which a Private Company (Whole Foods makes an excellent example) can grow and change things is not fast-enough in relation to what is going on in much of the rest of the world.

For Example, China is no longer really a “developing nation.” Given that their economy is poised to overtake America’s as the world’s largest, the Chinese are laughing at our idea of them as an under-developed nation.

And Other Parts of the World are taking back their American-educated citizens and putting them to work at home: in India, in the Middle East, in Brazil, etc.

In Europe, They Laugh at America as a second-world nation. They are leaving us behind in the dust. And it’s not just the French who are laughing.

While Europeans Have their own economic issues these days, they are taking those issues in hand, by cutting spending. But unlike America, they are not cutting their own tax income at the same time. (Only Americans seem to believe that cutting your income helps get you out of debt.)

Europe Is Finding Ways to Move Forward in developing new jobs, through developing New-Energy Technology. Europe has joined the eNTER: race against China. And they are not waiting for us to catch up.

What Makes the Current  Round Different than earlier ones is that  for business/economic growth  this time, our large, international corporations can continue to grow and to enjoy record levels of profits, but they do it using only jobs that are created abroad.

Meanwhile, America (which currently still makes more buggy-whip-equivalents than anyone else) is focusing all of its energy on cutting costs (i.e., trimming the deficit).

In Your Family Life, if you are unemployed, your don’t just cut costs. You have to focus on finding new work. And no one likes living on credit-cards and savings (i.e., deficit-spending). And yes, you need to cut your expenses, such as the cable TV and the lattes (which is what earmarks are).

But When Your Income Is Too-Low (the way we have starved our government’s income over the last decade, as well as losing citizen income by shipping good-paying jobs overseas), then you really need to come up with a new income plan.

While China and the Rest of the BRIC Nations race away with the New Technology Economy (NTE), America just focuses on its taxes and its deficits.

So Far, America Has Stayed out of eNTER: the New-Technology Energy Race.

We Need to Focus on changes America can make to how we stimulate new-technology industry. America needs NTE: a New Technology Economy.

America Needs to:

eNTER:

Meanwhile, the Coffee Party wants to reform campaign contributions. As if this will somehow stimulate America in a race for the next technologies.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party wants to take back a government that it keeps useless in the economic battle with the rest of the world. As if Boeing can compete successfully, head-to-head with the entire nation of China.

Are We Really Willing to Let China build the first lunar base on the Moon? Is America really ready to let India or Brazil send the first manned mission to Mars?

Around the World, Other Governments have gotten involved. While the Soviet Union went broke trying to mix a dictatorship and communism, the ancient civilization that is China has found a way to mix a dictatorship with capitalism. And China is eating America’s lunch.

Without Some Kind of Floor under Energy Prices (to give eNTER: an environment in which it can create manufacturing jobs) or without some sort of government seed money (such as NASA gave to so many American industries in the 1960s and beyond), America would keep losing the eNTER: race. And not just to the BRIC nations.

In Case Americans Haven’t Noticed Yet:

Europe and the Chinese have already figured eNTER: out.

What Else Could Get Historic Enemies such as Britain and France and Germany and Italy to unite as one entity?

It’s Okay to Laugh at the French all we want to. But France has high-speed trains and wind farms all over the place. That’s energy-use reductions, fewer new cars clogging highways, new-technology jobs, and a better quality of life over all.

While We Americans Are Bickering over Coffee and Tea over here, the European Union is busy putting its financial house back in order, while working toward winning their own share of the NTE. (Spain already is a leader in building wind turbines. While not one wind turbine in America is built in America. For that matter, how many of America’s cell phones was actually built here in America?)

If Only We Could Get the Rest of the World’s Governments to stay out of the NTE race, maybe America wouldn’t be falling so far behind.

And Maybe We, the People, would be creating good-paying, factory jobs.

Or Are We Really Going to Let China and Europe put the first permanent colony on the moon, send the first manned mission to Mars, and keep leading the way in winning eNTER: The New-Technology Energy Race?

America’s Next Race to Win

eNTER:

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!

What the European Union Teaches America About “States’ Rights”

In the Development of the European Union, we can see the issue of “states’ rights” versus “large, central government” play out in real time, in the modern world, before our eyes. One great example of how these two approaches interact occurs between Sweden and Spain.

Swedish Citizens May Spend Their Entire Working Years contributing to the Swedish healthcare system, and then retire to Spain to draw down their late-life healthcare. What they will have paid for in Sweden will be more than they would have paid into the Spanish system, but they are free to move around the continent and retire in Spain, where things cost less. There, they can draw on health-care benefits for which they have not paid, while the Swedish system stays flush with their unclaimed payments.

And the Spanish Health-care System is going bust, at least partly as a result.

If We Had States-Run Medicare or Social Security Systems, we would experience the same issues here. Such as all those New Yorkers who retire in Florida, if they had only paid into a New York state system during all those cold winters, before heading south.

The States’ Rights Argument of the Republican Party and the Tea Party protesters can be powerful and compelling. But that does not make it viable nor realistic in our twenty-first century world.

In Today’s Edition of The Washington Post, Utah Republican candidate for the United States Senate Tim Bridgewater argues for just such a system, however. Mr. Bridgewater writes:

“In 1787, the Founding Fathers crafted a free system of government built on the principle that individuals have God-given rights. The Founders protected those rights....by a vertical separation of powers between the federal government and the states. The national government would manage external affairs and keep the states on a level playing field; state governments were to do the rest.

“Over time, that vertical separation of powers has almost disappeared. Today, the federal government feels it can manage even the details of personal health care and education. States have been relegated to administrative units of a central leviathan, in a system of plunder in which each state tries to live at the expense of the others.”

Candidate Bridgewater Offers Telecommunications as an example argument for states’ rights. But how could the individual states possibly regulate such a national, and even international, structure? How could we possibly have the Internet, with every aspect of regulation negotiated among “the several states,” if not for the coordinating power of our Federal government?

What the EU Demonstrates, even more than our 200-plus-year history shows, are the challenges of the state/Federal hybrid.

Candidate Bridgewater Also Writes:

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but Washington’s track record stinks. Congress has given us more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare. Lawmakers encouraged a housing bubble and then took hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers when it burst. There is no reason to think Congress can do a better job this time than when it tried to manage energy in the 1970s and ’80s.”

One Might Insert the Word “Republican” in front of each Bridgewater assertion about Washington, Congress and lawmakers, and get a better understanding of the failure of this thirty-year adventure with ideology. Despite that Mr. Bridgewater and the ground-swell of Conservative protesters seem oblivious to this fact, too, regardless of the inconvenience of actual reality.

What the Last 30 Years——and particularly the years 2001-2008——show is the limitations on the “states’ rights” policies, combined with an underfunded Federal government. The answer is not to excise the Federal government. The answer is to use that of it which works well, and to improve that of which works poorly.

Or Does Candidate Bridgewater Truly Believe that the state of Utah can individually put a floor under the price and costs of carbon, and let Utah take on the Chinese, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the Spanish in developing the world’s new growth industries, the new technologies?

Naivety Such as We Saw Under President George W. Bush is a powerful force. But what America and all its 50 states need now, is to put away the “childish things” of failed ideology, and roll up our sleeves, and get to work.

Find Mr. Bridgewater’s essay at:

In Utah's Vote, a Wake-up Call for Washington

Regards,
(($;-)}
Gozo!