America’s Future

In every era there are people who are "Chicken Little's" convinced that the sky is falling. They always feel that this time is different, these challenges are unprecedented, and that basically we are facing a doomsday scenario unless we take some sort of drastic action.

Of course they have always been wrong in the past, and I suspect will always be wrong in the future. The primary reason they are wrong is their belief that people are, well stupid.

If we are engaging in a destructive behavior, and we all do to some extent, we will change that behavior when it becomes obvious to us it doesn't work. Now, consider all of our current problems. We have a large deficit. Why? Well in addition to some tax cuts enacted when we had a surplus we decided to engage in two significant combat operations and subsequently had a major economic collapse. We clearly could have predicted the problem if we had thought about it, but politics led to the policies that led to the deficit. Now, the deficit isn't a good thing but does it mean that the country is about to collapse? Hardly! Of course we have a bunch of new politicians who ran against Government but now that they are in office seem to think that Government action can solve this problem. Let's get real. The deficit will be reduced as the economy improves. This is a double edged solution as we get more tax revenues and need to spend less on our social requirements. Does that mean the Government shouldn't take action to reduce spending? Of course not, but without an economic recovery it won't solve the problem and if we overdo it, we will jeopardize the timing of the recovery.

What we are most likely faced with for the next decade or so is an adjustment as America weans itself from foreign oil and becomes more self sufficient in energy production. This will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and help reduce unemployment, while reducing our trade deficit, increasing the tax base and helping to stimulate the overall economy.

Actually, if we really wanted to stimulate the economy, we should open the doors to a much greater number of young immigrants who will seek the American dream, work hard and help support our aging domestic population.

America is a very rich country. We have abundant resources and create a tremendous amount of wealth each and every year. We have recently been exporting a lot of that wealth, and that has to change, but the best way to do that is to encourage domestic industries.

There needs to be a debate in this country about what constitute basic Governmental obligations. In the modern world the population of a country is dependent on services that in our pioneer days were simply not feasible. Realistically we have many people alive and productive today who would be dead in the 18^th century. We have people living longer and to a large extent, because of the evolution of our societal values, no longer supported by an extended family structure.

The good old days had some good things, but make no mistake about them, people died younger, worked longer and suffered from things we just wouldn't accept in today's society. The number of people in this country who ever lived or worked on a farm is a small percentage and getting smaller all the time.

America's future is not a return to the little house on the prairie; it is a modern internet based technological society that is part of the entire world. We should embrace it.

Congressional Theatre

We witnessed the public spectacle that the new congress will be for some period of time got started yesterday with a reading of the Constitution. Now, the version read left out parts that had been amended over time and I don't really care about that since the whole thing constitutes waste and abuse since I would like to think the congress should be conducting business instead of theatre.

Of course saying there is waste and abuse in congress is probably unnecessary since they have so much of it. They did cut their own budget by 5% but are now going to engage in some additional play acting related to repealing the Health Reform Bill.

Now we have a lot of people who were elected because a certain portion of the public was angry and went out and voted. Remember that the turnout was typically low for a mid-term election so the mandate is really the feelings of about 25% or so of the American public, many of whom I firmly believe were caught up in the concept of "throwing the rascals out".

The cause of our economic problems is unrelated to the Health Care Reform and probably unrelated to anything the current Administration has done. What the current Administration failed to do was get us out of the mess we were in, and it is questionable if there is really anything that would have accomplished that in the first two years.

The good news seems to be that the economy has picked up some steam recently; however, it is still easily derailed. The new crop of congressmen may be the cause of the next train wreck if they don't actually get to work and stop posturing.

Solutions, not Blame

We think of the New Year as something of a natural event. After all it highlights the fact that the earth has completed another revolution around the sun. Of course the date we pick to celebrate this event is arbitrary. In ancient times, it was often celebrated in the spring to commemorate the fact that there was a rebirth of the world, symbolized by new growth. The spring is clearly a more logical choice, but our use of January goes back to the Romans and has been incorporated into our modern calendars.

We like to reflect on the New Year and consider areas that we could improve. Many of us do this individually. We also see many articles about things we can do better as a society, or ways to improve our finances, lose weight, meet members of the opposite sex, etc., etc.

The general idea is that reflection can lead to improvement, if we consider what didn't work and what did. However, human nature being what it is, you can most likely reprint the very same self improvement articles/blogs every year since we continually make the same mistakes.

There is one thing that we, as a society, could do that would help improve our future and the future of our children. That would be to adopt a forward looking approach and not a backward looking one. Unfortunately, it is much more common, because it is generally much easier to assign blame than it is to fix a problem.

Now clearly wrongdoing should be punished, but honest mistakes are not wrongdoing. When you consider the spill in the Gulf, the majority of the coverage both at the time and afterward was about how someone was at fault. I read an article the other day that depicted the last moments on the rig before it exploded and while interesting it ignored what was the real issue. The failures to act were the result of what proved to be poor decisions. Poor decisions are unfortunately something that humans do. Of course had the specific scenario been anticipated and if enough information had been available, perhaps an action could have been initiated to prevent the explosion and much of the resultant spillage. However these actions were drastic and the fear of overreacting is often the greatest fear of all.

What should happen now is that lessons learned from the event should help improve future training and improve future decision making. Hopefully this is going on at all the major drillers and it should make future drilling safer, not foolproof, but safer.

We usually don't know when catastrophes are avoided. I often read criticism of our anti-terrorism efforts as being ineffectual. Of course the criticism is usually voiced by someone with a vested interest. What matters is the absence of terrorist acts. Yes, our countermeasures incorporate reactive strategies, based on known terrorist attempts, but these strategies have prevented a repeat of 9-11 for almost ten years. The terrorists haven't taken a vacation but clearly we have become a more difficult target. Could we be better? Of course we could and suggestions to improve our efforts could be valuable, but criticism for political or economic gain is unproductive.

We are faced with plenty of problems to solve. Instead of spending so much unproductive time trying to blame someone, we need to focus on solving our problems.