What is to be Done?

It’s winter here now and we are busy battening down the hatches as we prepare for the cold. Kate is busy cutting the ornamental grasses and Rosa Rugosa. I am putting the riding mower to bed for the winter and closing up as many openings as possible. Our Solar roof panels are working just great, so we are looking for additional ways to cut down on oil consumption. We are looking for advice on how to store the sunshine that floods our living room all day. Any suggestions?

Now to the title question: What is to be done? We are still in the glow of the Obama victory and reality is just beginning to hit. Paulson continues to whine out explanations about the 700 billion bank bailout that seem to satisfy no one. Why aren’t the banks starting to lend? Wasn’t that the purpose of the bailout? The automobile lobby wants in on the 700 as do lots of other corporate screw ups and my hunch is that all this mess will just be left for the incoming President. Isn’t that generous of the Bushies.

I am not at all certain what Obama’s thinking is regarding how to deal with a “crisis of capitalism.” I know that phrase has long lost its popularity, yet I believe that’s what we are experiencing. One way to know that is the argument between the free marketeers and the Keynesian tinkerers. The marketeers are insisting that if everyone would just mind their own business and leave the market alone, it will do just fine in getting itself back to some kind of equilibrium. The problem with that idea is that it leaves the rich richer (like the Hedge Fund scoundrels) and the poor poorer (as the thousands loosing their jobs each month). The middle class is in the process of being launched back into the out of work, unemployed poor. So what’s Obama to do?

He needs some fresh thinkers who really are CHANGE people. So far I am unimpressed with his choices for the Change Team. Looks to me like far too many holdovers from the Clinton “third way” crowd. I am not sure what Obama’s ideas are when it comes to the economy. Yes, I do remember his mentioning redistribution of wealth, but how we do that is a very tricky question. Taxing the rich. Great. Increasing entitlements, universal health care, unemployment insurance, stabilizing social security--all good things. But one big problem remains. Jobs. How to create jobs?

FDR spent a lot of money on Public Works that built the Triborough Bridge, Jones and Orchard Beach, many of the Lodges in the National Parks, etc. People who never lifted a shovel in their lives were out digging drainage ditches along the Bronx River Parkway. I don’t think that would be applicable now. We simply have come too far for people to be sent back to shoveling. I just don’t see that happening.

Now Ronald Reagan had a great idea. His expansion of the military budget created thousands of well paying jobs in the defense industries. I thought of it as a great new WPA. And because these were Federal contracts, the workforce included minorities on a scale never seen in private employment. The Federal non-discrimination clauses in all the contracts meant really well paying jobs, for example, black welders at the Electric Boat Company building atomic submarines. As we get out of the Iraq nightmare I have no doubt that the military is going to want to rebuild. That means there will be an all out push pull between the infrastructure rebuild folks and the military. How Obama will come down on that I don’t know. What I do know is that the infrastructure needs a lot of rebuilding. Problem is, that work is highly automated like paving roads, or very specialized like rebuilding bridges. It doesn’t lend itself to hiring lots of people on an assembly line to build military Hummer’s or tanks.

All of this is to say that Obama needs to find ways to use the talents of at least some of those wonderful people who got him elected. They are young, energetic, and I am sure have a lot of new ideas as to how we can make this a better world. That energy needs to be harnessed and used to help find new and different solutions to old problems.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.