Proposals to fix the economy!
The key to economic recovery is job creation. Only people that feel secure in their employment spend money in the amounts needed to keep our economy afloat. With unemployment rising, spending money that may be needed to keep your house would be reckless. Sales can’t go up without a decline in unemployment. Job loss is the biggest hindrance to the mortgage crisis, refinancing your home doesn’t make any sense if you may lose your job. The downward spiral will continue unless enough jobs at decent wages are created in an area that does not depend upon spending by the general public. With that in mind, what should be done?
First, let’s tackle one of the obstacles to job creation, Healthcare. Our current system places the burden of Healthcare squarely upon the shoulders of employers. As a result of the increased cost of care, more employers are opting out of providing benefits. When employers opt out of covering their employees, it increases the costs the other employers have to pay because the cost of care for the uninsured is always covered eventually by the insured that end up paying higher premiums. Notice the upward movement of costs coupled with the downward movement in employers willing to pay them? At some point in the not too distant future, the only people that will have insurance will be government employees as the rest of the employers will not be able to absorb the costs anymore.
The way to make the system fairer is for universal healthcare coverage for everyone, at a level that includes all major health problems. Increasing the number of people in the pool to the entire population of the US, should make the per capita rate of Health Care drop, as there would not be any uninsured to be a burden on the system. Employers should be free to offer supplemental coverage for wellness programs (Gym memberships and similar things). If the wealthy wish to opt out of the (socialist) plan, they should be entitled to do so, but only if they assume “all of the actual costs” of their own care. By not having to burden themselves with Health Care costs, employers could increase the number of jobs and the wages so their employees can resume their role in the economy, spending their excess money.
Second, the government could require that any house taken over by foreclosure can not be resold unless it meets strict codes for plumbing, electrical wiring, insulation, structural defects, etc. The people tasked with retrofitting these homes would be the construction workers that are currently idle do to the mortgage and housing crisis. That would ease the burden our housing sector has placed on the economy.
Third, investment by the government in alternative energy must not be deterred by the false lowering of fuel prices now being done by big oil. They helped create the mess by cutting refining capacity, delaying oil exploration, and gouging the public. The best thing the government can do is to put up money for alternative energy structured in a way that prevents big oil from being able to buy or control these new sources. New energy sources should be controlled by the public so no company can cause damage to our economy in the way oil price gouging did during Bush’s terms.
mychaelalchemy
good luck any of this is going to happen, although there may be hope with Obama…Universal Health Care and quality Education are good ideas in and of themselves…my company, because of the high cost of fuel and labor costs fired me and a few others for lame reasons just to consolidate and keep their profit margin up…profit is the only reason most exist or care about, not the betterment of the economy or their employees…as with many companies employees are mostly just a number or a warm body, and, even when things got good, many kept the employee hiring to a minimum, putting the load on a few…the irony is when I see these same companies flying the American flag outisde their buildings in the name of democracy, but have you ever knwon of a company run like a democracy?
As far as housing goes, it is not the interest rates that make a difference, it is the higher and higher prices that eventually locks out the average worker from purchae or maintaining their mortgages, and those, like myself who can no longer afford a house, have to rent and rent keeps going up and up…there needs to be a cap on this, as this would keep their turnover rate from rising, too, but, they don’t care, someone will always take their place which is an old mindset during more prosperous times.
Alternative energies will be costly, as everything is at the outset…development costs, material costs, then making it en masse itself costly, and it will be a too-slow process by which time we may already be in dire straits…yet, this may bring the incentive to foreign oil to decrease the pricing…but, like the oil embargo of the 70’s it caused havoc, and prior to it, oil/gas prices were very humane….when that was, things were just fine economically.
I feel we need to get rid of the wage system entirely, that is, the money system itself, it can be done, but, greed and control and power over the masses will never let that happen. When we work for the sake of the betterment of one another and not for profit, the world would once again be a paradise…but, then, religion got us ejected from that idea long ago….
Bush was part of the political mind-control system over us and it ruined us, but, he will be ok, he will leave office much, much richer than even when he went in, him and Cheny having been tied to big business interests…