Rebuilding Somalia

The most important economic indicator is the level of household prosperity.  And since the economy is not good unless it’s good for everybody, we should get the mean of all households, say, in the U.S.  Also, since the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, we should get the mean of the lowest ten percent. 

            I’ve been thinking of Somalia.  As it is, we spend a lot of money patrolling the shipping lanes around Somalia.  For a lot less, we could breathe a little prosperity into the communities of Somalia, and make piracy a fruitless fishing expedition. 

            I’d like to drop off the components of a solar power station at various seaside communities of Somalia.  Minimum ten locations.  We should enclose pictures of what the assembled station looks like, as well as blueprints and diagrams of how to put it all together.  There should also be the components of a system to desalinate salt water, which could be powered by the solar power station.  Perhaps nine out of ten of these starter kits would be wasted, stolen, broken, or lost in some way.  If only one became a working system, the great value and possibilities would be immediately obvious to the people of this and surrounding communities.  We would respond by supplying new kits to former recipients who’d been unsuccessful the first time, as well as new communities near the successful community.               

            The overall health of the residents, as well as the quality of life would be greatly improved.  Local agriculture would benefit, primarily household gardens, leading the way to household prosperity and overall community prosperity.      

The Enabler

            An enabler is someone who encourages, makes possible, or overlooks the unhealthy behavior of someone else.  Making excuses for and even staying with an abusive husband is being an enabler.  Paying bills for an irresponsible adult is being an enabler.  Denying your daughter’s drug addiction, defending your son’s unprovoked fights, even picking up after teenagers is being an enabler. 

            So it is with the U.S. and the state of Israel.  A smart and scrappy group of dispossessed people who only wanted a home—we saw it all in Exodus starring Paul Newman.  They so deserved our support.  Most Americans learned everything they know about Israel from watching that movie, hearing the theme, rooting for this underdog.  Like a favorite child who starts misbehaving, over the years, an empowered Israel committed atrocities on the Palestinians and others, and we in the U.S. looked the other way.  When they seemed threatened, we were more inclined to send money and military supplies, so hard-liners dominated Israeli politics and a chronic state of bad relations with the neighbors ensued.  The truth is that very many Israeli citizens would prefer to live in peace, but they can’t get the majorities they need to change course, and the U.S. participation (enabling behavior) has a lot to do with that.  Now there is such a history of bad events on both sides that this will be an extremely hard situation to heal. 

            Where do we go from here?  For starters, the aid we send should be targeted to encourage businesses in the Palestinian territories that would produce high value added products from Israeli raw materials.  There’s nothing like economic interdependence to help people get along.  Sending military hardware to this area is like sending guns and ammunition to inner city gangs—not really moving things in the right direction. 

            And when the prime minister of Israel comes to Washington, the message is not that “we have your back”.  We don’t take sides.  We have the best interest of all people everywhere

Million Dollar Accounts

     This is not my idea for a proposed policy for a national health care system--it was a policy question put to a class at Georgetown.  I like this idea so very much that I'm publicizing it and have tweaked it  to include unfortunate individuals under its umbrella. 

     Everyone with a social security number will have attached to this number a health care account for one million dollars.  This money can be used for any health care expense.  It can be used for dental care, vaccinations, eye care and glasses or lenses, diagnostic procedures, insurance premiums, psychiatric care, or any other health care expense.  Only the person with the account (under that particular social security number) can use that account, and it cannot be passed on after that person dies.  It can be used for that person and that person alone.

     I've always felt that a single payer system would be the ideal except for two considerations:   the difficult (prohibitive) transition from what we have to single payer; and the fact that in our country we just don't seem to be able to keep unscrupulous persons from gouging.  With the million dollar accounts, every person would treat this as his or her own money (since it essentially is) and would examine every bill and challenge every charge.  One of the most important considerations in every major policy change is the ease of transition.  The million dollar accounts system would cause the least amount of ripples of any system I've studied.  People who now have insurance can keep that insurance or consider other options, and they can take their time making that decision and making any changes.
     As a society, we will be the strongest we can be going into the future since children would get the eye, dental, and any other care that they need to come of age in the best health possible.
     This plan does come up short for care for children born with expensive conditions, those that would cost more than the million dollars.  Expensive conditions might affect someone at any age.  These unfortunate individuals could perhaps apply for an extension, based on the fact that this expensive condition was not brought on by their own behavior, and that they have been good stewards of their accounts.         
  

The Future of Education

The Future of Education

            There will come a time when we can no longer afford to bus our children to a warehouse every morning and bus them all back in the afternoon, with all the accompanying expenses.  This change may be for the better--packing them all together with peers with a minimal amount of guidance is not good socialization, and the mass production method of teaching is not good education.

            At the state level there is enough money to create a computer-based system where a student may play a video game (non-violent) or watch an enrichment video (like the life cycle of a frog or the architecture in Rome) and pay for his or her time on this entertainment by doing some math problems or word problems.  The numbers on the keyboard could call up a short video of an expert teacher explaining the concept behind the problem that the student is currently working on.  With ten digits on the keyboard, the student would have access to ten different expert teachers.  He or she would soon find the one that explains the material best for him or herself, or the student can shop around to any or all of the available teachers.  In our system as it exists today, how many students are reluctant to ask for an explanation?  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the student will remain silent rather than ask a question.

            The computer program will detect which concepts an individual student is having problems with, and can accordingly feed that student exercises which gradually build to the desired level of ability.  How many of us feel that there were blind spots in our education because we were absent a day or were simply day-dreaming and missed out on something the rest of the class heard?  Between the student and this program, there will be no stones left unturned.  Every new level will be met on a good solid footing.

            For every major policy change, one of the most important considerations is ease of transition.  Can we try it out in such a way that we can back out if it doesn’t work?  Will the various groups who are involved or dependent on the old system suffer from the change?  This new system can be implemented right now in the classrooms that we already have.  I envision a circle of desks, at every one is a student sitting at a computer.  The teacher goes around the circle with her own laptop, sitting with each student.  She will ask them if they need any help, and help them compose a piece of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry.  She can keep the written pieces on her computer, and send a copy to the student’s computer.  For younger students, the teacher may also help the student with penmanship.  At the time when students are no longer bussed to a school building, the teacher will perform the same function, visiting the student at home. 

            The school building can evolve into a community building, where science labs will still be there for the education of any community member who wishes to learn that material.  In fact, the entire computer-based program should be available to any one of any age who wishes to use it.  The remainder of the school rooms could be turned into workshops for use by members of the community. 

            In our uncertain times, the internet may not be dependable.  The entire program for each grade could be loaded into the individual’s computer at the beginning of the year, so that education would not be interrupted when the internet is down.  Even in these days of student bussing, computer-based education would be very helpful during snow days or sick days, when the students are homebound. 

                    

Free Enterprise vs. Capitalism

Free Enterprise vs. Capitalism

            I hear people talk about free enterprise and capitalism as if they were interchangeable terms.  Just as hot and cold are the extremes of temperature, free enterprise and capitalism are far apart on the continuum of economic systems.  In fact they are in opposition to each other, since they compete for investment.

            At this point in history, I would say that capitalism is in the lead, with the U.S. firmly in its grasp.  

            The difference is where power and control reside.  A free enterprise system has power and control dispersed throughout the society.  Each person has the opportunity to invest in himself or herself –produce, invent, take risks, run his or her own business, run his or her own life.  The prosperity that has accumulated in the community is available to the residents of the community as someone who has managed to sell a product to a buyer outside the community then gets a local haircut or pays someone to fix his roof. 

            In our system of dominant capitalism, all prosperity gravitates to the magnetic center of wealth.  The only option for making a living is to work for big capital.  The return for one’s work is just enough to sustain life.  If there is profit to be made from one’s contribution, it goes to the corporation.  Residents of the community pay for the roads which enable corporate food and other products to be delivered to retail outlets, and enable residents to go there for all the necessities of life.  People have been reduced to giving their all in exchange for just getting by, living at the end of a corporate umbilical cord.       

             

Response to Comment

This is a reply to the comment from ttroszkowski. I'm sure there's another way to talk back and forth, but a post will work just fine until I find the better method.  First of all, thank you so very much for your comment.   
I'm a small business owner, so I think in terms of investment, and might step out of the Keynesian box.  We certainly are not in a period of surplus.  However, I think of the $660 billion just voted for the Pentagon as a sunken cost, money that is as good as spent already. I would like to see that money invested in constructive, productive equipment that would enable middle-class individuals to own the hardware of energy production.  We can close a few foreign bases of the 775 existing ones without any loss of our security.  That manpower which is already on the federal payroll can be much better invested in building our domestic production.  The Pentagon contracts for the material of warfare can be redirected towards producing the fixtures needed to make individual homeowners primary producers of electricity.
As a farmer, I take the risk of going into debt in order to buy molasses for my cows during the winter.  Hopefully, this investment will enrich my herd, and the whole business operation will benefit.  I am very careful with debt, my own and also our national debt.  But I feel that we must feed and heal our starved economy.

My Kind of Stimulus

I don't think there's any doubt that our economy in 2008 needed a little pick-me-up.  Right now it could use some tonic.  What's important is how the stimulus is applied.
Taking a wide-angle look at our economy, the biggest outlays of the last ten years have been the trillion dollars spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the half trillion (or more) each year that we spend on the Pentagon, beyond war spending.  No wonder we are all poor here at home.
We won't dwell on that.  Let's make a list of all the 775 (at least) military bases we have outside the country.  Prioritize them in order of importance to our welfare.  Close a few of the least important, and bring the soldiers (or airmen or sailors or whatever they are) home.  We will put them to work right here.  They are public employees and we have a job for them.
The Civilian Conservation Corps of Franklin Roosevelt's time was a hybrid of Army and federally-hired civilians.  I would like to see a hybrid of these soldiers brought back from closed bases and members of the electricians union.  Let the trained electricians teach and supervise groups of soldiers.  Housing could be at bases in the U.S. 
The job would be installing the electrical hardware in people's basements that is a necessary component of a family's home power production system.  The cost of this component is often the stopper in a middle-class family's decision to invest in solar panels, small wind turbines, or other means of energy capture.  
Instead of awarding military contracts to U.S. factories to make destructive devices (bombs, drones, warplanes) let us spend our public money on contracts to U.S. factories to make the electrical hardware that our soldiers will be installing. 
Communities with at least 1000 applications will be put on the list first come, first served for the installation teams to come to their area.  Small communities can band together to meet the 1000 application requirement.
I am especially inspired to see the courage of Ron Paul to stand behind the policy of closing foreign bases.  Even more inspired to see how many supporters he has that see the sense in what he says.  I don't agree with everything he says but closing foreign bases and ending unnecessary wars is so big and so basic to our future that it trumps just about everything else.