I realize that this is only a thought exercise. The American people and the politicans they elect have the attention span of a gnat, so focusing on anything further away than next weeks’ DWTS results is pretty tough.
But if we could, as a nation, focus on long-term issues and devote resources to them, what would they be?
“Long-term” is any project, goal, etc. that will take a minumum to 10 years to complete.
Mine:
Energy Independence. Energy is a strategic resource. We have the resources, the technology and the land mass to do incredible things here. Probably not complete independence, but significantly insulated to the ups and downs in the energy market from where we are now. With just the technology existing today we could have wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas to provide a mix of energy. Wind, solar & NG are ready now. Nuclear would probably take 20 years if the start gun was fired today. We could significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil by demanding increased fuel efficiency and credits for alternative fuled vehicles. The same with efficiency in new home construction and retrofit of older homes. This is all low hanging fruit and has the extra benefit of supplying american jobs to build all of this new energy infrastructure.
It all sounds good, but let me bring it down to something all americans can understand: Wouldn’t it be nice to sit back and watch a middle eastern country go down in flames without worring about how it will affect you at the pump tomorrow?
Um - no. That seems the very definition of schadenfreude, it wouldn’t be nice to contemplate. the only nice part, as i think you’re suggesting, is not having to worry about how that would directly affect us.
Except, of course, that it still would affect us, the world being interconnected and all. Solar, wind, and geothermal ain’t gonna get us petrochemicals.
Public Transit in all forms: Moving away from the dependence on car+gas+highway.
Unlike European cites, US tend not to suffer from density but sprawl. Highways allowed people to move further and further from downtown cores and/or where they work. The solution to this requires a different kind of thinking than traditional public transit. Systems like park-and-ride, bus only highway lanes, and commuter rail lines are needed to shuttle people to and from suburbs.
Something I’ve noticed with unemployment is that after losing a job, people are constrained by the radius they live in. There are lots of jobs available (although not enough) yet we struggle to connect workers with those jobs.
Well, can you make an argument for why energy independence is necessary for America to remain competitive (or would at least help America do so)? I don’t think that’s a self-evident proposition.
Other countries (with some exceptions) aren’t progressing toward energy independence any faster than we are, and energy independence would take resources away from other projects and likely require higher taxes (through energy credits etc., since many alternative energy projects are not profitable currently without tax benefits). So, it seems like there’s a lot to think about here.
where is that “nation” you speak of? There are at least two actual nations living within the US borders, and that’s not counting the minorities many of whom are not happy camper members of the nation that actively courts them.
All Americans, or even a major percentage of Americans, are not going to agree to anything other than “sky is blue”.
Structure taxes to make America ‘business friendly’, especially to foreign corporations. That will encourage companies to build manufacturing and other facilities here, which will bring in more jobs, which will bring in more taxes, which will benefit us all.
If possible, build a school system that encourages American kids to actually like going to school and want to learn. Pay top dollar for teachers…and then expect them to produce. Get rid of the dead weight. Get rid of the standardized testing mentality.
Other than that, my own personal long term goal for the US (not necessarily to make us ‘Competitive’, at least not in the strictest sense) is to focus on manned and unmanned space exploration and exploitation. Use some of the concepts and designs coming out of private industry these days instead of having to have NASA re-invent everything…just have the government buy the systems off the shelf, and get private industry involved (as well as other countries if they are interested) in pushing real exploration and exploitation in space.
Other than that I don’t think the government is particularly a good instrument to try and guide long term goals to keep the US (or anyone else) competitive.
A lot of it is because we treat our soldiers far better than the Red Chinese-ie pay them better and more decent wages plus such things as chaplains, support services in case of PTSD and so on.
Do you have a cite that a large portion of the five-fold difference in military spending between the US and China is difference in wages and support services?
Having a military budget that is 40% of the entire world’s spending on military forces will not keep us competitive. Unless you somehow define competitive as being able to kick ass anywhere, any time, for any reason. All our military needs to be able to do is defend us. (In fact, one of the major reasons for the dissolution of the USSR was that they were steering far too high a piece of their GDP to their military.)
That said, we’re not spending enough on infrastructure. Such things as roads, water mains, sewers, power transmission, and so on and so forth are all deteriorating like crazy.
We’re attacking public schools, both K-12 and colleges. Instead of supporting and improving them, we’re ensuring that in the not too distant future the only people in this country who will be educated are the children of the rich.
Drastically reforming our health care system. We spend 17-18% of GDP on health care when other OECD nations spend 8-11%. Plus our system reduces job mobility, doesn’t let people retire when they want, costs companies a huge sum compared to other competitor nations, costs the gov, etc. It is a mess on so many levels, and costs about $3000-4000 more per person per year than what you’d find in other wealthy nations for inferior care. But the meaningful reform probably won’t happen. But you’d save over a trilion from both public and private (employer and employee) funds and drastically increase job mobility if you reformed health care in the US. Tons of people want to retire and can’t, many want to change fields, and many want to start their own businesses but they can’t because of how our system works. Add into that the employers paying $7000+ in taxes and private insurance per employee when in a country like Canada it may be $2000 or so, and it isn’t a good system.
Aside from that, energy independence for transportation like you said. I don’t know if reforming the grid to renewables would make that big of a difference for our competitiveness, but our trade deficit would go down with transportation energy being made domestically.
I have no idea what to do about the brain drain we are starting to experience, I figure it’ll just get worse as the job market and wages stagnate and health care becomes a luxury. But that will be a big concern IMO. Talented people may not want to set up shop here anymore for various reasons and may go to countries with more security or a better future/outlook.
Promoting global minimum standards for labor, environment and quality control could raise the cost of competitor developing nations, and make the US more competitive.
[hijack]Curtis - would you please quit using this offensive and inaccurate term? “Chinese” or “Mainland Chinese” are perfectly acceptable. If you are just a lazy typer, “PRC” works well. It’s unseemly for someone born decades after Mao and Nixon died to use an outdated dispariging term. Thanks for playing. [/hijack]
I’m not sure why the United States needs to remain competitive at all. From an outside perspective you are already off the top of the scale for standard of living. There are 6 billion humans who would love to be as wealthy.
Can I suggest that your quality of life is much more important than trying to compete.