CriticalMusings

Can I suggest my five areas: “five major areas we need improvement: education, health care, environment, energy and infrastructure.” I think housing will fall out of the others, since better education helps, better health care means less money spent on medical bills so it could go towards housing, energy improvements will mean less money spent on gas and utility bills, and more for a house, and infrastructure will create more jobs, leading to more home ownership. Under infrastructure, it is imperative to add ‘broadband’. Neutral, high-speed, low-cost, if not free, broadband connections everywhere. Just like we extend utiiity lines or roads everywhere (almost) we should do the same with broadband. If the masses are on broadband, then telecommuting or part-week telecommuting will allow fewer cars to be on the roads, and more time to be spent with family rather than in traffic. More time with family may rebuild community bonds that have disappeared since people have lost much leisure time that used to be spent chatting with neighbors or being involved with kids’. Lastly, energy should include solar panels on all government buildings, solar panel subsidies on homes in the sunbelts, subsidies on geothermal and wind generators for those in appropriate areas. The next big boom (and hopefully not followed by a bust if we learn our lesson from our past boom to bust habit – fueled by Wall Street’s desire to turn anything positive into an index or tranche or… and pushed into a pyramid scheme), could be the alternative energy industry. Between development of the products and the deployment of them, this industry could be bigger than the Internet boom. Maybe we can help the government figure out ways to make the US the leading manufacturer/exporter of these products, rather than just a consumer.