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9/10/10

Music Break: Don McLean

American Pie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6U

Quote of the Day: Obama

It's like deja vu all over again...

If we're willing to choose hope over fear, to choose the future over the past, to come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy, rebuild our middle class and reclaim the dream for the next generation.

President Barack Obama
Campaign Speech 09/09/10
Parma, Ohio

Let It Crash

First we kill all the bureaucrats... 


Stop with the government interference.

For all practical purposes our economy, as we once knew it, has stopped in its tracks. We're way past debating The Broken Window Fallacy economic theory of destruction, since the windows are smashed, the bricks have crumbled, the warehouse is bare, the merchant had a heart attack and customers are paralyzed. Jump starting an old carburetor car with a 20th century battery to resolve a 21st century automobile problem just won't do. Restarting requires imagination, innovation and forward 21st century thinking, when what exists has been destroyed at the clumsy hands of the so-called economic policy experts of the northeastern corridor. They live in an alternate universe of fantasy economic theory-land, far away from real America, where they've never experienced a real job or struggled to build a career or business. Vestiges of the old economy do remain and what is worth saving should be salvaged, the rest left for the junk heap of days gone by. Facing the reality of most people, this is where we are as a country.

Therefore, let it crash of it's own accord, instead of endlessly trying to prop up markets and employment in some morbid morality play. Tip toeing among the ruins with half baked plans to rebuild roads, airports, railroads and bridges, the infrastructure of an old economy, is whiffing at the vapor of leaded gasoline and like an old Plymouth, going nowhere and a real bad buzz. Far better to flint sparking the engines of a new economy. Fuel for high speed communications and information, water purification systems, energy efficient buildings and modes of transportation, health facilities and so on. Encourage scientific and technical innovations and medical research by returning to real education and academic endeavors. That will bring meaningful employment. Enough of this fluff and buff stuff.

We certainly have an infrastructure problem but public works projects of the old order won't fix it. The real infrastructure problem is the bureaucratic regulators of the economy and the infrastructure they've created around their fiefdoms of power. We must push aside anyone who is a stumbling block, hanging onto old facades and get on with it.

What infrastructure, economic and physical, that remains should be maintained in the most cost-effective, efficient and best possible way to function alongside as we rebuild our economy and build new systems. To waste money, time and energy restoring them to what they once were is sheer stupidity. They are now merely ropes and rails to hang onto, utilize and keep functioning until they fade into the background as new ones come into the foreground in the next 5-10-15 years.

This is going to be a long rebuilding process and it will be difficult. Nothing about it or life is fair, the challenge is great, but the other options are not acceptable, economies that are roads to nowhere. We won't burn, we won't die, we will suffer, we will have to work hard. We are after all, Americans, and enough of us have what it takes, even in spite of those who don't, to get to where we need to go. First, we need to own up that we've fallen in a deep hole and it will take gumption, not government programs and intervention, to get ourselves out of it.

The Times They Are A-Changin'
Bob Dylan 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsHAW2fBHdQ