The high unemployment rate continues to plague the current administration. Less than a month before the November elections and the consensus seems to be that Democrats will lose Congress on account of the persistent high unemployment rates and lack of jobs for the American people. What can President Obama do to fix this situation?
Here are some ideas:
1. He should first of all, get some people in his advisory group who are not elitist from Yale and Harvard and who have a clue of what the not so privileged American lifestyle is really all about. Maybe if he does this, he will get a different perspective and some different ideas, when combined with the ideas of folks from Yale and Harvard and the like, will yield actual solutions for the American people. He needs a more rounded out group of advisors first of all.
2. He needs to get some creative minds in there that can tap into the Youth culture. Young people put him in the White House and they can take him out. That said, young people are also a resevoir of energy and a new way of doing things. They are not so "cautious" and "careful" and they are innovative and trend-setting and cut from a whole different kind of cloth. They can help him more than he thinks. Look at guys like Mark Zuckerberg and what he did with Facebook. This is the type of people he needs around him. Young, innovative, smart people with NEW IDEAS. These new ideas will help him craft a NEW DEAL solution for the millenium that may or may not involved digging up roads and building new bridges. The bridges we need to build are more abstract than they were in the time of Franklin Roosevelt. They are more technologically driven, more web based, more abstract. He needs to look at Cyberspace, Energy and Manufacturing to create new jobs. He needs smart young people to help him.
3. The president also needs to look at Terrorism as an economic issue, one from which new jobs spring. This is the wave of the future: TERRORISM. But instead of letting the terrorist define how this will play out, we the people need to get ahead of the terrorists. But not necessarily by sending young troups into these places to be killed, or emotionally re-arranged. We need to study terrorism and terrorists and use our resources to create new and different ways of combating the problem. This can create new jobs. We need to train people to speak many different languages, to be good spies (but using cyberspace, not necessarily being physically in danger)to build and create weapons that can defeat terrorists before they even get their operation off the ground. This will call for using existing technologies like the smart phone, for instance, and building on them too, as a way to combat terror. Lots of jobs can be created if we find a way to "securitize" terrorism and use cyberspace to completely defeat it.
4. We need to make more stuff, obviously. America does not manufacture enough things. We got rid of our factories and this was a big mistake. Bring back factories. Make good, quality, green products. Find a way to encourage creativity in terms of the production of new "cotton gin" type products.
5. Be slightly more "protectionist." When you are on an aircraft, they tell you, in the case of an emergency, put on your oxygen mask first before trying to help anyone else. America is suffocating right now and we need to put on our own mask first. NAFTA and these types of treaties are great. Because it shows we are not "protectionist" but maybe that's a mistake. Too many American jobs have gone overseas because it is too advantageous for Corporations to take their business overseas. We have to take care of our own first so that we never lose the things we need to "protect." When we get strong, then we can worry about "not being protectionist." For now, we need to figure out how to take care of America, first.
6. Corporations are taking too many jobs overseas. Why? Labor is cheaper. But what about our taxation schemes? Are we doing enough to hold these American corporations accountable for taking all the jobs overseas? Are we taxing them enough? Are we lobbying against them enough? If Corporations insist on taking all the jobs to foreign lands, maybe Americans need to stop patronizing these corporations. It's one thing to sit back and blame the President for not enough jobs. Congress needs to act to prevent corporations from so easily taking their jobs overseas. American consumers need to get in on the situation too. Same goes for banks, by the way. If banks aren't helping Americans (for example, the foreclosure situation) why are Americans continuing to do business with these banks?
7. A way to create low paying jobs is to pay students to study depending on their major and depending on how that major furthers the interest of the American government - both foreign and domestic policies (kind of like paid internships). So engineers, math majors, linguists, computer technicians can be "paid" (that's a job) to go to school and study for certain majors that will guarantee them a higher paying job when they get out of school (depending on their grades, etc) and that will help to further America's foreign policy and domestic agenda initiatives.
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