Problems

Every generation has faced challenges. We are facing grave challenges that will alter human cilivization permentantly. Climate change threatens are exsistence. Conflicts that have gone on for thousands of years continue to bring unrest to the world. Resources are being stretched ever thinner. The United States military faces a formidable enemy and our economy is crashing down. The citizens of the U.S. have turned to the democratic party for answers to these problems. There was somewhat a revolution in November of 2008 when Barack Obama won the presidential race. We know that things are bad, but what are the solutions to this dire situation. Strong, wise leaders are needed. The democrats want to build a stronger government that will provide assistance to people. The problem is that for the last 30 to 40 years we have wasted vast amounts of resources within our capitlistic society. Free markets are great when resources are easy to find. This contraction has been in the making for sometime. People must get back to basic needs and forgoe frivilous spending. Banks must be reined in to more reasonable levels. They have created this cheap money that made it seem like the party could go on forever. It could have if we didn't run into the wall with resources. Energy is king.

Policy

Unemployment is on the rise. I expect January and February to be very bad on the unemplolyment front. I'm betting that many companies pushed layoffs to the new year, because they didn't want to do it during the holidays. We are in for continued difficult economic times.

Policy Shifts:

Obama has said that he does not support raising the age that people receive Social Security benefits. This is not an option. The age needs to be raised now. That would take billions off the deficit and require people to stay in the work force longer which would strengthen our economy. This relatively new notion of retiring at 65 is not realistic. I know that people have paid into a ponzi scheme with the expectation that they would get benefits later on. Well Social Security is not a vialble business model as currently set up. If you raise the age that benefits are dispersed to 75, it becomes viable again.

Competitive sports in state run schools (1st through 12th) need to be halted as part of the acedemic structure. Fitness is important, but traveling around to play other teams multiple times per week is weakening our school system. The coaches are sometimes the highest paid teachers, partly because they deserve it for spending so much time traveling around. We need to go to the club sports model that many other countries have adopted. Professional sports teams need to sponsor these teams, because they are the ones that benefit from the developement of players. We have already moved in this direction with AAU and other organizations for basketball, volleyball, and soccer.

There has to be a contraction in the system and these are two places to start.