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.