In a previous post, I discussed economic reforms that should be made in the sick, corrupt financial markets. But this is only the start of efforts the next president and Congress must make to prevent a startling decline that is already evident in America. Whatever the Dow shows, most Americans are suffering and for the first time in generations, young people wonder, with good cause, if they can live better lives than their parents.
Real change is needed, and the question is whether the American people and their elected representatives have the guts to face the truth and move ahead. The laughable gas-tax holiday and much wishful thinking about alternative energy and hydrogen cars represent the school of destructive denial. This is "sustainability" that seeks to sustain the current unsustainable economic and social arrangements. It can’t be done.
Yet much of the current mess was caused, not by inexorable laws of economics, but by policy changes to benefit the rich and transnational corporations, as well as a sprawl economy at the root of the current recession. We can change it.
1. Initiate a major program to rebuild America’s railroad system. This would provide jobs as well as offering an energy efficient transportation option that is a given in other advanced nations. Amtrak’s budget should be at least quadrupled (this would be the equivalent of two B-2 bombers) to get regular, convenient passenger trains running nationally. Amtrak trains are already wildly popular, so they will be patronized even more if the service improves. Infrastructure should be improved to handle more passenger and freight trains. All this is a beginning of an aggressive effort to build bullet trains to link populous urban areas. It would be faster than the dying airline industry, use less energy, and be much more pleasant to ride. Here’s an energy-transportation system already working, already proven. Do it.
2. Convene a blue-ribbon panel of scientists, free of special-interest money, to recommend the most effective places to make major investments in alternative energy. We need to avoid boondoggles or unintended consequences. For example, solar energy won’t provide for most of the power needs of the Southwest, however much we wish it. Ethanol is a fraud. We do need a Manhattan Project for alt fuels, but the Manhattan Project did not put limited resources and time into a dozen unproven, highly speculative thrusts.
3. We need trade policy for the 21st century. It’s not 19th century protectionism, but it’s also not the destructive race to the bottom we’ve seen since the 1990s. Talk about setting labor and environmental standards is well and good, but difficult to accomplish. Our efforts might be better served in using sticks and carrots to get emerging powers, especially China, to buy American goods. Mexico is a different problem, and Washington should be leaning on Mexico City to implement the political reform to ensure that country’s rise to First World status. Then we can engage in the kind of internal investments in Mexico that worked so well in Portugal, Spain and Italy when they joined the EU. By all means use tax and other policies to penalize companies that send jobs offshore.
4. Go after Wal-Mart. We don’t need to break it up, a la Theodore Roosevelt and the great trusts. Rather, Wal-Mart should face serious scrutiny about its monopolistic control of the supply chair and its labor policies. More power to suppliers and unions would go a long way to taming this beast. And tax Wal-Mart for building "greenfield" stores in the middle of nowhere that encourage long, single-occupancy car trips.
5. Restore the balance in labor relations. This means not only making it easier for unions to organize and bargain, but a reform of state and federal laws that have steadily moved to favoring employers in recent years.
6. Encourage savings. If Americans can’t get their savings rate up, we can’t avoid the slide in living standards and get off the dole to the Red Chinese and other creditors. This will require a culture change (ban the odious word "consumers"), but it can also begin with policies that provide new incentives for savings.
7. Tax sprawl, which for decades has been subtly subsidized, and provide tax credit and other incentives for building within existing urban footprints. (Make city schools the best.) Do fix "roads and bridges" in existing urban areas and transportation corridors, but stop building freeways to make far-flung land profitable for a few developers. Give states the power to limit emissions and take other environmental protections, as California has sought to do. Require a major leap in fuel economy standards by automakers. Only with such policy changes will a viable "green" cluster of industries emerge. It won’t be green if we just keep sprawling and driving.
8. Resume aggressive funding for research.
9. Encourage and reward competition in every industry. As I noted in the previous post, this means anti-trust enforcement, breaking up the big concentrated industries, stopping further "deregulation" and taking away the tax and other incentives for mergers. The target is not capital that creates jobs and improves our lives, but the capitalism that benefits the few and destroys lives with its endless games.
10. Make a real "no child left behind" effort and fund it this time. American children must get back in the science and math game. But they also need to be taught history and civics, or we’re doomed. Every child deserves a good education and a shot at a good university.
11. Provide universal healthcare. If we use the Medicare platform, it will preserve the care-giving, productive part of the healthcare "industry." The insurance companies can fade away and their employees get retraining for other fields.
Good to see you back writing about Phoenix – I was a regular reader of your columns in the Republic. I think most clear-thinking Phoenicians are completely bored with the columnists now in Arizona’s “paper of record” (which has descended into AP wire regurgitation and absurdly ultra-local reporting on suburban HOA rule changes that now allow five beige hues instead of three)
We now are left with the robotically predictable Bob Robb, issue-illiterate Montini, bipolar soccer mom Laurie Roberts, and some other clowns that are simply horrendous writers. Anyway, sorry for the venting…..
Your “Tax sprawl” idea is interesting. Exactly how would that work? Phoenix currently charges “impact fees” but these only cover a fraction of the costs of only a fraction of the infrastructure required to make suburbia function. And the impact fee formula itself is complex and difficult to administer. So some sort of tax would be much better, if it was possible, which I’m not sure it is. (politically or technically)
I think some sort of infrastructure limit boundary is the only way technically (politically it isn’t because our economy’s umbilical cord is still the sprawl industry) And a moratorium on the perimeter freeway building is an absolute must.
What are the urban politics like up in Seattle? Anything remotely comparable?
Desalinize Using Solar Power – The Basics
Solar power is considered to be a cost effective and flexible power source. No wonder it has been used in several different ways, and one of which is in the desalination of water. If our planet is filled with water, why would millions of people suffer from water shortages? Well, maybe we are covered with water, but oceans consist of salt water, and we simply cannot drink it.
The topic about converting saltwater into drinking and usable water has always been controversial. The process, known as desalination, would be able to help solve water problems in the world today, if it can be utilized on a large scale but in a cost effective manner. There are different methods for desalination, and reverse osmosis has been deemed the most popular. It is actually a filtration process and is popular in countries that have desalination plants like those found in the Caribbean or in the Mideast. Reverse osmosis has now sparked interest in China and the United States and places where there are often water shortages.
But since most plants are powered by fossil fuels, many people want a desalination process wherein they can save some money and not be affected by global warming. As a result, they have turned to solar power as an energy source for desalinization plants. In this kind of desalination process, the power of the sun is built into the system and heats the saltwater, which will then turn into vapor. The vapor will then run through a condenser system that will turn it back into liquid, saltless water.
The idea of desalinizing using solar power systems is to separate the water from the salt through the use of natural systems one can find in the oceans. Solar power desalination actually tries to copy the process wherein water evaporates from the ocean to form clouds and then these clouds will turn into rain clouds and release the salt free water. Because of rising energy costs and global warming, to desalinize using solar power may prove to be very beneficial. With proper research and study, we may all be free from water problems in the future.