What do you think the new President should do?
Here’s my first attempt:
– Get the troops (all or most of them) out of Iraq. Stop military bullying of Iran, Syria and the like. Reduce the deployment in Afghanistan.
– Cut the military budget.
– Cut the budget for stupid stuff like Homeland Security, War on Drugs, etc.
The problem here is that this will cause a loss of jobs. The cutting of the military budget will cause Boeings of this world to close plants, laying off workers. There has to be a plan of their employment beforehand.
– Absent huge government intervention, the economy will be in recession for several years. This is unacceptable.
The only solution I see is to create a new asset bubble a la housing and dotcoms of the previous years. This will need a huge injection of money into economy
Healthcare needs to be reformed, Obama’s plan will do for start, but Clinton’s was better (a single-payer plan such as the one Kucinich and/or Nader advocated would be even better, but it’s not going to happen). Again, this will need money.
Education needs to be reformed. It’s a shame that in most European countries college education is free or accessible to almost everybody, while here most graduate with huge debt load. Education reform could create more jobs.
In my opinion, the government needs to do two things:
– inflate the money supply. Yes, this will cause prices to go up. However, it’s a lesser evil compared to a recession;
– create a lot of government jobs – a la creating national parks in 1930s, building highways in the 1950s, flying to the Moon in 1960s. I would recommend investing into public transportation – the benefits are jobs, money injection and future reduction of oil consumption.
