Capitalism's Damaged Muscles

Fixing capitalism for the richest country in the world

When all this Coronacrap is over, and we have the vaccine and herd immunity has come about, and when we the herd can congregate any damn way we want to, there are still going to be millions of us out of work. Unemployed, busted, homeless, turning to crime or living with our relatives, not to put too fine a point on it.

The muscle of capitalism is its workforce. 

Ours is in terrible shape, even without the Virus. That really needs to be fixed. We need a healthy, stable, motivated, well trained work force. That's not what we've got right now. Confidence is rattled. Well deserved fear is about.  It's not everybody, but there many million of our fellow citizens who see they are in deep trouble. For capitalism to survive, this has to be fixed.

In the days of Roosevelt, there was a functional majority of the nation that decided to support the New Deal. It was proof that government can respond - if imperfectly, perhaps - to national peril with large scale actions. In my view, the New Deal saved the nation and made it possible to fight WWII. Think of the alternative.

An obvious response to our current  situation, (which I believe will save, even improve the nation) is to launch the Green New Deal - green infrastructure projects by the hundreds and thousands. Launch it like a rocket, move fast, treat it like the emergency it is. Engage our unemployed by the millions as quickly as is possible. Sort them, assess their interests and abilities, begin intensive training programs and get them on the new jobs ASAP. Commence their income immediately.

Equip this new army with the equipment and technology to work at the highest levels. Buy American. 

The list of objectives is quite large:  Fix the roads, bridges, tunnels, train tracks, airports and all that hard infrastructure, and do it all as GREEN as possible. Go pure green building a buried grid for all the wind and solar farms that will be in the plan. Insulate every home and business that needs it with the highest performing insulations. Get water and sewer systems back up to par. Deliver broadband to all of rural America. Completely refurbish all the National Parks. Fix, then staff and equip public schools with everything they need to do first class education for all citizens. Begin the conversion of factory farms to smaller, more sustainable farms with private owners. Make health insurance a right of citizenship. Give every qualified high schooler a free college education. Pay the colleges enough for them to do superior work and be fully staffed with the best professors. Provide the non-college kids with world class vocational educational opportunities. Let them train on state-of-the-art hardware under top notch instructors. Return R&D to its rightful place in schools and industry. Return organized labor to its rightful place in the force.

We must get our priorities straight. 

A lot of the people who are permanently losing their jobs in this pandemic are at the bottom of the income curve, thus at the bottom of several measures including education and health. The hammer fell hardest on service workers, clerks, caretakers, maids and the like who lack the training to perform many better paying jobs. This reality must influence the policy on executing anything like the Green New Deal.

Millions of our out-of-work citizens can go to work for the GND, the 21st Century version of the New Deal in the last Great Depression.  (It's upon us, btw, it's just not obvious yet.) The second Great Depression in 80 years.

Here's the deal. Either income is created for all these millions of Americans ripped from their jobs by the financial disease that accompanied the pandemic, or homelessness and crime and sickness could flood our country. OR federal, state and local governments will have to pay for the most expensive bail out in history, and we won't recover for decades.

That seems to be a recipe for financial and social catastrophe.

There is only one conceivable (at least by me) solution. It will require a fairly radical rewire of our financial circuitry. I don't pretend to understand the specifics of how to provide what we obviously need, but I have great optimism that we can do it IF....

...We stop fighting with each other via the demon-eye of hate, start cooperating at a practical level and grant our adversaries a modicum of respect.  Then we can pull together and do

The Green New Deal

Big Time

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