I would like to be president, will you vote for me?

Unlike most, I am proud and excited about the United States, NOW. I believe we ARE a great country. We are the greatest country and things are going well for us. The struggles we share today, in the past and still to come, only create more greatness and strength. Times often seem worse than they should be but strength, purpose and meaning come out of struggle. I know no one who says things are great at the time they made the comment, it is always hindsight that we admire. I refuse to look back as a way to morn what I do not have, I believe everyday America exist, is another day we exceed the expectation of every nay-sayer, crook, dictator, oligopoly or power that thinks it knows better than the people it rules. We are America, we are the greatest country that has ever existed, and we fight like no other people because we are a country of THE PEOPLE. It is never possible to defeat a foe that fights as one for themselves. This is our greatest strength and are greatest power over all. We do not fight for a king, for a party, for a president. We are unbeatable and everlasting because we fight for ourselves, for us, THE PEOPLE.

I want to be President. It is the only job in the United States guaranteed to bring great frustration, enormous pain, and early death to me. I want to be President because I want to say what needs to be said. I do not believe I will be able to do all that is great or live up to any specific expectations. I will not be able to move congress or make massive shifts in government. To be frank, I don’t want to. We have great roads, great courts and police, the best military, the best science. I want to tell the truth as I see. I want to be in a position that makes people take a moment to hear truth. Not religious, scientific or abstract truth. Just the perspective of what is smart. My platform is one of Smarts. I am going to say what I think is the smart thing to do. I am going to listen to what others think is the smart thing to do. I want to debate what the smart thing to do is. I want people to start arguing, discussing, debating, conversing and negotiating what are the SMART things to do. This is Smart democracy

Vote for me and I promise only one thing; I promise to always ask what is the smartest thing I could do, then once convinced, to do it.

Below are my areas of smart government:

  1. Effective government
  2. Intelligent taxation
  3. Separation of Church and State
  4. Protection of the people

Almost everything a smart government should do, can be summarized in the list above.  I will work on defining each over the next couple months.  I look to you for input how to Sartly define each to give focus and direction to the difficult task of our government.

I am a United States Citizen and I am proud today!

It is far better than anyone wants to admit!

Lets talk economics.  I know many of you don’t like economics and even more of  you did poorly in it at college.  The key is you went to college and in today’s US economy, there is nothing more important than having gone to college.

The premise for the rest of this discussion is that our economy, the US economy, is doing great.  I know that both sides of the isle do not want to talk about it, but from a utilitarian point of view and that of the middle class and up, our economy is strong, effective, efficient and most of all, stable and in good shape.

Our banks are strong, our businesses are making money, our trade is improving, our dollar is weak (this is good for economics) and people are spending money.  This leaves the only issue of contention, employment.  Out of 20 articles I have read recently, almost all discuss employment as the proof of our failing economy.  In fact, many of these articles discuss it as the only issue.

There is one piece of information that both parties agree is too sensitive to discuss,  unemployment distribution.  I am talking about the unemployment rate between white collar (I define as college educated) and blue collar America. No one wants to point out that the unemployment rate for those with a college education is 4.4% (the Atlantic, July 14th 2011) .  What makes this amazing is that natural unemployment is 5% (CBO, 2007).  This implies that we have NO unemployment for those with a college education.  Yes, I read CNN and FOX News too.  Yes, they tell stories about people being out of work for ever and the plight of the college grad.  Out of millions of people, there will always be poeple who suffer.  Problem with this, is that at the macro level, college educated people never suffered during the recession and always had their jobs.  You can deny it but the facts speak for themselves.  The unemployment rate for College Educated people never rose above a natural unemployment rate.  The educated, never suffered from a recession.

Now here is the sensitive part, those with a high school diploma are at 10.8%  and those with no diploma are at 14.3% unemployed (Howard Gold, Oct 2010).  We already know the rich are getting richer and the poorer are getting poorer.  What we did not know was is that the educated are keeping their jobs and the uneducated are not.

Now why does this make for a great economy.  The unpleasant truth is that our blue collar labor pool  costs too much.  The mass of jobs available for individuals without a college education tend be in areas that are exportable, most notably, manufacturing.  The underlying problem is that our blue collar labor force costs too much.

Economic cycles exist to bring demand and supply and the relative expenses and incomes of demand and supply into balance.  As we have priced ourselves out of the blue callor world labor market, our domestic demand for these resources have shrunk.  Growing unemployment is the tool by which costs for labor are forced down.  Over time, the reduction in labor price brings demand back.

No one, including conservative business centric Republicans, want to say to the unemployed, “Hey, it is a good thing you are out of work, we need to drive down the cost of labor.”  Oh, by the way, the rest of us are doing fine so tough it out!

There is much to learn from this.  One of the most obvious is get an education.  As world markets open and technologies improve, blue collar labor demand will continue to decline.  If we do not prioritize education, we are going to see the divide between economic classes grow and social, political, and economic conflicts expand.