Who Speaks in 2008?

Who now speaks for single payer, universal health care? All employees and employers should contribute via payroll deduction by Medicare; the latter would distribute funding of health care revenues to the current distribution of providers. It is clean and simple: savings in administration alone would be an incentive. The downside is the loss of income and consequent loss of jobs in the health insurance industry: we should give preferential hiring status to those at risk employees from the industry into Medicare for the new positions that it will take to assume the responsibility.

Who speaks now for re-industrialization; a strong, industrially-based, economic infrastructure that provides employment for Americans? We should have a diversified economy that provides for all of our social, economic, cultural, and military needs. We should use federal funds to underwrite the start up of cooperative employee groups that want to assume responsibility for the work that it will take for us to be socially, culturally, economically, and militarily secure. Those co-ops would be much less likely to try to send our jobs abroad. We should be creating public utilities using a diversified, technologically advanced system of energy production, storage, and transportation; this should include new oil and gas refineries along with other infrastructure until we transition off of that source of energy; in so doing, we can develop the safest product possible from that source.

Solar energy can provide most of our stationary sources of energy use, including transportation. We should invest in a nationwide network of high speed rail, and we should use the most advanced technology possible. This should include local use of new magnetic and other technology. We want to look at the most promising technology for solar panels; this would include the actual structure of the panels but also the type of solar panel material used and its relative cost; there is promising work in South Africa for a more efficient product. There are many other sources of energy that are now available or in some distant horizon such as nuclear fusion.

We cannot develop this secure social order unless we gain control of employer hiring practices with a verifiable worker eligibility system. Doing so will expose employers who are illegally hiring ineligible workers. The outcome will include the loss of millions of jobs by ineligible workers over time. We need to plan for that dislocation so that we implement it humanely. We will also need to address those foreign residents who truly want to become Americans after generations of residence. While we should be generous in implementing these policies, we must also be prudent in protecting the interests of citizens and other legal residents.

In so doing, we should coordinate with our international neighbors. Those countries should welcome those educated, experienced workers to help develop their country. Those here illegally should have part of their contribution to social security, albeit via illegal use of credit cards, returned to them upon a return to permanent home residence. I would suggest that people would have to demonstrate a negotiated residency requirement before payment. By the way, if we do that we should also help them borrow money to tide them over at a reasonable rate, so they are not gouged by economic predators.

One of the most important reasons to talk to our international neighbors is to deal with the issue of over population. Humanity is a cancer on the earth that threatens to kill it: there should only be about 2 billion people on the planet. We should accomplish this slowly over numerous decades of efforts but get it done.

My own belief is that we need to abolish wage slavery if we are going to do these things more efficiently and thoroughly, but that is another issue for another discussion. In the meantime, we have a Constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare of our citizens. Conservatives completely disregard the inclusion of the language in the preamble and Article I, and Liberals don’t talk about it nearly enough. Just because James Madison had a narrow view of the concept does not mean that we can’t alter our views based up current needs and opportunities. Jefferson used that logic in the Louisiana Purchase. Financing the railroads is another example, but control of the monopoly conditions by big money resulted in most profit benefits going to railroad magnets; that is why we should develop our infrastructure via public utilities wherever possible.