There is an election in 2020, but I am not running for anything, and one year (or 4 years) is too short a time frame to address many complex problems. A curse of electronic media is encouraging an immediate response to situations with difficult complicated solutions. The following list of challenges requires solutions if the US is to move forward as a functioning country:
PEOPLE: Several problems face us as the community of persons. (In a corporation they would be called "human resources", but that
does not cover the range of issues in a geographic boundary.)
IMMIGRATION Who should be allowed to enter the US and have access to citizenship? What qualifications must they have? For more than three administrations the country has been unable to
formulate policies for persons wishing to emigrate into the US. The current administration's
efforts to make this a divisive issue continues a
failure to resolve this over the last 20 years. Reference to the
inscription on the Statue of Liberty is not a policy, and the split
between parties interferes with a cooperative rational solution.
HEALTHCARE Is healthcare a “right” for all persons? Does the society have an obligation to provide healthcare to all? Should the quality vary according to ability to pay? There are three questions for healthcare: Who
should receive it? Who should pay for it (how should it be paid for)? And why is it so much more
expensive in the US? Obamacare partially addresses only one of the
three, and no candidate addressed all three (in
either party).
HOUSING Who is entitled to housing in the US? Where is it available and must people move to what is available? What produces homeless populations and how to reverse this process?
OPPORTUNITY Does the US still promise economic and social opportunity to all who will work hard enough for it? How hard is that? Does it depend on race or other factors? Will the US perpetuate a tiered society of economic inequality or re-balance the financial population curve?
DIVERSITY Does the country accept that a diverse population is expanding the place of non-whites and will soon alter the political balance? What if some or all of the white population doesn’t accept this? Since its inception the US has been a diverse country. The
original inhabitants, the introduction of slaves, the migration of
French, Spanish, and English settlers, and the annexation of indo-hispanic territories
have been ignored by the political dominance of white
"Anglo-Europeans". This is currently challenged by the many stakeholders of
the country, along with new immigrants. Women,
which includes both females of discriminated groups, and some females of the Anglo-European group, also protest being discriminated in work and other settings, and seek equalization of opportunities. The Constitution did not originally enable diversity, and amendments which support it
have been undermined by the dominant political
group. This is reaching a critical point.
EDUCATION Does the society have a responsibility to educate its children? How much should they receive and what jobs be prepared to perform? The most fundamental task of any society is preparing its youth for the
continuation of the future society. The US has been failing to provide
extensive educational and social training for all youth for most of its
history, and the post WW II period showed some promise of improving
but these gains have been lost since the 90s.
SOCIAL CONSENSUS: Does the country have a common set of values?
Is the US committed to maintaining a patriarchal Judeo-Christian values system, or are women entitled to equal social and political authority? What about other gender variations which violate Judeo-Christian norms? Are they supported in the US society? The dominance of patriarchal male culture was unchallenged until the
amendment giving women the vote. Since the 1980s, new
challenges to patriarchy include gender diversity, female s in
authority roles, and rejection of organized
religions. The US was never "one nation under god" (and never
specified which god) and is certainly not now. And the cultural
diversity is exaggerated by the way in which cultural groups have
migrated to specific regions of the country and established "cultural
outposts" in these regions. The US has a crisis of cultural identity which is being attacked
on all sides by political extremists. The culture of a country cannot
remain static, it must grow and change for future needs.
REGIONAL DIVERSITY Is the US one country or a collection of different regions with different values and orientation? Can one central government manage these differences? How much autonomy do separate regions need?
MATERIAL CHALLENGES The US economy is facing major changes with little guidance from political leadership or labor groups to guide the population through the changes.
ECONOMY Can the US create a growing economy which does not depend on consuming trash or fake financial manipulations?
The US is transitioning from a broad manufacturing economy to an
"information economy" of unknown design, and using financial manipulation to facilitate the changes. No one knows where the
changes are headed. The changes are
creating an inequality of economic opportunity which will lead to
political instability (as it historically has in other places).
The impact is likely to be much more profound than the railroads which totally transformed the country. The current dependence of the
economy on financial manipulation is untenable long term, a result
already observed in England.
CLIMATE The country must make some response to the climate changes in process. Should the US attempt to reduce factors presumed to contribute like green house gases? How important is renewable energy? What (expensive) steps should be taken to deal with changes in coastal sea levels? Who should pay? No matter how stupid you are, or how you attempt to ignore the
weather, the data are clear that there is a change underway. How much
humans contributed to this is not clear, and what humans can do to
moderate it is also unclear. But something must be done. Figuring out
what to do requires overcoming the denial in some, the false
assumptions of others, and a meaningful engineering strategy for each
problem that is recognized. The increasing world population creates more trash, other pollution, and
needs some place to avoid the worst aspects of climate change. This is not a
"homeless" problem, or a "pollution" problem. It impacts everyone by
degrading the available, finite land. Economic
compromises that address the needs of a controlled population is
essential. The consumption of fossil fuels, and other commodities is
part of the problem, not only because of the related pollution and
climate effects, but because they are being depleted!
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY The US is a separate region of the world, and has never mentally adjusted to its separation or to the post cold war era. There are not two "super powers" but multiple players in a complex military-economic world stage requiring sophisticated consideration from both State Department, military, and the public. A leader that feeds the public babble prevents effective policy development and weakens security. The US role in international relations is neither the “sole nuclear power bully”, the “champion of world democracy”, or the “enforcer for global corporations”. US policy must articulate and advocate for US interests on the global stage. In historical terms, the US is a childhood or, at most, adolescent
country. Its prominence during and at the end of WW II is entirely
unrelated to the sophistication of the population or its leaders in
managing the complex relationships with other countries. In
most of its short history, the US has used minor (or major, sometimes
unsuccessful) military incursions in lieu of diplomacy to establish a
foreign policy. This is no longer possible.
POLITICAL INTEGRITY Behind all this is a collapse of political integrity in the country. The days when we could challenge developing countries about their leaderships' exploitation of the population is over. US candidates and leaders depend so totally on campaign financing that their autonomy is a joke. Until this is modified, the values of the country will reflect a small wealthy interest group.
Is it possible to remove enough financial influence from the political process to allow it to represent the broad goals of the country? This is not about "socialism" or preventing people from making profits. It is about revising the political system so that financial factors do not have a significant role. At this time, every other "democracy" accomplishes this to a better extent than the US.
INFORMATION BOUNDARIES The internet has created a new opportunity and challenge for all the nations in the world. It makes
countries vulnerable in unanticipated ways and provides social and
economic opportunities. Currently there is no
national or international process for determining how to manage
this resource for mankind. Instead ignorant people and leaders either
try to "sell" its income value, or rail about its danger, and the need
to cut it off. The most desperate and greedy people are exploiting its
potential before more responsible people pay attention to the
issues.
The TRUMP presidency raised several of these issues without ever resolving any.
Stay tuned for coming posts regarding proposals for how to develop solutions (the actual solutions will require many participants!). If you have other topics to include in the list please comment and I will consider them.
