There were three separate issues reported in the news this
week, all on the same day, all symbiotic but the connection was not noticed by
the media.
One was homelessness in Hawaii and how it adversely affects
tourism; the homeless don’t look good to tourists while sleeping on the beach
or smell good going to the bathroom in the streets.
The second issue was immigration in Bakersfield, California,
where Kevin McCarthy, the new house Republican majority leader resides, and how
undocumented workers were attractive when farmers want crops picked but quite
unattractive when the pickers flood the hospitals and overwhelmed school
system.
The final issue was income inequality, regarding how much to
raise the minimum wage for workers employed by the various cities, a hot topic
debated by the major city mayors at their annual United States Conference of
Mayors held this year in Dallas, TX. They could not agree on how much it should
be or even if it was a good idea.
All three issues are connected to the same social issues
facing all of us. Without jobs people become homeless, without money or jobs
people become both poor and homeless and without hope in countries south of the
USA people come here looking for work, find it when in season, but can’t afford
to live here when the work is not in season. Poverty and homelessness becomes the natural next step.
The first question concerning all three issues can’t be how
much will it cost, although it is usually the first question asked by those who
have no answers. No, the best first question is “will it ever end”, followed by
when and how. Then the question can be how much will it cost. If we continue down this path of
poverty, homelessness and unending illegal immigration there will be no end and
the cost of inaction will rupture our economy, the country and our way of life.
The answers offered by elected officials are weak, if at
all. In Hawaii they give the
homeless tickets, push them out of tourist attraction neighborhoods, and
threaten them with fines they can’t pay or put them in jail at an additional
cost to the taxpayers of Hawaii.
There is a plan to spend $47 million on public housing but again someone
else is going to have to pay for it and it will not solve the problem, only
postpone it.
In the farmland there is no offered solution, as farmers
want the cheap labor, when they want it, but the remainder of the community
wants the illegal migrant worker immigration to STOP altogether.
Increased minimum wages might be an answer but are they long
term? When an employer can’t afford, or does not want to pay the required
minimum wages, they lay off employees who then move from the list of low wage
employees to the doles of poverty and ultimately homelessness. Is that a good
thing? It might be an answer but is it a solution?
There is no interest in immigration reform in DC, especially
by the Republicans yet while “immigration reform” is a great sounding phrase it
is equally as hollow when its true meaning is broken down. Do we give amnesty
to those here illegally, while allowing the borders to remain so porous our
next generation will face the same problem only at higher levels? Do we simply keep kicking the
immigration can down the road so someone else has to solve the problem or do we
put troops on the border to keep “them” out?
Do we shift homeless people to parts of towns no one sees so
our blindness deludes our thinking into a perception of a solution? And,
finally is paying a higher minimum wage truly a solution or simply a
postponement of a reoccurring problem?
Personally I see no simple answer to these connected
problems but one that is completely without merit is the one that is currently
in vogue, INACTION.
Hide our collective heads in the sand and “kick the can down
the road” are anachronistic approaches. They don’t work and they won’t
work. These, and many other social
problems like them, will continue, get larger and become far more
profound. Just giving people more
money, houses or benefits begs two fundamental questions: how will we pay for
what we are currently doing and is what we are doing really good for those who
continue to take from society and refuse to give back? I say the answer is NO.
Jobs are always offered as a solution but “jobs” is a hollow
phrase and works better in a prepared speech given by politicians to their
constituents but fails when observed in contemporary reality. Politicians love
speech making far more than offering solutions. “Job creators” is one of their
preferred terms, used on behalf of their corporate supporters. The term
attracts an enthusiastic response but overlooks the fact that companies are in
business to make money, profit, not to create jobs. The creation of jobs is a
by-product of corporate innovation, of new ideas, of new products and services
all of which will eventually require more employees.
Much overlooked is the basic premise of technology: reduce.
By definition technology makes things smaller, cheaper and faster. Technology
is designed to reduce cost, waste and, yes, jobs. You don’t hear robots asking
for more money, pensions or better working conditions and you don’t find
electronic devices sneaking across borders in the middle of the night.
Technology is being used extensively everywhere to reduce the need for people.
Pure and simple it is designed as a job destroyer. But if technology has killed all these jobs and
consolidation has eliminated massive duplication and it is so destructive then
why do we have more millionaires, billionaires, thousands of new companies, new
products, new services today than we have ever had in our entire history? Based on the overwhelming success of
many in this country it would be hard to suggest there is not a future in
America and not a huge one.
I think there is a bigger and brighter future in America now
than there has ever been before but we must understand it is a “different”
future and it is in that difference that we MUST focus all of our attention,
resources and imagination. Forget about what worked in the past. That was the
past. Now we have to focus on the future and what works now.
Before we delve into how these positive “differences” manifest themselves in
our future we need to solve the current social problems that we have been
carrying with us for the past 50 or more years, issues that manifest themselves
in what was available to us back then, in our past, and how we chose to live
our lives. It was understandably different in the past. We lived very different lives with many
choices that are no longer available or no longer germane. While many people
have moved on to a more positive, enlightened future a far greater number have
been unable or unwilling to do the same and feel they have been left
behind. We cannot abandon
them but we cannot let them bankrupt the next several generations simply by
giving them more.
The answers for solving what for too long have been the
unsolvable problems are responsibility, sacrifice and consequence. Every single
American has to accept responsibility for both them and for this country,
period. Going forward NO ONE is going to get everything he or she wants.
Everyone will have to give up something. There will be a shared sacrifice and
EVERYONE has
to understand what it is they must give up. It might be different for different
folks but in the end a sacrifice by everyone will be expected. There has to be
no exceptions. The arguments made by every side of every social argument have
to change. They can no longer prevail at the expense of others. Everyone will
have to accept what to them will appear to be less, and probably will be, but
that will be the consequence for too much unwillingness and recalcitrance in
the past in dealing with the problems that now plague all of us. We owe it to
ourselves and we owe it to this country.
Politicians will have to stop pandering to those who they
think elect them. Every district, regardless of its predominance, has all types
of people and all people and opinions have to be represented. Maybe a few
elected officials will have to bite the bullet and, while in office endeavor to
compromise for the good of the country and not the good of the few. If in the
end they don’t get re-elected then so be it but at least they will have done
the right thing. Imagine if they all willingly worked to actually solve
problems, rather than avoid them, maybe none of them would lose their office.
The people in office are the ones we elected. They are not
part of some World Cup soccer tournament. There are not several teams here. We
are all on the same team. We may have different players but all of us are
competing to win as a whole. This is not a sport. This is our country and we
elected people to solve its problems not pander to the highest bidder and forgo
the future of the next several generations.
If we are to continue to be as great as we have been in the
past we need to change our behavior and start to think as one, to figure out
how to exploit our differences in positive ways, ways that employ, support and
encourage all of us to participate. We have to focus on the differences of the
future and can no longer afford to hold on to a past, regardless of whom it
might endanger.
The “difference” mentioned above lies in the type of
products and services 21st century Americans are creating, literally
industries that will guarantee jobs for everyone willing to work going forward.
The overwhelming majority of what we produced and consumed
in our past now is cheaper to buy from overseas companies where wages are lower
and worker rights are less regulated.
So we have to get over that fact of life and accept we will not be a net
positive exporter of manufactured goods and services.
What do we make and use today that did not even exist when
General Motors, United States Steel and so many other major manufacturers
employed hundreds of thousands of people, most of which constituted our middle
class citizens? Look around: we
have become an automated society. Technology drives everything. Everything we
do has been studied, analyzed and copied with the intention of automating it
and/or controlling it. The ambition of every creator, inventor or designer is
to use technology to make things easier, more cost effective, better, more fun,
more enjoyable or more useful. There is literally an app for everything and if
one does not exist it is probably being designed in a garage somewhere or has
no application.
We are riding the wave of innovation as has never been seen
before. The list of new and exciting products brought to market overwhelms the
mind. There is nothing we want to see, listen to, hear or experience that is
not literally at our finger- tips. There has been more creative innovation in
the last 25 years than has existed since before humans inhabited the earth. It
is inconceivable that with all this new and evolving technology, the truly
exciting products and services and the remarkable epidemic of creativity and
innovation that we are incapable of exploiting their uses for the good of our
citizens.
There are a few things we MUST do.
Develop a real immigration policy. Whatever we decide the
borders have to be a fundamental part of the solution.
Eliminate all corporate subsidies regardless of the industry
they represent. Farm, energy, oil and gas, use of public lands and any other
financial support given to companies as incentives to do business. If they
cannot compete honestly with the products they make based upon the costs to
bring them to market then let them go out of business.
Fix the tax codes and eliminate all deductions. Deductions
are only useful to those who can afford to hire professional advice to avoid
paying them. For the majority of Americans deductions are meaningless.
Use tax dollars only for purposes of innovation, research,
education and support services we all use: roads, bridges, utilities, military,
first responders, disaster protection etc.
Finally we have to decide on what to do with those who
cannot take care of themselves. Some of our citizens will never be able to take
care of themselves, for reasons well beyond their control and we must always
stand up for them. People with serious medical, physical, emotional or mental
challenges have to be supported by the rest of us. But for the hundreds of
thousands of others who, over the course of their lives, made poor choices or
continue to do so we are going to have to say: enough. It may seem cruel or harsh but if we
don’t develop expectations and hold people accountable there will simply be no
incentive for them to take care of themselves. We cannot afford to burden our following generations with
the costs associated with continual baby-sitting.
For those among us without the wherewithal to prevail in the
world today, through bad choices but in environments where the choices were not
wholly their own to make we need to offer safety nets to them. But for those among
us who are in grade schools and below we must develop educational outlets that
give incentives and options for making better choices. In the end if the
choices made are conscious and continue to be poor choices we must let them
know there will be no net and they will be completely on their own. If other
citizens want to care for them that will be their right as well as their choice
but we as a nation will no longer give them free care. If they have had the
exposure, education and the wherewithal to make the appropriate choices and
failed to do so then they will have to survive on their own.
This is the brightest time in our history. We have serious
problems and they have all been pushed aside for the purposes of re election.
Far too many elected people think they know everything. Well they don’t. None
of us do. They have to understand their job is to solve problems, not win.
If we are to leave a healthy planet to the next generation
we must solve the problems we created in this one.
The next time you hear from me it will be on “the
environment”, another of those pesky problems our elected officials are
convinced they know better than anyone else. Stay tuned.
