If Obama really wanted to have a jobs creation program and an alternate energy program, here is what he would do:
1) Mandate that all public transportation systems be changed over to CNG - Compressed Natural Gas - useage with a decade, with intermediate targets set up in a logical manner. Also increas the tax on long haul trucking that is not powered by CNG by 5 cents a mile every year, starting in 4 years.
This would enable the basic infrastructure for CNG to be established nation wide in rapid order. This is a proven technology, it is would cut green house emissions by more than 50% from these sectors, and it would use a domestic supply of fuel, helping to cut the economically crippling balance of payment transfer that we are exporting to the oil countires every year. Indeed, it would have a further impact of really having a lowering impact on oil prices globally.
The infrastructure that was set up could then be used to power CNG private vehicles and other commercial vehicles that were not Public Transportation or Interstate trucking.
2) Streamline the process for the building of new nuclear power plants. Despite decades of bad press, American nuclear power plants are the safest means of producing power in history. Burning coal produces more radiation into the enviroment than the entire US nuclear industry does. (Sounds weird, I know, so go look it up.) Invest in mas production of the new micro sized bebble bed nuclear energy sources.
3) Build and then mothball factories for national defense. Yes, build factories capable of producing every component of Humvees, M-1 Abrams, F-22 and F-35 jets, UH-60 helocopters, M-4 rifles and virtually every other frontline, state of the art weapon system - particularly ammunition - that the US uses, and mothball the factories. This could be done very, very rapidly. The plans for all the machinery and plants already exist. build the plants, mothball them, and let them sit idle forever - unless they are actually needed. In which case they will worth their weight in gold.
Remember, if NASA decided today to send a man to the moon, it would take longer than it did to send Armstrong to walk there from Kennedy first proposed it. Even NASA says this.
4) Give ownership of the public housing in the big cities to the occupants - in exchange for a gaurantee that they would never again seek any sort of public housing.
5) Right now, a country with a low taxation policy on the production of goods has a very great advantage over any American company producing goods in the USA. This is exacerbated by the other costs of production, mainly those of capital, labor and regulatory. The USA has some of the highest regulatory costs in the world. Changing our tax structure to be more on consumption rather than on production - at net neutral level, where the amounts garnered by the government are the same - would shift much of the tax burden away from production and onto the makers and sellers of the goods. This would be beneficial to American Producers of goods and detrimental to overseas low cost producers of goods to the US market.
6) Begin production in the United States of 1,000 freighters, oil tankers, bulk ore carriers and Ro-Ro container ships, and then put them in harbor, mothballed.
This is a national defense situation, so all the work can be done in the USA. What, we no longer have the shipyards to produce 50, let alone 100 ships a year? National defense situation right there! By embarking on a long term program to build and store ships to conduct the shipping the USA would need in a time of war, we are recreating the shipbuilding industry here that we have lost in the last 50 years. And making hundreds of thousands of jobs. And reinvigorating industry, particularly heavy industry.
7) Remove commercial, non-DoD and non-NASA flights into space (say, over 60,000 feet) from the FAA. Long involved story, but basically companies that want to try to get into space commercially have to abide by many of the FAA rules as Delta or Alaska. Making it economically unviable. Ergo, no real competition for NASA.
Inflation in the USA has been kept down for years by two simple things - The flow of ever cheaper (in real terms) goods from Asia, particularly China, into the US market, and the ready availability of cheap labor through illegal immigration. Cut off the inexhaustable supply of cheap, unskilled or semi-skilled labor by illegal immigrants, and labor prices will rise. Employment of Americans will increase, particularly on the low end jobs. This will also help lower government expenditures (unemployment, welfare, crime, etc).
9) Increase the use and extraction of domestically sources natural resources. This produces jobs directly. It also helps to prop the US Dollar, already being called the "sick old man of the world". It creates revenue by direct taxation, by directly employeeing the workers involved, and by secondary and teriary effects.
10) Reform the US legal system to make it quicker and less complex in commercial activities.
11) Scrap the entire idea of "Cap and Trade" until China and India impose similar programs.
I won't bore you with my more radical ideas.
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Topic: Obamacare is a Tax Scam (Read 1101 times)