I have listened for as long as I can without speaking out and realize that two simple solutions are the answer on the economy. The solutions are simple, but implementation is hard. When I was young, someone impressed me with a saying that has stayed with me my entire adult life: "if you don't know where you are heading, you will end up where you are going." I took that to mean if you don't plan and set the goal, you will end up going nowhere. What is missing from the current economic situation is the clear goal that should take us back to prosperity. Instead, we have a series of actions that, put together, are what they are: unrelated individual actions that could inflate a portion of the balloon, but won't create anything worthwhile. It is time to set the plan, which I can do very easily, and leave the implementation to those who can make it happen.
In the early 90's, when we were floundering as a nation, those who implement great ideas sought to bring us into the "information era." When Bill Clinton took office, it was reported that there were less than one hundred web sites in the world (most likely an inaccurate figure, but you get the idea). Now you can't go anywhere in the world without finding a room where the inhabitants have more than 100 web sites between them. The result was the dot com boom, followed by the stock market boom and bust. We still have the residual of all that was good about the era, the companies that were created, the technology and the wealth. The names that are part of our national fabric are a testament to that: Ebay, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, E Harmony.com, etc.
After 9/11, when the economy was at a low, those who could, did it again. We had experienced the information technology boom, now it was time for the communication boom. We had come from the telephone up to the cell phone and then we paused.
In the beginning of the century, we exploded with communications from Blackberrys that kept those who could, typing through life; the iPhone, which created the first lines I had seen at a phone store since those lines that used to form outside the phone company on the last day you could pay your bill without having the phone shut off. Added to that, we now have texting (and if you do not know what it is, sit next to a teenager at a movie). Once again, the world was excited, companies were created, and wealth was being created.
Now it is time to do it again. We have moved information and the ability to keep in touch at record speeds, and now it is time to move people. We know how to move people around the world, across the nation, from city to city, but we have never found a way to get the masses into the city to work and shop and out again without massive jams, huge loss of productivity, physical danger and a stagnation of living and working.
I have seen some rudimentary solutions such as the changing of the lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge, adding more in the morning going into San Francisco and reversing it by adding more in the evening going out of the city. We need 21st century solutions to a 19th century problem and voila, the world gets excited, companies are created, technology is advanced and wealth is built. Fixing the roads and infrastructure is not the answer, but merely an unrelated action that won't inflate the economy. Let those who can, find the way to move people in a better manner and watch out for the explosion.
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