Economic Developer

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Recession? “No Way… Just Transformational New Economic Strategies in the works!”

The scary times that are being promoted currently during this election year are more hype than fact… in fact, the media has pictured and positioned this all wrong. Everyone always thinks if the economy comes off of an irrational fiscal stimulus that is based upon nothing more than hype (a speculative bubble) then we must be in bad economic shape.

Most of this is just media and political hype to scare people into remaining polarized in our current economic paralysis and monetized political system.

The current economic condition is more about 40 years of sinful (not in a religious manner) misuse of our abundant economic fruits and failure to prepare and transform our workforce, educational system, tax system, trade system and immigration system for the well publicized and understood burgeoning debt of our gluttony of consumption of resources and economic spending. Our fiscal imbalance has created a perfect storm. We have a huge demographic mass of baby boomers that will begin to withdraw more from the system than they pay in (red ink will exponentially increase from 2010 to 2019). The lack of a transformational economic strategy to pay for our need to retool as a nation our communities, workforce and infrastructure to remain competitive in the global economy is essential.

The real story is in our local innovations to address these issues and they do begin with the letter “R.” It will be about Retooling America to compete for meaningful manufacturing jobs here on our own shores. There will be massive investment into Redevelopment of our core infrastructures and communities to remain the nation with a huge collection of World Class Communities. It will be about the remodeling of our political system to demonetize the political favors, lobbying donations and junkets allocated to the elite rulers of our nation and restoring public confidence in our electoral system to provide first and foremost for the good for the nation as a group of voters not special interests.

Globalization may have been the catalyst for this process but it is not to be viewed with disdain, but rather as just the normal growth of human technologic discovery and trade as a collective society. Such forces have always brought chaotic destruction and opportunity in one package and it is always dependent upon who is gaining and who is losing in the equation at the time.

In the end it will require that we reallocate and rethink our public policy on the collection and uses of taxes to create a balanced national budget and shrinking our current global trade deficit with all others. This new process must be humane to our workforce and our citizens so that the business climate is still enviable to global investors. This means we have to retrofit our version of capitalism to be more capable of providing a meaningful living to all contributing members of our society and providing for their economic and social welfare while doing so.

The 21^st century and this next election will be about overcoming delusional views of our future and our responsibility to humanity and the planet while creating robust economic opportunities for personal, corporate and community growth and progress.

Make no mistake there are yet bubbles to come filled with false hope of quick fortunes and huge economic opportunities. The next one will inevitably be around renewable energy sources… the great innovation race to find new energy strategies and resources to address our current ravishing consumption of fossil fuels. The good news is that we will find new sources and solutions during this process that will lead to our diet and eventual abstinence from fossil fuels in favor or renewable clean and sustainable alternative energy during this century.

By no means does all this mean we are headed for a recession, rather it is our time in history to redraft how it will be recorded 100 years from now. Transformational economic development, driven by world class communities and fearless leaders at the local, regional, state and national level will cast our lot for how history will record our time in this timeline of human evolution.

This next election is about shifting our national paradigm to the long view on responsibilities to our citizens, our communities, and the planet. I hope you view this with optimism even if we have a short period of financial pain in order to enjoy the gains of our new endeavors ahead as America in the 21^st Century.