| abstract
| - Furthermore, this is completely wrong. There are a panoply of extremely important issues which require immediate and strong and dramatic reform legislation and executive management in order to prevent from developing into severe ailments which threaten America's standing as the sole superpower, or even possibly remaining one of the coming Great Powers or a first-world nation. The American social system is critically damaged by decades of Reaganomics and ideologue legislation and culture. The American worker saw their wages adjusted for inflation stagnate between the mid-1970s and 2000, with many costs associated with success and quality of life dramatically increasing. Health care and pension security is much more threadbare for the working and lower middle and middle classes today than in the 1970s. Both parents work, their children are even more dependent on public education and recreational/extracurricular support, which has been starved at the roots and mismanaged. More and more jobs are fleeing abroad, while reliance on a bloated collegiate education system with exploding costs and an inability to better manage and direct students into quality careers and self-reliance has increased dramatically. We are producing legions of business and communications majors who are motivated by nothing but class consciousness and insecurity and with no clear job skills or prospects. Health care in the United States is among the worst coverage and quality of outcome of any industrialized nation. National single-payer health care or a well-managed hybrid system with guaranteed lower costs, better outcomes, and universal availability is required immediately. Education must be dramatically and radically reformed. In order to sustain these reforms, and dramatic reform of our electoral process (specifically regarding gerrymandering, campaign finance, and corruption) must be undertaken simultaneously with dramatic fiscal and monetary reform to return America from a severe debtor nation publicly and privately to a creditor in the medium-term, while reducing current account deficits as soon as possible. Global warming is a real, scientifically verifiable, and accelerating process. Dramatic action must be taken on four fronts: dramatically lowering carbon output, adaption to the changing climate, research and deployment of mitigating geoengineering efforts (like carbon capture and sequestration, among others), and providing strong leadership to coerce and encourage dramatic move in all previous three directions by other industrialized and industrializing nations. Concurrently with this effort, massive transitionary reforms must be undertaken in how we supply the energy to our modern society. Nuclear power must be pursued with all due haste in the immediate, for it is a proven technology that can yield results in the short-to-medium term to fill the gap caused by lagging research and development and economy of alternative options such as wave, tide, wind, solar (both thermal and photovoltaic), and possibly (if rigorously proven and economically/environmentally worthwhile) zero-carbon-emission fossil fuel technologies. In the long term, development of reliable long-term fission and alternative infrastructure must be secured, and fusion power should be a much higher priority for international cooperation and development. Our transportation infrastructure must be replaced and reformed with a dramatic increase of reliance on heavy rail freight and an expansion of light rail for personal transportation. Reintroduction of trollies powered by electricity and draconian penalties (high parking fares, high tolls, gas taxes, registration and sales taxes) on personal vehicle use should be employed in high-density population centers. Much higher and stronger targets for fuel economy must be set. A much stronger emphasis on electric vehicle research and production must be undertaken. Development needs to be reconcentrated along New Urbanist and New Pedestrianist lines where possible in lieu of the exurban/extended suburban commuter-in-personal-vehicle model. Strong reform is required in the military sphere. Currently America is still using the Vietnam cludge to squish ants throughout the world. The U.S. needs to reemphasize soft power of the diplomatic, economic, financial, scientific, and cultural kind while deemphasizing the hard power of military intervention. The cost of the Armed Forces must be reduced, and the cost of military R&D and acquisition must be brought under control. The U.S. probably should undertake a more isolationist posture emphasizing strategic defense in lieu of conventional and occupation interventionism. Lastly, we need to produce a global space colonization effort with real goals centered around worthwhile permanent industry and development in space. We cannot live in the cradle forever.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)