President Obama and the State of the Union

by: lfurman

Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 09:27:39 PM EST

I had the honor, privilege and good fortune of seeing then-Senator Obama speak in Hoboken, on November 2, 2006, at a campaign event for Senator Menendez. Afterwards I called my father and said "I think I just saw the next President of the United States." Two years later, November, 4, 2008, he and the American voters proved me right; I attended a victory party for President Obama, Senator Lautenberg, for "Change we can believe in," for the American people, and for, I think, the world.

I felt like that watching the State of the Union; less euphoric, more focused and disciplined.

lfurman :: President Obama and the State of the Union

He asked for a better health care plan. I can answer that in five words: "Single Payer; Medicare For All." Medicare works for my octogenarian father. Medical Insurance Care doesn't work for my 20-something son. He just graduated from college. He has no job and therefore no medical insurance. If he was a full-time student he'd be covered on my insurance. A simple reform would cover recent graduates until they find a job that pays a living wage and provides health insurance benefits, or by expanding Medicare to cover all citizens. This is much easier said than done. Our medical care system cannot adequately care for approximately 50 million people - one out of six. This can't be changed overnight, but it must be changed.

He also said "The best anti-poverty program is a world class education." It's a positive, or reinforcing, feedback loop. Education enables people to accomplish more, earn more, and better educate their children, who also accomplish more and earn more. It is one of the most important differences between the populations of New Jersey and West Virginia. This is described in detail in Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows, (C) 2008, published by Chelsea Green, ISBN 978-1-60358-055-7.

Energy is another set of systems problems. No one who has seen a once pristine valley after strip mining or "mountain-top removal" uses the term "Clean Coal." Countries like Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Japan, and Sweden built their economies with education not extraction of natural resources. As you alluded to, conservation and clean, renewable energy technologies - solar, wind, geothermal, hydro - can be implemented faster, at a lower cost, and with fewer negative economic externalities than traditional fuel intensive resource based technologies like fossil fuel and nuclear power. This suggests another of the differences between New Jersey and West Virginia - the "Blessings of Education" versus the "Resource Curse" from which areas built on extraction of natural resources suffer.

You, as President ,need economic advisors who start think in terms of ecological economics, of the Genuine Progress Indicator, GPI, rather than Gross Domestic Product, GDP. Simply put, ecological economics is neoclassical economics with a better understanding of the long term and of costs. Spending one dollar - or one trillion dollars - to clean up a mess is not as good as allocating those resources to build factories, houses, libraries, museums - the infrastructure, culture, and community of a nation.

Good luck, and thanks,

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