Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Gameplan and leadership
Share:
by YankeeJim | August 10, 2011 at 06:05 am
144 views | 4 Recommendations | 16 comments
Photos
Friends in high places
Do you ever get the feeling that President Obama 1) doesn’t have a plan to address economic growth, 2) doesn’t have any capable friends to help him, or 3) doesn’t know how to make friends in corporate America? Those three things have him and the rest of us stuck.
Without forward progress where “leadership” is the catchall for action or inaction, there is no way ahead.
For that reason, Republicans are mounting a challenge and Democrats had better reconsider their candidate real quick.
“Only presidential leadership can restart America’s economic engine
By Paul H. O’Neill, Published: August 9
This piece is part of a leadership roundtable on unemployment and restarting America’s jobs engine — with opinion pieces by former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill, Harvard Business School professor and author Bill George, leadership expert Katherine Tyler Scott,Wharton School professor Michael Useem, and Woodrow Wilson Center scholar Amy M. Wilkinson.
In our society, there are some things that can only be done by presidential leadership. Fundamentally fixing the country’s unemployment problem and strengthening, more broadly, its economic engine is one of them. It can’t happen merely at the hands of business leaders.
· Weigh In
Gallery
· Paul O'Neill: Restarting America's economic engine
· Bill George: Where's the action on jobs?
· Michael Useem: The business of employment
· View the full roundtable on unemployment
The major impediments to higher rates of growth are structural. And it’s ultimately only our government leaders—particularly the president—who can help us overcome them, by taking the initiative to overhaul several of these massive, systemic flaws.
To start, we have an unbelievably inefficient tax system in America. It costs our society hundreds of billions of dollars to administer each year, not to mention it under-collects the revenue owed by hundreds of billions of dollars more. And this is further complicated by the fact that the tax system, which should be about raising the revenue we need to pay for the agreed shared needs of U.S. society, is really more about social engineering—every credit and every deduction is formulated to create incentives and disincentives for Americans to cultivate particular behaviors.
That shouldn’t be its mandate. Our lives and the prospects of our economy would be vastly improved if we could reset the tax system to raise revenue; we could do so with some sort of value-added tax. Then, whatever social engineering our government leaders choose to do can be done by writing checks to the people we want to favor. A collateral benefit would be that no individual, non-profit or company would ever have to give money to members of Congress again in hopes of receiving or maintaining a tax benefit.
There are two other structural changes we need to make in order to improve our growth potential. One is to convert our ‘Ponzi scheme’ entitlement programs into truly funded programs to ensure financial security for the aged and disabled, and the other is to focus on the trillion-dollar opportunity—per year—we have to eliminate waste and error in our health and medical care systems.
To fix these three major impediments to U.S. growth requires presidential leadership, and it begins with a truth-telling diagnosis of the problems and the opportunities. We will return to a better growth path in time, but it will never be what it could be until we fix these structural problems.
Paul H. O’Neill served as the 72nd secretary of the U.S. Treasury, from 2001 to 2002. He was also the chairman and CEO of Alcoa.”
Advertisement
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (16)
at 09:31 on August 10th, 2011
The truth! Progressives can't handle the truth. And the unions and emplyees working for government paid services have no interest in the truth. They are only interested in getting for themselves, while spinning the rhetoric that it is others who are only interested in getting for themselves. Look at who's lobbying Obama and to whom Obama is giving tax dollars and waivers. Those getting are those who already have a mechanism in place to get all they demand. Unions. Now the non-union tax payer is directly funding the Unions and union employees. Of course the progressive liberal sees nothing wrong with this picture. They've been working towards this goal for twenty years.
at 10:32 on August 10th, 2011
Well, you won't get me to bite against unions. It is working man's answer to corrupt capitalists.
at 12:25 on August 10th, 2011
Only 440% of Democrats think the President should be challenged by a new candidate. I bet that will increase in the next month to 50%. If we get to 50:50, all bets are off on Obama reelection.
at 12:28 on August 10th, 2011
Unions are corrupt capitalist. Not only do they take from the worker necessitating in wage inflation and consumer costs. Now they have non-union tax-payers feeding their pockets. Taxing for unions is wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
at 13:04 on August 10th, 2011
I think that subject deserves a lot of consideration in context with everything else associated with capitalism.
at 14:59 on August 10th, 2011
Let us start our considerations in context with lobbying first. We can overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie after the re-election of Obama. He shouldn't need much more time to finish the job, comrade. I wonder if Obama will take note of the 40% approval rating among Democrats or hold to his progressive base and hope for the best? Not that a few wont join us independents anyhow. And that will be a good thing. Though I think a series of single term elections will send a better message to politicians. Ignore us at your peril.
at 16:47 on August 10th, 2011
I am a serious critic of the President, but I don't see any contender worth the risk of change. Democrats presently support the President's reelection at 59%. I predict that will fall to 50% in a month. If that happens, he will have competition from his own party.
I do think that studying alternatives to capitalism is a worthwhile endeavor because capitalism is unsustainable under the current model. It fails to fairly address the needs of most people and over-empowers people and corporations on the basis of capital riches alone and fails to address contributions to societies overwhelming needs for humanitarian assistance.
at 17:53 on August 10th, 2011
Right. Everybody who has tried communism is adopting the private capital engine. It is the only one that frees the individual and allows each to achieve, own, trade, and aquire wealth. With out private property there is no advancements. Steve Jobs never gave over his intellectual property to the common good. He charges handsomely for it's use. Same for all the other bleeding heart liberals who say one thing while doing the exact opposite. If you provide food, clothing and shelter to those who can not create product or employment, what need do they have to get up out of bed and aquire by their own effort the essentials of living. None. 50 years ago poor was something you worked your way out of. Today it's a status simbol of the social victim who demands to be cared for. That's not my world. I've been poor and I worked my way into being less poor, and now I have people depending on me and each other to if not become even less poor, not to become poorer for the experience. But I'd rather be poor again knowing I'll have an opportunity to improve myself than live in your idealism where someone else looks after me. I'll keep my dignity and self-respect even if it means working for minimum wage and doing with out the fancy gadgets they kill you for in the inner cities. Thanks. P.S. And if you can't afford to feed yourself you shouldn't be having four or five children. It's not my job or moral responsibility to feed, clothe, and give shelter to those who have zero respect for those of us who will ultimately secure their tommorrow by our effort and paycheck. They are not the victims. It is we who are being victimized.
at 18:02 on August 10th, 2011
I am not advocating communism. There are many things that you say that I agree with, especially those having to do with personal responsibility. Reality is, people are imperfect and everyone is at a different starting position. Some must bear greater burden than others because when anyone fails, it is a drain and drag on everyone else. Working together as a team, society can produce and perform better than permitting everything to skew to extremes.
It is late, but I will think more about your comment here because it is thought provoking.
at 19:17 on August 10th, 2011
My company puts on a free meal once a month. The wives do the shopping and everyone does some of the preparation and cooking, and we all go out to serve the less fortunate who are in our community. Our children included. It is an object lesson we all thought was worth the inherent risk. We struggled with the municipality to get the use of a piece of abondoned property that was once a crackhouse but, had to be torn down because it was shot full of holes from the outside and destroyed from the inside, neglected and left in dangerous ruin. Then we had to deal with gangbangers and drug dealers and other troublemakers who tried to destroy what we were doing. So we went to the police. They said nope. City wont pay for that. Cost too much. So I went to a couple of my police buddies and explained the situation, and now they come by when they can during their patrols and do a walk around off the books. We serve between 80-150 meals. It's a good meal consisting of a green salad, maccaroni, beans, franks and instant drink mix. The same food my own family is happy to have on any given day. You would not believe the complaints we get every month. This experience has taught me you can not do enough for others once you start, and if you answer to their every "need" soon you will be unable to afford what you already do. Same for government. Somewhere the line must be drawn. Assistance should be just that. Assistance. Not a vocation for those unwilling to contribute to their own hierarchy of needs. The unmarried woman with children on welfare in my community have an average 3 children. They do that according to what I'm told because they can get the most from the welfare system. I've met many of them and some aren't old enought to have learnt enought to care for themselves let alone any children. The state is not failing these people. That thinking is simply wrong. Though there are many profiting from the advocation of "the system is to blame". It's not the system which should be blamed but, it's not PC to place the blame where it belongs. We mustn't place any burden of responsibility on the poor victims.
at 03:11 on August 11th, 2011
"Assistance" should come in different sizes and types depending on where people are in their life cycles and work cycles. There is a higher return on investing in youth.
In extremely hard times like today, government is going to have to step up assistance and that means wealthier people are going to have to pay more to cover a larger needy population.
I appreciate your entrepreneurial work ethic -- been there done that. I loved it and keep trying even in my disabled state.
I believe that you are compassionate as you can be.
Real world circumstances serve up people that you really don't want to help because they truly don't deserve it. Unfortunately, some people are on a path to incarceration and we are going to pay for them behind bars whether we want to or not.
at 13:36 on August 11th, 2011
There is so many types of assistance I can't keep track. From what I hear from those who live on assistance there are several programs offering the same thing and my own research shows that there is a lot of duplication across the board. So I don't think we both can be wrong. And while it may sound like I'm against it all, I am not. My sole intention is to interject a understanding that every "social service" must come with an "affordability" along with the idealism. Unfortunately from the very beginning we have neglected the long term affordability of funding these services and continue to push the idealism rather than the understanding of the need to have these services achieve their stated goal in a cost perficient manner. Our primary goal in starting the meal program was not for my company to maintain it. We can't. What we want to achieve is a collection of data from our experience that we can take to the municpality and several religious organizations that already do this work and prove that there is a need in our community. We have no local churches or food bank or anything like it. We live in an area that is the confluence of many cultures and small industry like my own business. It's a no mans land for gangs and drug dealers and property crimes. Any kind of public service is at least 2 miles away from our center. It goes with out saying that the city and municipality is stretched to the maximum and we have been rejected on the face of that but, we have some tentative agreement that if we can prove our case a couple of the religious organizations will consider taking up the role as providers. [???] I don't think in terms of not wanting to help some and not others. Whether they accept the assistance and use that to get ahead is their responsibility. In as much as it is for anyone else. In my opinion "victims" are self made. Not created by the false impression of an uncaring society. I don't know what you mean by "I believe that you are compassionate as you can be." We are 11 men with wives and children hoping that our community effort will show a return in local improvements for our effort. We are not rich people with the capacity to resolve the problems of the world. Not by any means. We can barely influence our own small corner.
at 09:25 on August 11th, 2011
Nice comment .30-06 !
at 13:42 on August 11th, 2011
Thanks The 1
at 09:25 on August 11th, 2011
Good article YJ ! Obama is still the man. He's learning !
at 05:40 on August 12th, 2011
Persistence and patience come from having outlived your own expectations. Think about that.