March 5, 2020 Rethink
After thinking through what has evolved over the past few months we have come to the following conclusions on the 2020 election.
Democratic voters are exhausted by the process and want to settle in for a more comfortable move forward. All one has to do is watch Donald Trump every day and realize the last thing the people of the United States need at this point is a disrupter.
What this means is Joe Biden is someone the country feels it knows well. True, he is from a bygone time and in not the most innovative person on the block, but he is a known entity. To many of us it has been apparent that probably any one of the top five Democrat candidates running could have easily beat Trump, and the electability issue hurt some, especially Warren and Klobuchar. In fact we would say there really is no need for Presidential debates in the the 2020 election, why waste the time and money when we know both of the contenders so well.
Providing the party is ok with Biden at the top and we don’t need to spend more time debating this aspect of the election, what is important is the people who will vote on and implement a new government for the people. What that means is who is selected for Vice President to spear head issues and getting a majority in Congress, both the House and Senate to initiate the bills to get the country back on track.
Specifically, we think Elizabeth Warren with her experience in setting up and running the Consumer Protection Agency is a top pick for VP. She can get thinks done, and if Democratic voters go to work and get top people in the House and Senate, bills can be written and passed and the get done and the administration will be able to get things moving.
The environment that a new administration will be addressing could be challenging. Moving to more equality for all in terms of many areas, personal and economic will be huge. One only has to go back to the early 1980’s when the Reagan Administration implemented it’s Supply Side, Trickle Down agenda to see where much of the inequality originated.
That will need to change, and that will involve structural issues. The problems relating to student loan debt and speculative money in the markets, markets where the economy and markets never seem to be in the same ballpark are part of the change needed. America is not a free lunch society, student debt will need to have some innovative pay down programs to make it more equitable and faster to close out the balances.
The bigger issue, the education debt issue that grew from the trickle Down 1980’s where state and federal entities reduced their funding share and required students to pick up a much bigger share, has to be reversed. On income inequality, we don’t need to talk about wealthy people being bad or having too much money, they just manipulated the system based on what was set up in government in the 1980’s. Structural change will include those issues in a move to a more equal America.
Health care is another issue that will need to be addressed by the next administration. Democrats in the primaries seemed to come at the issues backwards, throwing out solutions before they described the problem.
Obama’s Affordable Care Act hit the number one problem, pre-existing conditions, on the head and made it work a number of years ago. The number two problem in health care, the uninsured, is really where the under the table debate arguments started. And the number three problem, making health care more efficient in outcomes and affordability was totally nebulous, probably because politicians cannot solve that, it will take people with expertise in that issue.
The key Health Insurance issue which the debates got hung up on, (and which could have had more meaningful debate, if the DNC would have put up this chart first. Round numbers )
- Median American Employee Income $ 56,000
- Average total Employer paid Health Insurance 20,000
- Average Employer paid portion 14,000
- Average employee paid portion 6,000
Key question how does the government fund the cost of the uninsured who typically have no employer insurance and have incomes closer to the AGI number of $ 36,000 which is average gross income after some deductions. There is no way they are going to fork over $ 20,000, so they either opt for no insurance or high deductible and hope they never have a big health issue and have to file for bankruptcy.
The fear of a government led solution to the American employee with employer paid health insurance is that the employer will not raise his or her income by $ 14,000 to cover the health care taxes that will be part of the plan. In fact the taxes would be less than the $ 14,000 number for the average person. This is because the portion of the total bill paid for by a health care tax would be paid for by high income people. This portion would go to pay for workers under the $ 76,000 average.
So it would have been interesting as to how the candidates would have answered this question before getting lost in the trillions over ten years talk that they seemed to get buried each time. But anyway this should be a start for more meaningful discussion down the road.
The really Big Initiative for the next administration is the Green Infrastructure direction. This is big, this is bigger than the New Deal of the 1930’s and the Interstate Road Program and Space Program of the 1960’s.
This will take the Climate Change Issue and turn it on it’s head and make it an opportunity for economic and personal growth. The interstate road system made it possible to use cheap energy and move things efficiently to any corner of the US. The Space program off-shoots helped build the technology that we all use today.
Now we know the costs of moving stuff everywhere and finding and refining fossil fuels to make it happen, especially in what it is doing to our climate.
This will involve a lot of change but we have the digital technology to make it happen. More growth will happen in one’s community, technology will allow a lot of energy production to be local through solar and wind. Grids will be built out to move overflows. this will re-energize America with opportunity and jobs.
There is so much more to say, we are trying to build out more information on our website:
framework2020.org