#house of usher works because of a two pronged approach;

[the-four-humors]

Finished Fall of the House of Usher like a week ago and it's still rattling around in my brain. Mike Flanagan's best work imo.

[notyouraveragearchitect-blog]

HOW TO REALLY ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN’

An Economic Plan Rebuttal to the Trump Syndrome.

If you’re not a supremacist, or a hater of anything that strays from the strictest version of Patriarchal society, or you don’t have an economic annual value over $1 million, and you supported Donald Trump for President, I want to say, I feel your pain.  Although I am technically thrown into the societal basket of privileged white males, I live every day in fear of being one bad medical mishap away from economic ruin. I am a self-identified progressive that consciously moved my family to the bleeding edge Bay Area of CA, but my roots are firmly in the rural cornfield lands I like to call the ‘eastern-most edge of the Midwest’; the snowbelt area of southern Buffalo, NY.  The mindset is conservative and the economic boon of the auto and steel industry have long since seen the area slowly bled of its vitality and hope.  Even so, it has taken me a while to wrap my head around the feeling of economic despair facing white middle America.  The Trump Syndrome rocked my word and many in my world.  The shock of electing possibly the least caring person I could think of living within the United States left scars that may never fully heal.  But because so many people in my life have closed one eye to the horrors of his character, I knew there had to be something real there; something much deeper.  It was only through placing myself firmly in their shoes; shoes I too could have worn if I remained in Buffalo, was I able to finally get it.  

At one point not long ago, a man [as was typically the case back then] could find a job working in the Bethlehem Steel Mill or the Ford Stamping Plant with or without a college degree, earn a pay check, buy a house, buy a car, raise a family, and have a pension with security for the future.  The money spent by these upwardly mobile middle class workers powered the entire economic region.  Those jobs are mostly gone now. This is not a new phenomenon as the slow bleed has been happening for many decades and is well documented.  What’s new is that the level of despair and the feeling of not being heard or helped has finally come to a head.  The cost of housing, daycare, college education for children, health insurance, etc is pushing even modest dual-income families to the brink of what’s physically possible.  Stepping backward from middle income into the poverty level is demoralizing and creating a universal feeling of failure amongst working white families, in particular white men.  Democrats have fought the hardest for the middle class, but have focused their empathies on minorities and the poor at the perceived expense of middle America whites; which made it easier for conservatives to place the blame on them for that demographics’ economic woes.

The economic revival of the Bill Clinton era was undercut by one major slice of the NAFTA lawn sickle. At the same time, the powerful auto workers’ unions dug in their heels on innovative changes to preserve the generous negotiated pension plans.  The rallying cry became ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’  And thus the barn door was swung open for Japanese and other auto makers to take the reigns as leaders in auto innovation and performance.  Whether or not globalization was upon us because of declining belief in American goods or because of the NAFTA agreement was almost irrelevant.  It became the scapegoat for all the ills of the manufacturing industry, and Democrats were squarely to blame.  The actual truth behind the blame played second fiddle to the perceived lack of compassion by the Democrats to the cries of the middle America whites.  The real issue is the direct link between a family’s pocketbook and the feeling of self-worth as a human being by the bread winner. Although it was always clear to me the Democrats cared more about the middle class, they never were able to articulate and fight for a real economic strategy for bringing back those types of jobs. Until Obama.

The feeling of hope and change in the Obama era faltered for many reasons. Ushering in of this era scared the crap out of conservatives.  The vision was strong, well-articulated, and with the economic meltdown at the hands of the Bush administration, there was fear that a second New Deal would crush the Reagan conservative agenda for decades to come.  To remain politically viable, they had no choice but to clear cut and intentionally dismantle all signs of hope through obstruction of each and every Obama initiative.  Coupled with the relentless Fox News negativity campaign, which is the primary news source of middle America, the slash and burn approach by conservatives worked. Obama, the great compromiser, overestimated the goodness of conservatives and squandered a second New Deal vision for a watered down ‘shovel ready project’ version.  The New Deal built schools all across the country, dams, bridges, tunnels, and had long term lasting impacts on communities through social good.  What was left across the country were physical built reminders of the ‘greatness’ of American achievement. A reminder of the jobs that were created and the pride that came from those built structures.  For the sake of expediency and compromise, the Great Recession recovery left no such lasting mark on the landscape.  Fixing roads and bridges puts people to work and saved our country from economic ruin, but there were no prideful physical remnants.  Obama saved our country, there is no doubt, but did not fight hard enough, did not push back on conservative obstruction soon enough, and did not stick with the real long term projects that would have set us up for the next 30 years of economic growth. Even the achievement of Obamacare fell short of a truly revolutionary vision.  Instead of providing health care for all through a single-payer plan similar to the well liked Medicare plan, Obama early in the negotiations scrapped that plan as a way of getting conservatives on board.  In the end, none of them came on board and the resulting watered down version left profit-driven insurance companies still in charge our nation’s health care system.  We are still the only major first world country left with millions of citizens without health insurance.  Now, it’s easy prey for conservative dismantling and is one of the largest contributors to the Trump Syndrome through incessant Fox News negativity.

The Trump Syndrome is a direct byproduct of the economic hopelessness felt by white middle America, and the relief that a candidate was finally feeling their pain and offering a vociferous vision defending them. Unfortunately, the current regime is motivated by two basic creeds, money and power. The economic principals being implemented will give the economy a short term shot in the arm, but will ultimately fail the entire middle class, will further enrich and empower the top 1 percent, and send our country into another recession.  The primary reasons are simple. Tax cuts for the wealthy results in greater wealth disparity, more money being hoarded in tax shelters, and less money in the hands of the middle class.  Giving more money to ‘job creators’ does not create more demand for products or goods. Putting more money in the hands of the middle class and the poor is the only way to create more demand. Most importantly, the current regime has no vision for HOW to create new sustained jobs for the future. Like Obama, infrastructure projects like fixing roads and bridges create jobs, but once the 'fixing’ is done, those jobs go away.  So, the result is a short term bump, and a long term bust.  It’s the equivalent of a 5-Hour energy drink for our country for short term political gain with no thought for what happens after 5 hours. It also takes years to undo the ill advised policies that were put in place. What’s needed is a new long term New Deal-like vision, and so far progressives are the only ones embracing the visions I’ve summarized below.  All that’s needed is the right orator to sell the deal to the American people.

Although high tech, real estate, and other sectors have powered much of the current urban economic boom, these jobs require highly skilled, educated individuals. So the economic benefits of the recovery has been focused outside the rural areas. What’s really needed are good paying jobs that tradesmen type workers can get for the next 30+ years to power an entire generation of people into the middle class.   These jobs do not necessarily require 4 year college degrees to perform successfully. We need industries that transform our country and produce downstream ripple benefits for other investments and other industries.  

There needs to be a three pronged approach to the future growth of our country:  1. a new country-wide high speed rail infrastructure [which should be coupled with the electric grid upgrade]  2. an all-in approach on renewable energies  and 3. return to belief in sound science and investment in technology.

The auto and oil industry lobbyists have dominated congress for decades. Every politician that mentions high speed rail gets slammed by naysayers who claim it needs to be economically ‘viable’.  What they mean is that the dollars generated by passengers needs to cover all costs including construction, operation and ongoing maintenance. This assertion is ludicrous. There are millions of miles of highways and roads across our country, yet only a handful of select toll roads are actually economically self-sufficient. The remainder are 100% taxpayer subsidized. When the highways were built, there was an enormous infrastructure investment by the government, which spurred decades of secondary economic growth and private sector profits. But it took a vision and courage by Eisenhower to sell it, and faith and hard work by the American people to make it happen. Once the roads were built, real estate speculators and developers bought up land which created new wealth, towns were constructed around the highways which created millions of jobs, and entire new industries [like trucking and delivery services] became feasible.  Our country did the same with airports.  It’s time for high speed rail. Studies have shown each dollar in infrastructure spending results in $10 of private sector wealth. High speed rail lines can run between urban centers, reduce airport congestion by reducing flights between cities 2-5 highway hours apart, create millions of new high paying construction jobs across the country, spur in new real estate market growth at rail stations, reduce highway congestion and pollution, rail cars can be built here in the US, and result in generations of construction in new walkable communities within ½ mile of stations. The country also needs an upgrade to the power grid. The new train lines are electric and ideal locations to couple with a new electric grid upgrade. Because of auto and oil industry lobbyists and conservative obstruction, our country has missed this opportunity and our middle American workers desperately need this vision to get them back to work. 

Regardless whether our leaders are science deniers, the rest of the world is not.  This wave of green technology and renewable energies technologies is well under way in every country of the world.  Except the US. Even if our leaders don’t believe man effects the temperature of our planet, it’s imperative for the economic future of our country that we get on board and start to become a leader in innovation and technologies around these ideals.  We’ve spent the last 30 years fighting wars because we lacked control of our energy sources and we’re about to shoot ourselves in the foot again because we’ll be buying our energy products from China and other countries just so we can compete.  If their energy sources are built, renewable, and cheap, our manufacturers will be at a significant disadvantage. They will crush us economically in the world marketplace. Our leaders need to lead to a new future, not fight to go backwards to coal and oil and fracking.  The first countries to discover cheap new innovative ways to harness energy will be the ones that benefit the most financially from those inventions. The US has never backed away from a challenge, and yet the Trump Syndrome has put us potentially four or more years backwards into the past. 

Because most major economic booms start with government investment [i.e. the internet, biomedical engineering, robotics, satellites, air travel, high speed rail, aerospace industry etc] we need to double down on science and technology investment. Like infrastructure projects, [even if only 1 in 10 dollars lead to new innovations] the economic return on those successful innovations is enormous to not only our economy, but to our societal and potential health benefits. This is the obvious reason why investment is the key to our future. We can’t let conservatives that bash government investments that don’t work out [like Solyndra] thwart the progress of investment in our future.  This is imperative to ensure the United States remains at the forefront of ALL new world discoveries.  Giving this edge away to another country, like the current regime is doing, is the first step in the demise of the US as a world leader. 

To make this vision happen, all citizens must reject every aspect of the Trump Syndrome that puts the US at risk for losing its status as an economic leader.  We must rally around a progressive candidate that fights for where the US can be in the future with new and innovative ideas and not someone that clings onto old technologies to maximize their own personal profits. And we must focus on a financial vision that benefits urban AND rural America so we can finally rally our entire country behind a common cause again that doesn’t involve a war.

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