Yesterday was pessimism, today is optimism. I have run out of ways to compliment Goldman so take that into account.
David P. Goldman’s open letter to President Trump:
Here are some ideas that may help in your efforts, followed by more specific proposals:
- Inflation is closer to 8% than the official “3%” after figuring in higher interest costs to consumers. Biden started this inflation by running record budget deficits, and the Federal Reserve made it worse by increasing the interest burden on consumers. You must educate the American public on this reality and get the right people in place to fix it.
- The federal budget deficit is 6.4% of GDP, “larger than any deficit in records going back to 1930 except the years around World War II, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic,” according to the Tax Foundation. Federal interest costs have doubled and now cost as much as defense. Get people on the Fed board who understand your economic agenda.
- Our woke education system is a disaster and has betrayed working-class kids. We can’t fill skilled jobs in manufacturing because high school graduates lack basic math skills. In the short term, state community college systems and work-study apprenticeship programs can help. Create a federal-state initiative for public-private partnerships in manufacturing skills, and ask Governor Ron DeSantis to head it.
- Vice President-elect Vance offered a workable peace plan in September to end the Russo-Ukrainian War. Give him a big role in handling the Ukraine problem. Leftovers from the foreign policy establishment in your first administration did nothing but sandbag you. Don’t listen to them, and put a smart outsider in charge instead.
- The U.S. military-industrial complex is a hopeless morass of corruption and incompetence that can’t make enough artillery shells to supply Ukraine, let alone enough submarines. Bypass the Pentagon brass and the defense contractors and choose a secretary of defense who understands new defense technologies.
- Your proposal to put high tariffs on Chinese EV imports but allow Chinese companies to build plants in the U.S. is brilliant—and very much like Ronald Reagan’s response to Japanese auto imports in the 1980s.
and,
The biggest obstacle to industrial revival is lack of skilled labor, thanks to the liberals who control U.S. education. Summon the CEOs of our biggest manufacturing companies, and they’ll tell you the same thing: less than a quarter of U.S. high school students are proficient in math. That puts high-end jobs in computer-controlled manufacturing out of their reach. We can fix the problem by enlisting state community college systems in partnership with corporations. Florida already has the ball rolling. Ask Governor DeSantis to head an emergency effort to train skilled workers.
finally,
We beat Russia in the Cold War by inventing the Digital Age, using NASA and the defense budget to drive breakthroughs in new technologies. We can innovate better than China. But federal support for R&D under Reagan was double its present level as a percent of GDP. That’s why it’s critical to shift the defense budget to support new technology. To take only one example: We can’t out-produce China in missiles. The best response to China’s huge force of anti-ship missiles is directed-energy weapons (for example, lasers). But the Pentagon R&D budget for these new weapons is less than $800 million a year, or the cost of ten fighter planes.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.