Change.gov

Obama wins! Woo hoo!

Here's my first letter to the incoming administration on their change.gov website.

Thank you for building this site. It sends a great message to the grassroots that our voices will be heard. It is a huge change from the inaccessibility of the last, well, 216 years, and I look forward to more and more transparency in government. We have the right to spy on the government; the government does not have the right to spy on us.

Energy/Environment/Economy

These issues are inextricably linked. We cannot continue with the mindset that growth is sustainable, that mindless consumption and squandering of resources is "good for the economy." If we do, we run straight into the laws of physics. The earth is finite, and we depend 100% on the earth and the energy from the sun for our survival as a species. In the long term, the only wealth we can create comes from combining energy from the sun with available materials on earth. The more solar energy we waste, and the more materials we waste, the less wealth we ultimately create.

My simple proposal to require the seller or importer of any item to be required to accept all packaging, as well as any non-biodegradable material in the item itself, for recycling. This proposal builds in the true cost of the item, and makes it more financially beneficial to manufacture natural, biodegradable, and easy to recycle products and packaging. It does not solve the problem of placing man-made chemicals into the environment via consumable products (polypropylene "micro-beads" in facial scrub, chemicals in detergents, etc., etc.). There are some 20,000 man-made checmicals present in human breast milk, including hundreds of cancer-causing agents. Whether any or all of them are harmful according to the EPA is not really the point. The point is that we don't have a way to hold creators of molecules responsible for the complete cost of releasing those molecules into the environment. The environment on which we depend 100% for the survival of the species. Reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act would be a much better way to protect the "unborn" than removing Roe v. Wade. I'm speculating here, but it's possible that reducing toxins in our children's bodies would reduce the incidence of asthma and allergies. What is that worth to our society? It cannot be measured in the GDP.

My second proposal is to add to the goal of 80% reduction of U.S. CO2 production by 2050. The additional goal should be to reduce world CO2 outputby 80% by 2050, and we should invest additional money in carbon sequestration technology. This would provide more U.S. jobs, and the owners of the sequestration equipment/plants could sell carbon credits in the U.S. or especially overseas, if we can get an international cap and trade system going. Maybe this is already part of your cap and trade plans. I would like to see sequestration count as domestic production for the purposes of the tax credit.

As a scientifically oriented administration, I'm sure you will adjust your policies as the science progresses. Specifically, methane from the Arctic sea bed and from melting tundra is a 20 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So we may need some way to capture and resequester that methane (or use it for fuel.)

The ultimate goal for survival and sustainability is cyclical processes, rather than linear processes. The traditional economic models assume unlimited growth and unlimited resources. We need new economic models based on limited resources, zero waste, and the big one, zero growth. Waste should become as unpatriotic as flag burning, and illegal as well.

Unemployment

As the economy contracts, we should not try to consume our way out of the recession. This is old, unsustainable, economics. Instead, we should learn to live with less and save more, investing those savings in a green future. To deal with unemployment, we should decouple health care and pension obligations from the employer, and make 401(k) plans mandatory, with company contributions mandatory. For small businesses, there should be a government-sponsored or adminitered plan that they can pay into, so that they can take advantage of group pricing. State and local pensions are in trouble, and pose a serious threat to the future of state budgets and services, especially in bad times. Those plans should be incorporated into thefederal pension plan. Rather than bail out GM, we should move its pension plan into the federal plan, decoupling those pension plans from the employer. This will increase job mobility, and increase the security of our retirees. The hundreds of thousands to millions of workers to be laid of by the auto industry should be put to work in the green sector, with good pay, health care, and a retirement plan that can follow them around.

In addition, I propose a 32-hour work week, with the extra day being a national "Get-R-Done" day, not to go shopping and mindlessly consume, but to accomplish the real work that needs to be done in this country (national service days to build windmills, install solar panels, build parks, plant trees, tear up decrepit roads, build open source software, help people with their taxes, replant mountaintops scraped clean by the coal industry, remove old unneeded heating oil tanks after district geothermal is installed, etc., etc.). This way, employers can hire or keep on 25% more employees (probably somewhat less, because of overhead and benefits.) We spread the work around, rather than having some of the people working 60- to 80-hour weeks, while others are unemployed or are working at low-wage McJobs.

The McJob should disappear. If a job is not worth paying a living wage, then that job should be eliminated, and the mega-corporation should go out of business. Yes, I'm talking about Wal-Mart, McDonald's, the Gap, and all of the other junk- and poison-peddlers out there. The minimum wage should be increased at a rate higher than the inflation rate until it is enough for a family of four working 64 hours per week to be above the so-called poverty line (which itself needs to be re-adjusted to reflect reality.) Once it reaches that level, it should be permanently indexed to inflation. Once again, if a job is not worth paying a living wage, then that job should disappear. We as a society should not value corporations, goods, and services that cannot survive by paying a living wage. To put it another way, the standard of living in our society is being reduced because of our wasteful lifestyle and consumption, and the rich and professional classes should bear more of the burden of that reduction. Sure, I may have to reduce my takeout ordering, but the employees at the takeout place will be able to eat out once in a while, and not have to work two or three jobs to get by.

Transportation

We should cut the federal highway budget (and unlink it from the ridiculous 21-year-old drinking age -- I am 43 and have two children, 10 and 8.) The money saved from the highway budget should go toward REMOVING highways and other roads, and replacing highway lanes with high speed rail lines. The remaining highway funds should only be used for maintaining existing lanes and bridges, not building new highways and bridges.

To help the auto industry along with its contraction, we should not pump billions into keeping the status quo. The status quo is unsustainable production and consumption of huge personal vehicles that burn liquid fuels incredibly inefficiently. The future should include penalties for driving: a higher gas tax, based on a percentage of the selling price of gasoline; fewer lanes with more high speed trains in their place; much higher excise taxes on personal vehicles, to discourage car collecting. People will respond to these incentives by moving to transportation hubs, not replacing their second or third car, and in general, driving fewer miles.

Taxes

You should consider adjusting taxes for inflation. If it can be accomplished without causing a huge drain on assets, a simple tax on consumption plus wealth, rather than income, would be very progressive and fair from an inflation standpoint. Tax at the point of consumption, and then tax whoever ended up "winning" in the economic game. This tax encourages investment, because if the rich person with wealth does not invest it, it will be taxed away. If he does invest it, he gets to keep the profits, and pays the wealth tax on all of his holdings. The consumption tax discourages consumption, which is better than taxing work, which discourages work. The consumption that is discouraged becomes investment, and helps us build more green technology.
I will stop there, and will post additional ideas on health care, "homeland security," defense, and foreign policy later.

Thanks for reading,
dino_burger