Right now, and for the next few years, the economic future for the Millennials and Generation-Z is being determined.

James Lyman BSAE, BSEE, MSSM

Only the most rabid Trump-hater would deny how dramatically America’s economy has prospered. While many others might concede to the improved economy, they would object to President Trump being the reason for the good times, but many Americans consider the President and his policies, to be the sole reason for America’s return to prosperity. Until the coronavirus, President Trump was considered a ‘shoe in’ for reelection. But in the realm of political dynamics, memories are short with the President’s poll numbers progressively sliding downwards from the pandemic and the need to shut down to save lives. It’s beginning to look like reelection may not be so easy after all, maybe even impossible! This begs the question, what will happen to economic prosperity with a new administration? What economic future does the millennials and generation-Z have, as well as us baby-boomers who depend on a strong stable economy to continue our lives, . . . if there’s no Trump! After all, people on fixed incomes are the first to get clobbered when the economy collapses.

But there’s still hope!

What originally got the President elected was his promise to reform Washington- he would Drain the Swamp. This appealed to many Americans who were so fed up with the continual non-performance of the governments (note plural). They wanted a functional government which would start addressing the problems they face in life. Candidate Trump promised them that . . . he promised he’d drain the Washington swamp and make a government, which catered to the peoples needs and problems, and in turn would revitalize the economy and return the people to prosperity. And he surprised so many of us by doing much of what he promised, unlike so many of the professional politicians who say only what the polls tell them to say to get elected.

As the coming elections started to warm up, it looked like President Trump couldn’t lose, that with the economy going great guns, with so many American’s happy and satisfied with the economy, that he was a shoe-in for a second term. Then a small semi-living bundle of DNA called coronavirus or Covid-19 came out of China as a life threatening pandemic to spread across the world with the blazing speed of a crowned forest fire. And like such a fire, the only option was to set ‘back fires’, and by deliberately causing damage would ultimately limit the total damage. The only way to stop the virus was to shut the economies down across the world. To trade extensive economic damage for minimum virus damage to people. While there are growing numbers who now want to blame the new recession on the President, the measures he took were taken world wide by many nations. It was unavoidable no matter who was president!
But even if there hadn’t been a pandemic and the President is reelected, the swamp is destined to refill. In four years Trump will have to leave, and the chances of getting another outsider, willing to fight the Washington mob, to keep the swamp dry is very doubtful. Things are destine to return to the old statues quo, back to being governed by the same ‘old guard’ as before.

WHY??

Back on the day of his retirement, Speaker Tip O’Neill, a democrat, stood on the Capital steps and warned about the new generation of representatives coming to Washington, people he called ‘sound biters’, people who were very skilled at giving perfect 15 or 30 second sound bites for the news media. People very skilled at manipulating and using the print and electronic media to cultivate images instead of actually working and solving problems. The well refined technologies of mass media and mass marketing were vigorously applied to the election process erasing those checks and balances so necessary for a modern government to function. We now create our governments using the same exact marketing techniques used to sell tampons, hemorrhoid medications, laxatives and toilet paper. The result is the ability of the Congress to address complex difficult problems has been eroded to the point of being dysfunctional . . . to the discuss of the people.

And the American people have some serious problems on the horizon, which will need the attention of professional problem solvers. Experts in automation and AI (Artificial Intelligence) predict that in 15 to 25 years as much as 50% of the jobs will disappear. (Go Google these three words- Osborne, report, and pdf). ‘Reading the law’ is the education of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, it’s the education from the 16th to the early 19th century. While lawyers are an important and necessary part of society, a law degree doesn’t prepare someone for the 21st century. The bulk of the elected members of the House and Senate are lawyers or political science, which is just a watered down law degree.

Reforming the government means creating an environment to get those kinds of people who have the intellectual skills to analyze and solve complex difficult problems, those problems that more and more Americans are facing with obsolescence and technology displacement. Problems far beyond the abilities of the present members of the Congress. It’s like if you have a lump that keeps growing or an open sore which will not heal. Now do you want a doctor with all the technical degrees required to become a licensed physician . . . and knows what he is doing? Or do you want the old kind of doctor . . . the witch doctors, medicine men, shamans or voodoo priests who dances around the ‘examination room’ naked, shaking a stick at the sky, mumbling magical incantations while sprinkling magical powders to cure your ailment? These shamans and witch doctors are what we are now getting for congressmen and senators. They have only their skills of using mass media and marketing, their version of those ‘magical powders’, of images and illusions. Like the shaman medicine men, our congressmen and senators can only create the images and illusions that your future is ‘well’, so therefore you have nothing to worry about.

The one thing that President Trump’s tenure in office has shown is just how little our representatives in congress can really do, hence why they are constantly bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Why there’s the constant Machiavellian back stabbing posturing, with their only real goal of bringing more power to themselves and their particular party. Never any real concern or activity towards real problems facing so many Americans. It’s so prevalent in our politics I think history, 25 or 50 years from now, will call this the ‘age of the great pretenders’. People are constantly asking, why can’t they do more than just fight like little kids on the playground, why can’t they do something about the problems we are facing, and the answer is: Because they don’t know how to do anything else! So in turn, this has lead to the all too familiar dysfunction of our government.

The only way to resolve this situation is by creating an environment conducive to attracting capable qualified people, twentieth century people who have some real understanding of a high technology world, who have the education and experience and therefore have glean the intellectual, analytical and problem solving skills necessary to make real progress towards the obsolescence that so many Americans now face. This means having four constitutional amendments: 1) Line item veto, 2) Term limits for congressmen and senators, 3) Ban participation in elections, in coin or in kind, unless qualified to vote in the election, 4) Give both House and Senate power to demise federal employees via vote. The amendments are presented in detail at www.peopleobsolete.com by clicking on | The Amendments | on the top menu bar, as well as the problems of government dysfunction by clicking | Our Government’s Abilities | on the same menu bar.

Presently, there isn’t any real acknowledgment of obsolete people and their displacement by machines, let alone any real analysis or problem solving by our congress, which is charged by the Constitution with governing the domestic America arena, while the President is responsible for the international. To have any progress resolving the problems we now face, we need and must have the best and brightest people America has to offer, instead of opportunist of limited abilities who only see congress as a way to enrich themselves. A means to go from rags to riches by living off the people for 20, 30 or 50 years without actually doing anything tangible. We want people with real educations just as we do with our physicians, who we entrust with our lives and health. Presently, we have people who are only skilled with words, and word games do not solve problems, they don’t even add to the solving process. It’s just play . . . just entertainment of illusions and images, the same as stage magicians with their smoke and mirrors.

President Trump has the ability to reform simply by using his social media skills, the power he has developed with Tweeter to ask questions and explore the possibilities for real reform. I’m sure he would be surprised by the number of people drawn to the possibility of real permanent reforms with a return to functionality to give a real government. The President would see that his real goal should be to rally the people around him, as he’s done with his ‘Make America Great Again’ rallies, just by drawing attention to what the people can do to reform our political process. If the American people are rallied to a real common goal, they will do the rest themselves. They will form the local grassroots committees to raise funds and do the door to door political canvassing work to form city and county committees that elect delegates for state conventions, who in turn would have a national constitution convention as provided by our Constitution. Then do the advocating work at state levels to campaign for ratification of each amendment in their state legislative bodies, thus adding the much needed amendments to our Constitution.

Only then will the Millennials and Generation-Z have an economic future by actually draining the swamp.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *