Additionally, t here are nearly 44 million people living in poverty in the United States; that's nearly one in every seven Americans. Poverty crosses every barrier--age, race, gender, and family situation--but most Americans in poverty are children (20% of the population), elderly, or people unable to work due to illness or disability . Likewise, d ata released by the Census Bureau show that the number of uninsured Americans stood at a record 46.6 million in 2005, with 15.9 percent of Americans lacking health coverage, primarily because of the erosion of employer-based insurance.
Worse, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of all the industrialized countries in the world. The U.S. incarceration rate on December 31, 2008 was 754 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, or 0.75%. The USA also has the highest total documented prison and jail population in the world. As the new president of the United States, I will certainly address all these serious issues, including addressing the shortcomings of our immigration policy (we all are "temporary residents" of this planet), but most importantly, the recurrent pitfalls of our Capitalist System that has not reduced the income inequalities in this country by proposing serious social legislation to address all these socio-economic ills once and for all, which will include a new industrial policy with a new social contract to protect U.S. workers from the negative effects of globalization as well as to propose new company ownership schemes for all workers, including owners and managers so that we feel that we are all winners.
Good country case studies to adopt are the socio-economic policies of Japanese and European countries aided by progressive governments being led by the Scandinavian countries who have consistently shown better distribution of wealth among their citizens, low levels of corruption, superior health care and educational systems, low infant mortality rates, etc. All of the above proposals I would present to the American people are based on what Albert Einstein once said: "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Once again, one of the most prominent lessons of economic history that I will share with the American people as the new president of the United States is the fact that the loss of control over the economy reduces sensibly the political sovereignty as well as the perspectives for a healthier economic development, therefore, the temptation to resort to violence and repression at home and military expansion abroad is increased, undermining the economy one more time in a vicious circle with no end in sight.
Last but not least, one of my first acts as the new president of the United States would be to declare unconstitutional (by referendum) the greater powers given by the Supreme Court to American corporations by having allowed them to give unlimited monetary donations to candidates for the presidency of the United States in a 5-to-4 controversial decision, therefore giving the green light to these corporations to buy the elections, an unacceptable and undemocratic outcome.
My Message to Our Educational System
"Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is."
Noam Chomsky
As the new president of the United States, I will completely reform the K-12 educational system in the U.S. by incorporating the teachings of self-knowledge, Multiple Intelligences theory (MI Theory), world history, geography, eco-systems, math and sciences, system dynamics, system thinking and foreign languages so that the new American generations can live up to the new international standards of citizenship, including respecting and even admiring other cultures. I will also propose teaching that military spending and peace and security is an oxymoron and that living in greater harmony with other people as well as with the resources and regenerative capacities of the Earth -s eco-system is imperative in this new economic and social era. Last but not least, I will propose that business schools in America begin teaching a new profession of enterprise designers of human systems so that the systems (economic and social) better serve the people within them.
My Message to the American Industry and the Financial Sector
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
John Maynard Keynes
A key question that I will pose to the American people is whether the Capitalist system practiced in America encourages owners, managers and workers to be more human, more cooperative and innovative with each other, and whether this economic system has created a freer spirit and more egalitarian and eco-system society in the United States. The answer is obvious. My message as the new president of the United States to American industry, therefore, is the following: It's easy to talk about the changes wrought by today's global economy. But most such discussions fail to address the real impact of business practices in the twenty-first century. The growth of industrial societies during the past 150 years -- and particularly the aggressive corporate growth strategies of the past 50 years -- have done unprecedented damage to the environment and created unsustainable performance pressures on companies. The threat to our natural and organizational systems flows from a view of business that most CEOs accept without question, but which is at odds with thousands of years of human economic activity. "The key problem in the American business world today is that we've lost sight of what business is all about," says Portland State University professor Tom Johnson. "We think it's about accumulating financial wealth and shareholder value, but the fundamental purpose of business, going back thousands of years in human experience, is to meet human economic needs by cultivating creative human talent."
Our response to this threat must go beyond anything commonly proposed in policy or regulatory debates. What's needed is a vision of the future that recognizes the potential and the constraints that govern all natural systems as M.I.T. professor Jay W. Forrester and H. Thomas Johnson, a distinguished professor at Portland State University have insightfully stated. The first glimmerings of that vision -- evident in some unlikely places, embody a way of managing that speaks to the higher aspirations of people throughout an enterprise. Such a vision offers a hopeful alternative to the mindless pursuit of growth (greed) for growth's sake that threatens the health of the planet.
In this new context, we have to first remember that the goal of the economy is to sustainably improve human well-being and quality of life. We have to remember that material consumption and GDP are merely means to that end, not ends in themselves. We have to recognize, as both ancient wisdom and new psychological research tell us, that material consumption beyond real need can actually reduce well-being as professor Robert Costanza from the University of Vermont vividly pointed out in a brilliant article called "Toward a New Sustainable Economy." As the new president of the United States I will make sure that the American people better understand what really does contribute to sustainable human well-being, and recognize the substantial contributions of natural and social capital, which are now the limiting factors in many countries. We have to be able to distinguish between real poverty in terms of low quality of life, and merely low monetary income. Ultimately we have to create a new model of the economy and development that acknowledges this new full world context and vision.
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