This is the grand illusion of the big spenders, bankers, Reaganomics, and Bushenomics (perhaps to some degree Cintonomics, too,) types.

The fact is, not since the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s has the U.S. spent its money strategically well to help directly most regions and peoples.  From the 1960s onwards, middle men (& very many of them) and the wealthiest have been depended on to grow the pie.

There have been no great national rural electrification projects,

no major new mass transit systems (like bullet trains),

no great social security innovation, and

no attempt to provide inexpensive higher education to masses of people as occurred in our grandfather's time.

Instead, after 1964, for example, the U.S. government created the student loan program and prices in higher education have skyrocketed.  (How many of you have had family members who have gotten in trouble due to  their inability to pay back loans?)

America needs to return to better core investment strategies of its resources in this 21st century-in a way that good strategies made America so strong after WWII.  These well-thought out spending strategies included direct government transfers to the poorest and more underdeveloped parts of our society.  This is how Americans gained access to telephone, radio and televisions faster than any other peoples on the planet-investment in infrastructure and human being which empowered America.

When I think about a needed American Recovery, I believe a full-recovery of values that commit each American more to helping each other out will absolutely include not only private sector good-will but those wise usage of resources practices which made America so fruitful a hundred years ago-but in a way that has not been seen in over a half a century.  (Just look at how competitive Germany has become in recent years through better allocation and reallocation of resources than any American governments has demonstrated in decades.  Look at the whole European Union for a smorgasbord of political-economic practices which Europeans learned the hard way-and sometimes by copying our forefathers.)

America needs to recover a vision of building better social-infrastructure, i.e. infrastructure that helps almost every person in the country (not relying on trickle down) to solidify a flailing unity which once dominated America in the post-Depression era but has since been erased by made-for-TV illusions of wealthy investors running U.S. media and politics.

WHY NOT A WORLD VISION BEYOND MEDIOCRITY?

For several decades, I have been dismayed at the mediocrity that so many Americans and American households have been willing to put up with under an illusion that they are living or pursuing (or have access to) the American Dream.

The American Dream I was raised on was revealed in the visions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and others at mid-century) who asked Americans not to assume that we have achieved a great society but asked us to strive for the day when we were a great society-a beacon on the hill to others as well as to our offspring.

2008 is the year to march forward on such a path.

For example, labor unions in the USA are finally realizing that the cause of workers in other countries from China to Bangladesh are related to their own struggles on behalf of improving the standard of working and living at home in the USA.  However, awareness is only a first step.  International cooperation lifting standards of labor and lifestyle for all are important and our government must practice the tact and right people-to-people tools to get things done. (I.e. stop throwing bombs and asking questions later!)

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