Leadership Insanity

Most of our problems have the same root cause…leadership failure.  Whether leading our lives, leading a business, or leading our country, it takes good judgment to put us on a path to a better future.  In the case of our current economic woes, rarely have so many of our national leaders been so united in stupidity.  Stimulating our economy by dispensing $160 billion for us to go on one final binge of consumption is simple but insane.  Our economy is not healthy and hasn’t been for over a decade.  We have become a consumption-based economy artificially stimulated by first a stock market bubble and then a real estate bubble which did nothing but cause reckless inflation in food, energy, health care, and housing prices.  Sure, our economy is the biggest in the world, but it’s not muscular.  It’s obese, fattened by the junk food of personal and public debt.  Now is not the time to give billions to consumers to buy more stuff made in China or oil pumped from the Middle East in some last orgy of shopping.  There are things real leaders should be doing to invest in our future while we still can.

We have a serious problem.  80% of container ships return from West Coast ports empty on return trips.  For the most part, the world doesn’t want what we make.  They want our ideas, our technology and our markets.  One of our biggest exports is our investment capital.  Tens of billions of our U.S. company profits are being invested in productive capacity in China and India instead of Ohio and Michigan. This was not inevitable.  Germany with 82 million people leads the world in exporting over $100 billion of extremely well engineered cars, precision tools and advanced technology products.  Their total manufacturing employment has been reduced by only 2% over the past 15 years, while their wages, benefits and vacations are legendary.  The point is we don’t have to destroy our productive capacity.  We choose to.

You can blame decades of leadership failure that overlooked the need to keep our K-12 education system first rate.  Or keep our physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation up to date.  We even created a two tier tax system on businesses in which huge business get subsidies and rarely pay anything near the stated tax rate and small and new business, which is the only sector that creates jobs, pays taxes on profits that would otherwise be reinvested in local growth.

So what should real leaders who want to invest in the future spend $160 billion on?  How about skilled job training for U.S. precision manufacturing which is currently running unfilled job rates of 20% plus?  How about more investment in clean renewable energy research?  How about full tuition scholarships for math and science majors?  How about a 21st century national infrastructure and mass transit?  How about anything that builds our productive capacity, encourages new business formation and provides education?  I realize that none of this is a quick fix.  And that’s exactly the point.  Liposuction is not a cure for obesity.  And having everyone spend an extra $700 between now and July is, as one economist said, giving one last drink to an alcoholic.

People running for president are all claiming to be the one to lead change.  Well I hear it.  I just want to see it.  Where is the substance?  To unleash our creative capacity and become a productive economy we need to build a support structure with affordable access to education, training, capital, transportation and technology.  That’s what deserves our investment and nothing less.  Debates are good, speeches inspiring, but refried liberalism won’t help us.  And a continuation of old industrial-style capitalism will destroy us.  What we need are bigger, bolder, higher solutions.  Most of all, how about some real, genuine leadership?!

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