Forum Post: The "can do" spirit

When thinking about what it is that we are fighting for, it occurs to me that what we want is a society in which most people can do their job, get paid for it at a reasonable wage, and go on with their lives. That is, work, live, get married, have children, send them to college, retire, etc.

Now, although these things are increasingly difficult for many to attain, there was a time when a larger percentage of our people had the opportunity to accomplish all of these things.

If you think about those times, they were the periods of the "great middle class". The society in which 30% of the people could graduate from high school, get jobs in factories, do productive work making things, and buy houses, cars, send the kids to college, etc.

Some of the other percentages did more thoughtful work, like professionals, or less challenging work, like retail sales. But the people who did the work making things were the prosperous middle class who served as the customers both for the professionals and for the sales people.

Surprisingly, the answer to our contemporary dilemma would be a rebuilding of this prosperous middle class that was in the business of making things. These were the people who once had the "can do" spirit that was symbolic of America.

Now, many of these kinds of people are unemployed, but should be put to work on infrastructure projects, building roads, bridges, etc., but actually more of the high tech variety like nuclear power plants and magnetic levitation trains.

They could also work in the factories where the products and materials needed for infrastructure development are made, and as such a "building" type of economy matures, they would move more into the better paying private sector manufacturing jobs.

Then, we could build a better world for ourselves. We could bring water from Alaska to create agriculture in the central American desserts, and replenish the underground water supplies that are being depleted across our nation.

We could build new power systems that would power progress, making life easier for all of us. We could have fast trains that get us quickly to work, avoiding the traffic jams we used to sit in. We could have a space program that made not only the abundance of the universe available to us, but also challenge us to comprehend the laws of the universe and understand how they apply in our daily lives.

These are the alternatives to our current society which has neglected building in the real world for the virtual world of Wall Street and online games.

We have to become that practical people again with the "can do" spirit to build a better world for ourselves. It starts by bankruptcy reorganization of the virtual financial quagmire that Wall Street has bequeathed us and a more national approach to financing real world projects that benefit all of us, creating jobs and improving the economy.