Economy in the doldrums, and how to get it out

"If I were President, I'd give everybody their choice of ice cream."

Well, kids can dream about being President (but I think they'd rather be pro baseball players instead), but it's a really hard job. Which is, of course, a vast understatement. And President Obama (Happy Birthday to a fellow August birthday boy) has a lot on his plate. It would be hard enough to be elected when the global economy has just barely avoided depression, and we are learning that giving too much to the non-working classes isn't sustainable. Ask Greece, or Portugal, or even the Brits. But we also have wars and unrest and terrorism and the Tea Party -- not that I'm saying those last two are equal, but when you hold the world hostage to get your way, you aren't exactly NICE.

Now we face the fact that the economy sucks, likely weighed down by the continuing euphemistically-phrased "softness" in the housing market -- as long as people are getting foreclosed on, it's hard to sell houses for value. And the fight over the debt didn't help. And being way in debt several trillion dollars is bad. That's why I didn't panic when the GOP took over the House -- I remembered back when divided government resulted in a budget surplus, slightly aided by the dot.com bubble. But that was still illusory, because of those damned entitlements. We're all getting older and living longer (and healthier, too). So what's wrong with raising the retirement age a couple of years, I ask?

Ultimately I was hoping that divided government would result in sensible compromise, entitlement and tax reform, and something serious (to the tune of $4 trillion) would get done about the deficit. But primarily it seems because the Tea Party idiots wouldn't accept anything that sounded like a tax, even if it really wasn't one, actual progress on the deficit was forestalled due to that hostage taking alluded to earlier. So now we're stuck with a very imperfect debt deal. And the Tea Party crash of the market. Hope that stops soon, or pretty soon I'll be losing real money.

But the ultimate question is how to get the economy going again. And I return to something I said before. We need to fight a war. And because the energy sector is where the war is being fought, we need to fight a war to GET MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT. This has huge economic benefits, because if taxpayers weren't shelling out for either heating in the winter or cooling in the summer, they'd have more money! There are scads of inefficient appliances in this country: room air conditioners, refrigerators, dishwashers, computers that suck up energy when they're sleeping; and houses leak heat and cold because of old-fashioned doors and windows and attics; and buildings could be much more efficient with smart sensors that turn off lights when people aren't in offices ...

I could go on and on and on and on. But I think my point is made. What is needed is an incentive program to retrofit buildings and homes to make them more energy efficient, paint roofs white or install solar panels on them, remove clunker appliances and replace them with Energy Strrs, and the consumers (us) will reap the benefits and have more spending money to buy things and energize the economy. It's a long term plan because energy efficiency investments accrue over time. But it also makes us more nationally secure too, and our allies, because we'll be less dependent on oil. And if we are to make renewables work, and if the world is now too scare of nuclear energy such that the nuclear renaissance is forestalled, then energy efficiency is needed to usher in the Age of Renewable Energy.

It can be done, but the strapped government has to fund the upfront costs. Our country as a whole needs to invest in the future, give people and businesses the money to become more energy efficient, and the saved money will pile up. Get the economy going and the current level of tax revenues will increase.

The Great Depression ended when the U.S. had to militarize for World War II. War is the answer -- war on the inefficiency of obsolescence and antiquity. If we started an EEE -- the Energy Efficiency Echelon -- much like the Civilian Conservation Corps of yore (ooooh, that was catchy), we could put American back to work making America better.

If not now, when?