From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: The Decline of America: Larry Agran's Program (II)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University
Distribution: na
Date: 12 Apr 92 05:03:17 GMT

harryo@cbnewse.cb.att.com (harold.r.holm) writes:

>In article <9204040500.AA03640@tba.msi.cornell.edu>, harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai) writes:
>> 
>> 
>> The Decline of America: Larry Agran's Program (II)
>> 
>> Democratic Presidential candidate Larry Agran proposes a fundamental
>> change in the American economy to bring us out of the recession.
>> 
>> Reaping the Peace Dividend
>> 
>> Larry Agran would reallocate the $150 billion in savings to address
>> all the needs of the domestic agenda:

>Comment:  yeah, haven't we seen these big-spender magic formulas for
>the American Utopia before?  Seems this was pretty much espoused by
>Sen. Harkin, and look what happened to HIS plans.  Like this ex two-
>bit mayor would/could do any better.

	The so called "Peace Dividand", at least the way it was managed
by George Bush last year, makes my blood boil! Talk about bungeling
imcompetance! The worse thing that government does is to jerk funding
around, cut it off, and then let business flounder around covering its
backside, usually by laying people off. I'm talking about a loss of
40,000 jobs in Silicon Valley due to the WAY Bush withheld follow on
business to defense contractors at the beginning of Desert Storm.

	I don't argue with redirecting resources away from defense,
cutting contracts and the like, but you have to provide some means
for businesses to convert to non-military markets, and garner the
technical expertise as a national tresure. The way most businesses
treat their employees, now, is extremely wasteful of the human
resource. We have been told by the captians of industry to live
with less security, while we hear of their lack of planning or
outright greed. Unregulated business cannot be trusted to
serve the good of the nation, by itself. It needs incentives
from the government and from the people to do so.

	Government spending needs to be done in a climate where the
welfare of the rest of the economy will be promoted. If revenue
is increased due to wiser use of government resources and growth
occurs in the economy then things like the huge deficit would be reduced.
The problem with the last ten years is that we had idealogs running
the show, who were blind to the indications that their spending
plans were running amok and that the health of the economy in
general was not promoted while a few people got filthy rich. Most
Americans have not come out better, in fact worse with much more
debt and worse a pessimism about future prospects.

	Internationalism, going from national economies to world
economies is nice talk, provided the playing feild is level, provided
everybody wins, but when some nations compete internationally but
still racially isolate the leadership of their businesses, or
eanct restrictions that overprotect local markets, we are not
talking about a level field. National interests will have to
do in a period when it is clear that our nation will lose to
foreign competition due to trade practices that are ilegal in
this country, and not respected elsewhere.

Bruce Salem

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