money-wide >>> marcel deveraux

Kid in Candy Store
Where's the vision?
America, please don't misunderstand me.

God, I love President Bush, but I just don't think they get it, when it comes to our economic crisis. And if you think we are not in crisis, then you haven't been paying attention.

The current incentives set forth by the president and proceeding through the congress virtually unopposed makes me think. The course the administration has set us on, makes me think. What is going on? What are we missing that we had in such great abundance before the tech-crash? I think I've figured it out.

What we are missing is hope. Not greedy, "I'm gonna retire at 30", "cash-me-out" hope, but "where are we going?" kind of hope. And I don't think all this war-talk or even 911 is to blame. And that's why it hurts so much when Columbia failed to return home.

Our economic system exists because we believe it does. Our belief in the system makes it work. The key to the tech boom was not greed... it was invention. It was the pioneering, Made In America, garage-grown notion that a new millenia was starting, and a brave new world needed new ideas and new ways of doing business. See, I remember the boom as a moment when I said, "I am taking part in building a new future." No kidding.

Marcel, ever the cinic, instead wore rose colored glasses and was participating in the American dream. It was a glorious effort. Then one day, in our corporate boardroom someone said, change gears! Put an "e" in front of our name and issue more stock! My leaders traded years of hard-won recognition for a chance to make a quick buck. The old economy, shaking in their boots, put on the brakes, and here we sit.

Loss of hope. Then 911, then Afghanistan, but no hope. We linger daily with Iraq and North Korea, and as Columbia and her seven-member crew perished, they took our hearts with them. And the millenium is just beginning. OK... we watch the news... what is the point? The point is that we need hope.

As I read the incentive package to get the economy cooking, I'm at first excited, then I start to get it. Do you remember that he comes from the Corporate world? Does the notion of this President handing out corporate incentives seem like a good idea? Isn't it like a kid in a candy shop with MY, no our Amex card?

I read my own writing and I sound like a mouthpiece working for the Clintons, but I'm not. I am a card carrying Republican with Libertarian tendencies... and still... the tax incentives do not make sense. Why, you ask? Because they do not give us any hope.

Where's the Vision?
We need a vision. We need a plan, long range goals, something to aspire to. And corporate pandering just aint it, because they are not the source of invention. (Unless you count all the invention it has bought up and stifled.) Kennedy said we could put a man on the moon. And we believed him.

In my last article I suggested we give up oil. I put forth that war in Iraq wasn't the smart way to go. Several readers responded, angrily, that I was am ignorant, tree-hugging, nut who doesn't have a clue, but they missed my point.

My point is that if we were to remove oil from the equation, then Iraq would be penniless and therefore could not afford to do all the horrible things they do. I see things from an economic perspective. My point is that this conflict is systemic and more about a global strategy based on oil... not about what we think of the Iraqi regime. For decades, our energy companies have been buying up technology that could removing our dependency on oil... and my car only gets 27 mpg.

I see American companies continuing our dependance and that's what bothers me. An argument against new technology is that it costs too much to implement and my take is that if you add in the cost of waging war on Iraq, that it makes better sense to invest in technology and end our dependance on foreign energy, than invading Iraq. Use invention to replace gas consumption and, when we end our need for oil, we fulfill the same objective, without killing anyone or being the bully. We make an economic choice, using dollars, not bullets.

A national crusade (yes I chose that word carefully) to use technology to solve our dependence of foreign powers that do not share (or more realistically, oppose) our view, would give us the quest. It would fill us with hope. Our economy, saturated with imaginiative tech workers and thinkers looking for a job, would be reborn. And if we could actually learn from our mistakes, if we fought the greed that the crooked E, Arthur Anderson and her peers revealed in us all, then maybe, just maybe, America could truly rise from the ashes.

Mr. President, please provide us with Vision. Chart us a course that keeps our country and all the ideals of our founding fathers intact.

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