What is our nation’s economic objective?

by James Schneider: 8/20/2012

For a nation struggling through the worst economic malaise since the Great Depression, the unfortunate answer is that our Federal Government does not have a stated economic objective.

How can that be?
Anyone who has ever led a group of people on a mission, or been responsible for a complex project of any kind, understands that you cannot develop an effective plan without first understanding and clearly stating your primary objective.

Focus, Focus, Focus:
Whenever a group of people is confronted with a complex problem they want to solve or a worthwhile goal they want to achieve, their logical first step is to determine their primary objective. Communicating the objective to all stakeholders is crucial for maintaining focus and reining in the scope creep that invariably manifests itself as those with alternate objectives and differing priorities develop clever ways to influence decisions and divert resources. If those detours from the primary mission are not addressed quickly then the primary mission becomes obscured and subservient to the multitude of parochial priorities that are allowed to take hold.

What is the objective?
All too often, people in leadership roles believe they know what their strategic objective is without fully vocalizing it to themselves let alone to others. They often assume that everyone else instinctively shares their vision and their priorities without ever formally writing them down and getting buy-in. But until leaders take the time to enlist the stakeholders to help formulate the primary objective and reach acceptance of the mission, you do not have a consensus driven primary objective and your chances of success are greatly diminished.

Less is more:
Your objective should state your goal clearly and succinctly. Less is usually more; frequently a single sentence will suffice even for something as large and complex as our national economic objective.

Measures of Success:
How will you know if you are successful? What baseline will you measure your success against? Your objective should identify the barometer(s) you will use to measure your level of success.

Means vs. Ends:
An objective should not mention anything about how you intend to reach your objective or any other limiting criteria. In terms of “means versus ends”, your objective is your ends, not your means. Once you have your “ends” defined, then and only then should you begin to discuss the various means available to achieve those ends.

Life Cycle:
An objective sentence should address the life cycle of the task at hand. The life cycle of any task, project or system can be identified as either finite or perpetual. Most projects, like building a bridge, are finite in nature and terminate once the objective has been achieved. A perpetual task is a system that is expected to operate indefinitely – such as a national economy. The objective sentence for a perpetual system should acknowledge the perpetual nature of the system. Hallmark examples of objective statements for perpetual systems include phrases like “continuously improve …”

Unite or Divide:
Stating your objective can  be either a unifying or a divisive act depending on how your objective is perceived and how those perceptions align or conflict with the personal objectives of the people your task may affect. From a political standpoint, that may help explain why we don’t have a stated national economic objective.

Is a Unifying National Economic Objective possible?

In this divisive climate of hyper partisanship and political gridlock, is a unifying economic objective even possible? Could anyone construct an economic objective that appealed to the majority of Americans regardless of their political party or ideology?

If we could achieve such an objective would it help unite our nation? Would it allow Americans – the stakeholders – to begin rowing in the same direction instead of pulling our nation apart with paralyzing uncertainty and cross-purpose legislation designed to pit one group of Americans against another and pick winners and punish losers based on the political party in power?

A unifying economic objective would permit us to focus on those "things" that are preventing us from reaching our common objective.

Is such a unifying economic objective even possible?

The Americans United Party believes the answer is a resounding yes!

A unifying national economic objective is the critical first step along our journey to end our political gridlock and restore our economy to maximum vitality. With that as our backdrop, we present our National Economic Objective for your consideration.

National Economic Objective:

Continuously improve the standard of living of all U.S. citizens.

That's it. It's that simple.

The standard of living provides the basis for measuring our success. Investopedia does a good job of defining standard of living.

Definition of 'Standard Of Living'

The level of wealth, comfort, material goods and necessities available to a certain socioeconomic class in a certain geographic area. The standard of living includes factors such as income, quality and availability of employment, class disparity, poverty rate, quality and affordability of housing, hours of work required to purchase necessities, gross domestic product, inflation rate, number of vacation days per year, affordable access to quality healthcare, quality and availability of education, life expectancy, incidence of disease, cost of goods and services, infrastructure, national economic growth, economic and political stability, political and religious freedom, environmental quality, climate and safety. The standard of living is closely related to quality of life.

Investopedia explains 'Standard Of Living'

The standard of living is often used to compare geographic areas, such as the standard of living in the United States versus Canada, or the standard of living in St. Louis versus New York. The standard of living can also be used to compare distinct points in time. For example, compared with a century ago, the standard of living in the United States has improved greatly. The same amount of work buys an increased quantity of goods, and items that were once luxuries, such as refrigerators and automobiles, are now widely available. As well, leisure time and life expectancy have increased, and annual hours worked have decreased.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/standard-of-living.asp#ixzz23fMNWvzU

Economic Road Map:
With our National Objective to guide our efforts and maintain our focus, the AUP has developed a set of interrelated policy proposals designed to achieve our national objective.

We invite you to read our Economic Roadmap Executive Summary and the detailed policy proposals that stem from it.

We would like to know if you agree with our economic objective or tell us yours if you have a different idea.

Thank you.

To Outsource or NOT to Outsource

 

The Romney Tax Distraction

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/07/16/the-romney-tax-return-distraction/ Jonathan S. Tobin.


Attempts by some in Congress to shame American business leaders who outsource or relocate to less costly shores as un-American are ridiculous demagoguery. By definition, capital must follow the path of least resistance or risk being lost. It would be a violation of a business leader s fiduciary responsibility not to do everything in their power to maximize the return on any owner s capital investment, even if that means going offshore. It is the responsibility of Congress to ensure that investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders do not perceive their best opportunities lie offshore. Any Congressperson or president who does not understand and accept these fundamental economic truths is not qualified to set economic policy for a country founded on free-market principles. I wish we had a presidential candidate who understood, believed and could articulate this basic American economic truth. http://americansunitedparty.blogspot.com/2011/06/eliminate-job-burden-and-they-will-come.html

America’s Job Engine is Broken!

"Government stimulus applied to a broken private sector can no more spur job creation than can a jockey's whip applied to a race horse with a broken leg. If you ever expect the horse to run again, fix the leg first."

America's job engine is broken and we have only ourselves to blame. We the people have allowed our elected leaders to heap an ever-expanding array of non-business related costs on our private sector economy year after year ever since President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935.

After the ravages of World War II, when the manufacturing capabilities of the rest of the world lay in ruin, the United States transformed its relatively unscathed and vastly expanded wartime production capacity into the world’s sole manufacturing super power. Competing for scarce labor and persuaded by the demands of organized labor, American manufacturing successfully absorbed the incremental costs of new employee benefits such as healthcare and pensions.


As America prospered in the 50's and 60's, she had the luxury to reflect on her historic social injustices and the economic imbalances often attributed to capitalism. During the 1960s, a revitalized Social-Progressive movement returned to power and instituted additional programs that applied their vision of social justice through various employer regulations and wealth redistribution techniques. Most notable of these programs were Medicare (health care for seniors) and Medicaid (health care for the poor). Proponents of these programs, like their predecessors, successfully convinced a naïve public that much of the costs of these programs would be borne by "business" and "your employer; not by you." Again, since America was still the world’s production giant, the increased costs did not materially effect profits and America continued to grow. 

When globalization began rolling out in earnest some forty years ago, the imbalance between the U.S. production costs and those of our foreign competitors was regarded as little more than a nuisance. However, over the last couple of decades that nuisance has not just cost America a handful of manufacturing jobs but the complete loss of our most profitable industries and our best paying jobs. Some of the lost industries that America once dominated include steel, energy, plastics, electronics, white goods, brown goods, computers, automobiles and apparel.

With unemployment in excess of 8% for almost four years, both political parties claim that their primary economic objective is to help the private sector job market. Unfortunately, so far the crux of their proposals has been based on short-term government stimulus programs. Both parties have failed to recognize the fundamental, long-term problems that confront our job market.

The Democrats' solution is to increase taxes and government spending. Their theory assumes that increased government spending would increase the demand for private sector goods and stimulate the economy. This, they believe, would help the private sector rebound.

The Republican solution would lower taxes and reduce government spending. By allowing individuals and businesses to keep more of their money, Republicans assume that the private sector would spend more of their money on the things they need. This, Republicans believe, would help the private sector rebound.

Both approaches have been tried several times over the last dozen years or so with little evidence that either approach works, yet both parties persist in promoting their respective lackluster policies as the Holy Grail of job creation.

The time has come for both parties to recognize that Government stimulus applied to a broken private sector can no more spur job creation than can a jockey's whip applied to a race horse with a broken leg. If you ever expect the horse to run again, fix the leg first.

To make my point, allow me to present an absurd example just to establish a baseline for discussion.

Assume hypothetically, that in order to help cover the projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, Congress passes a new law dubbed the “New Hire Tax”. The new tax is paid by the hiring business and is equal to the new hire’s first year salary. In essence, doubling the cost for a business to hire a new U.S. based employee. How eager do you think employers would be to hire under those terms?

The purpose of my absurd example is to demonstrate how easy it is to concoct scenarios that reduce the incentives for the private sector to create jobs. It’s so easy in fact that our government has been concocting these types of policies for decades. Instead of our government trying to “stimulate” the economy with short-term gimmicks, they should identify and permanently eliminate those things that impede U.S. based private sector hiring.

Allow me to propose a slightly less but nonetheless still absurd example.

Assume that Congress passes a new law they call “The Business Paid Safety-Net Tax.” The tax mandates that businesses pay a 30% premium on top of every employee’s wages to pay for our national safety net.  Such a tax would not only reduce new hires, it would force many businesses to cut their existing U.S. labor force. As American workers struggle to compete for jobs in this global economy, what are the chances that Americans would support such a law?

Well, apparently most Americans already do support such laws.

• The business paid portions of Social Security, Medicare and other non-job related payroll taxes amount to a 12% premium on U.S. based jobs.

• Pensions and 401K type retirement plans paid by employers add another 6% to the cost of U.S. based employees. 

• Before accounting for the added costs of the PPACA (Obama care), Health care premiums paid by U.S. employers add another 12% to the average cost of every American job.

The above costs amount to a 30% premium on every U.S. based job and unfortunately only represent the tip of our tax and regulation iceberg.

Beginning with Social Security, every burden that has been placed on our jobs has been placed there by the very people we elected to represent our interests in our government. These job-funded safety net programs were enacted with the best of intentions. But, as the saying goes, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.

Our elected representatives, led by our presidents, created these private sector job roadblocks without consideration for the long-term damage to our jobs. To be fair, before globalization, the problems were not material. However, globalization is the new world order.  One principle that the electorate should demand Congress adopt is that it is almost never in any American’s best interest to add non-job related costs to our private sector jobs. There is always a better way to pay for the programs we deem we need.

In addition to endangering our jobs by increasing U.S. based labor costs to pay for our safety net, lawmakers have created several other regulatory restrictions on or threats against private sector job creation incentives.

Regulation Uncertainty:
Excessive uncertainty is devastating to a free market, private capital based system like ours. Uncertainty is risk and decision makers loath any risk they cannot predict, manage or mitigate. Excessive risk of uncertainty paralyzes decision makers and forces them to retrench. They will wait until there is a clearer direction and will hope for a more favorable business climate. Consider the huge amount of private sector risk associated with the unknown regulatory direction of some of our nations most important business policy arenas.

·         National Health Care Policy:
The Supreme Court has ruled that Obama Care is constitutional. Unfortunately, the incremental health care cost estimates are hurting hiring - not helping it . The Secretary of HHS has until 2014 to finalize many of the regulations. When will business be able to estimate the impact of those regulations on their costs?

·         Financial and Banking Regulations:
When will the regulators finalize the Dodd-Frank regulations and what will they mean to our private sector? When will the banks start lending again to small businesses?

·         Tax Policy:
Both parties agree our current tax policy is broken and we desperately need a new one. Will we get a new tax policy and if so, how will it affect the private sector and private sector jobs? What will happen with tax policy issues set to expire by the end of this year and known as “Taxmageddon”?

·         Energy Policy:
We still don’t have an energy policy and still rely too heavily on unstable and unfriendly governments. Energy is the lifeblood of our economy. Wide-ranging energy price and supply fluctuations outside our control add excessive risk, uncertainty and costs to key energy related and energy dependent industries. 

It is inexcusable for Congress and the Administration to allow any one of these major economic areas to languish without a cohesive direction let alone all four. Responsible leadership demands policies that provide our private sector with the certainty and confidence they need to make reasonable business forecasts.

Regulation Inefficiency

Most of the burdens Congress has imposed on our private sector jobs have been implemented with little or no attempt to minimize the compliance costs or other negative affects these regulations will have on U.S. based jobs.

Our government should work with stakeholders in each industry to evaluate how to optimize, replace or eliminate every job inhibiting regulation.

Regulation Inequality vs. foreign competitors

Many of our regulations place U.S. based producers and therefore U.S. based labor at a competitive disadvantage because our laws apply to U.S. based employers but not to foreign competitors. For example, regulations are often designed to protect workers or enhance work life quality. Others are intended to protect, restore or enhance our environment. Unfortunately, the regulatory bodies often fail to consider the affect their regulations will have on our private sector jobs in a global economy. Ultimately, these regulations help foreign enterprises compete in America and around the world. We lose our best jobs to foreign competitors who maintain poor workplace practices and poor environmental controls and thereby negate any anticipated protections to people or planet the legislation was intended to provide. Those nations with high work life and high environmental controls should reconsider free trade arrangements with nations that maintain much lower work life and environmental standards. It is illogical to impose environmental controls on a U.S. based producer but then import the same products from a foreign nation with much less environmental controls.

Our government should compare regulations that restrict a U.S. industry against the regulations of foreign competition and utilize U.S. trade policy and tariffs when necessary to level the playing field.

Americans should expect their government to recognize and then unite against regulations that hurt U.S. based jobs. Yet, instead, Americans must suffer through political gridlock as both parties promote their ineffective economic policies as they hope beyond reason for the brighter days promised after the next election. Regardless of which party wins the presidency or the legislature in our equally divided nation, unless both parties and most Americans can agree to fix our economic racehorse’s broken leg, we will continue to wonder why our economy is not producing good paying private sector jobs.

Americans can have a fair, efficient and affordable safety net. American labor needs and deserves strong workplace safety regulations. Every successive American generation deserves environmental controls that bequeath to them a planet that is at least as safe and pristine as what was left to us. We can have all these benefits but only if we stop trying to do so at the expense of our job engine.

To learn how to restore our private sector job engine and our economy while we simultaneously improve our safety net, please read our position paper entitled Jobs and the Job Burden.

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PreFunding Senior Entitlements

How to Save Social Security and Medicare

The Problem:

Congress has promised that our seniors will have health care coverage and retirement income for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, Congress has failed to pay for all the benefits they have promised. Now our children must deal with the $61.6 trillion shortfall[1]

 

Pay-As-You-Go Funding:

Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries are primarily paid from the payroll and income taxes that are collected today. This type of funding is called Pay-As-You-Go.

Pre-funding at birth:

The greatest criticism of pay-as-you-go funding is that it ignores the wealth accumulation effects derived from the time-value-of-money. The time value of money is defined as the growth of money over time due to the compounding of interest.

The concept of "Pre-funding at Birth" takes full advantage of the time value of money. Pre-funding involves investing a relatively small amount of money at birth that grows unmolested until the beneficiary reaches a certain age – say 70 years old. The accumulated investment is then used to pay the beneficiary for the rest of their life. If you know how much money you want to receive in the future and you know the rate at which your investment will grow, it's a straightforward calculation to determine how much you'll need to invest today to reach your goal.

Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR):

Equity markets do not pay interest.  An investor makes money when the value of his or her equities increases or when the company pays a dividend. Because equity values can decline as well as increase, equity value changes are measured by a computation known as the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). For purposes of this discussion, CAGR and annual interest rate are synonymous.

CAGR History:

Using stock price and dividend yield data for over 100 years, U.S. equities, including reinvested dividends, have delivered a CAGR of 10.4%. The worst 70-year period since 1915 still returned a very respectable CAGR of 9.85% while the best 70-year period returned a CAGR of 11.92%[2]. The site www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm allows you to enter a date range and returns the corresponding CAGR.

Risk Mitigation:

There is a widely held but patently false belief that pay-as-you-go-funding for critical programs like Social Security and Medicare is less risky than investing in the stock markets. While it is certainly true that markets can and do fluctuate widely over a five, ten or even a fifteen year period, it is also true that the longer the term, the less the risk in the markets.

Consider a funding plan that was based on the perpetuity of the equity markets. Such a plan could eliminate market risk and beneficiary angst altogether simply by fixing average annual returns for all beneficiaries at a rate that was a few tenths of a percent less than the historic average. The plan could instill confidence further by guaranteeing the benefits through the full faith and credit of the US government.

When you compare the risk realities between Prefunding at birth and pay-as-you-go financing for Social Security and Medicare, the facts are hard to dispute. Even including the Great Depression and the current Great Recession, equity markets have still managed to average a 10.4% return on investment while pay-as-you-go financing has left us with a $61.6 trillion unfunded liability against our children's future. Nice legacy. Which financing strategy would you say is less risky?

A Social Security Example:

In 2007, the average Social Security benefit was $12,972 per year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a person who turned 70 in 2007 was expected to live another 14 years. Each year Social Security payments were expected to grow 2.8% to cover cost of living increases[3]. The lifetime payout after 14 years was expected to be $218,664[4].

Pre-Funding vs. Pay-As-You-Go:

How would Prefunding at birth compare with Pay-as-you-go financing from an historical perspective? Well, given our 10.4% average return on investment and a 2.8% average annual inflation rate, how much would taxpayers have had to invest one-time in 1937 in order to be able to payout $218,664 over 14 years beginning in 2007? The answer is $121.

You might want to read that last paragraph again – let it sink in.

In other words, if you were born on January 1, 1937 and the Social Security Administration had deposited $121 for you in a fund that grew on average 10.4% per year, at age 70, you could start withdrawing $12,972 per year. Each year you could receive 2.8% more than the year before to cover inflation. You could receive that inflation adjusted payment each year for the rest of your life (estimated at 14 years). At the end of those 14 years, you would have received the same $218,664 that Social Security would have paid you if Social Security had the money, which under current funding law, it would not. Said another way - $121 Pre-Funded at birth is the same as $218,664 Pay-As-You-Go.

Compare the one-time investment of $121 made 70 years ago against the $218,664 that must be taken from workers and employers over the next 14 years. Moreover, that is just one person. Had Social Security and Medicare included pre-funding at their inception, then those programs would be adequately funded today and more importantly, forever.

That's looking at Prefunding from an historical perspective, but what about the future. The BLS.gov forecasts that average life expectancies for a 70 year old will increase from 14 to 18 years. So, how much would it cost today to prefund a newborn’s Social Security account that begins paying benefits 70 years from now? With an average annual growth rate of 10.4%, average annual inflation rate of 2.8% and a life expectancy of 18 years, the answer is $750. 

With roughly 4 million Americans born each year, the cost to fund a program that deposits $750 in an account for every newborn American is about $3 billion per year ($750 X 4 million births).

How much is $3 billion per year? To put it in context, consider that we spend about $2 billion per week in Afghanistan. In other words, the annual cost to prefund Social Security is equivalent to about 10 1/2 days in Afghanistan.

In 2009, Americans paid $805 billion to Social Security. Social Security paid out $680 billion in benefits and Congress spent the remaining $125 billion Social Security surplus on programs unrelated to Social Security. If that surplus had been hidden in a mattress, it could prefund Social Security for the next 40 years ($125 billion / $3 billion per year). But suppose the $125 billion had been invested in non US debt. Any return slightly greater than 2.4% on $125 billion could pay for the prefunding program indefinitely. ($125B x .024 = $3B).

Conclusion:

Pre-funding at birth can resolve the financing problems confronting both Social Security and Medicare. Transitioning from pay-as-you-go to pre-funding would place us on a glide path to eliminate the $61.6 trillion in unfunded liabilities and save Social Security and Medicare from financial crisis. Americans need to be aware of this solution and demand that Congress save our senior safety net and keep the promises they made.

To learn more about how pre-funding can save our Senior Safety-Net programs, please review the position paper ABC – Social Security.

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[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us-owes-62-trillion-in-debt_n.htm

[2] http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm Robert Shiller: The data collection effort about investor attitudes that I have been conducting since 1989 has now resulted in a group of Stock Market Confidence Indexes produced by the Yale School of Management. These data are collected in collaboration with Fumiko Kon-Ya and Yoshiro Tsutsui of Japan. Some of our earlier results are also noteworthy.

Stock market data used in [Robert Shiller] book, Irrational Exuberance [Princeton University Press 2000, Broadway Books 2001, 2nd ed., 2005] are available for download, Excel file (xls). This data set consists of monthly stock price, dividends, and earnings data and the consumer price index (to allow conversion to real values), all starting January 1871. The price, dividend, and earnings series are from the same sources as described in Chapter 26 of my earlier book (Market Volatility [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989]), although now I use monthly data, rather than annual data. Monthly dividend and earnings data are computed from the S&P four-quarter tools for the quarter since 1926, with linear interpolation to monthly figures. Dividend and earnings data before 1926 are from Cowles and associates (Common Stock Indexes, 2nd ed. [Bloomington, Ind.: Principia Press, 1939]), interpolated from annual data. Stock price data are monthly averages of daily closing prices through January 2000, the last month available as this book goes to press. The CPI-U (Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers) published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics begins in 1913; for years before 1913 1 spliced to the CPI Warren and Pearson's price index, by multiplying it by the ratio of the indexes in January 1913. December 1999 and January 2000 values for the CPI-Uare extrapolated. See George F. Warren and Frank A. Pearson, Gold and Prices (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1935). Data are from their Table 1, pp. 11–14. For the Plots, I have multiplied the inflation-corrected series by a constant so that their value in january 2000 equals their nominal value, i.e., so that all prices are effectively in January 2000 dollars.

[3] SSA.gov Social Security Administration, Master Beneficiary Record, 100 percent data. SSABenefits2.xls (sheet 2: 12/2007)

[4] http://www.financeformulas.net/Present_Value_of_Growing_Annuity.html#Calc-Header Present value of a growing annuity.

[5] http://www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/trsum/index.html

If I Wanted America to Fail: Teacher Challenge

On April 20th, 2012, FreeMarketAmerica.org released a four minute video entitled "If I wanted America to Fail"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ-4gnNz0vc
I challenge every teacher in America to show this video to their classes and then conduct an open discussion.

But before a teacher can show this video to their students, they should answer the following questions for themselves.

Questions for teachers:
1. Would you be "allowed" to show this in your class?
2. Would you be "concerned" over peer pressure (teachers) to show this in your class?
3. Would you be "worried" about your career if you even asked to show this in your class?
4. Would you "fear" repercussions from the parents?
5. Do you "think" any of the points raised by the video are worthy of discussion?

6. If you belong to a Teacher's Union, do you think your union would support any of the positions raised?

Please submit your answers to these questions and include the zip code where you teach and the grade(s) you teach.

If you know any teachers, please forward this link to them.

Let's have an open and honest discussion for a change.

______________________________________________

James W. Schneider

CEO, Americans United Party

Is America a Nation in Decline?

The evidence to support the case is strong. For starters, we face an unsustainable national debt that continues to grow at an accelerating rate. Our job market has failed to support our population growth for over four years. Our increasing income gap has been eroding the purchasing power of America’s middle class families for decades. These are just a sample of the mounting problems we face as a nation.

Through our Constitution, we empower our political leaders to solve our national problems. Unfortunately, our political leaders have become more of a problem than a solution. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have offered anything substantively new from their anemic economic playbooks. Democrats once again want to increase taxes and spending while Republicans want to cut taxes and slow down spending. Both approaches are nothing more than Keynesian band-aids that shift pain from one group to another as we continue our gradual decline.

Neither party has articulated a strategic vision that reverses the decades old policies that are responsible for our protracted economic decay. By pitting American against American and group against group, our political class ensures an equally divided, never-ending tug-of-war among the electorate. Neither side appears capable of offering solutions the other side will accept. How could they? If you despise, distrust and believe your opponent is inherently evil, you are unlikely to accept that they could ever have your best interests at heart.

Confronted with an overly partisan and hopelessly gridlocked government that is either unwilling or unable to solve our nation’s fiscal problems, a concerned electorate has learned that we have been chipping away at our economic foundation since globalization began over forty years ago. While our economy declines against the backdrop of an expanding industrialized world, we are being conditioned by our political leadership and our national press to accept our decline as the “new normal”. Well, this is not the new normal. America’s decline is not a foregone conclusion. Our decline is the result of irresponsible mismanagement perpetrated by both political parties, fueled by an ideologically biased media and funded by the inherent corruption of deep pocket special interest groups that have managed to isolate our elected representatives from “we the people”. As President Kennedy said during his speech at The American University on June 10, 1963,

- Our problems are man made; therefore, they may be solved by man.

Our man made economic decline is fully reversible, but only if Americans can forge a solutions-based strategic plan that unifies the majority of Americans around its implementation and allows us to reject the emotional ploys that keep us a nation divided.

Carting out a retread crop of previously rejected solutions will not be any more palatable to the opposition groups then they were in their previous incarnations. We need a different framework. We need a framework designed to appeal to the majority of Americans. A framework that is so founded in common sense that even the deep-pocket media blitz from the status quo seeking special interest groups will find it difficult to demagogue.

Recognizing that the only positive way forward is through consensus building, the Americans United Party has developed a comprehensive economic road map that addresses the root causes of our economic decline and prescribes a remedy that places America back on the path to prosperity.

The AUP Economic Road map appeals to the financial aspirations and common sense of most Americans. Our solutions based approach was not locked into the rigors of any entrenched ideology nor were we forced to settle for middle of the road mediocrity in order to gain widespread acceptance. On the contrary, our strategy transcends political ideology because our plan puts the financial aspirations of Americans, all Americans, first.

The AUP plan addresses the six economic components whose deterioration is most responsible for our protracted economic decline - Jobs, Debt, Safety Net, Energy, Education and Government. Our Economic Road map presents a plan that coordinates and optimizes these six facets of our economy into a cohesive economic model designed to accomplish one simple and universally acceptable economic goal. Namely;

Continuously improve the standard of living of all Americans.

We invite you to review, comment and support our economic road map.

http://americansunitedparty.blogspot.com/2011/07/executive-summary.html

I look forward to hearing your constructive suggestions.

Jim Schneider

CEO Americans United Party