A Promise Fulfilled

After letting this post lay fallow in the long Brazilian winter, it is time to replant with thoughts that I have been too busy to share.

I promised one of my two readers some time ago that I would add some comments around why I think the best days for the US are still ahead of us.

It would be easy to be pessimistic ...

• China owns so much of our debt that they could buy us.
• The dollar is in freefall thanks to our continuing to print money for which we have no real value (goods or services or real assets)
• The country is bogged down in two major overseas wars
• We are under the continual pounding of proposed changes from the most liberal, socialist president since Lyndon Johnson (or maybe even Franklin Roosevelt)
• The country is equally divided by those who seek more from the government and those who seek less, and the relationship between the two is acrimonious and dogmatic
• Unemployment is very high, feeding the current business downturn
• Business is generally in the tank and the government owns way too much of it

Sarcastically, one might say that, since there is nowhere to go but up, our best days HAVE to be ahead of us.

Looking at our problems, they have all been there before. There was a time we thought Japan would own us. The value of the dollar will stay low unless we reign in spending and borrowing - it can be done. We survived Roosevelt and Johnson, although they both saddled us with social programs that are about to go belly up. We have had many heated differences of opinion many times in our short history. Unemployment and business activity goes in cycles. Much of this will fix itself.

What I point to in my optimism is the indomitable spirit of our citizens. We are risk takers as a country (immigrants, the backbone of our history, are risk takers by definition). We are creative. We tackle problems head on and come up with new and exciting ways to do things. We will move away from oil because someone will figure out a way to make big money by doing so. Our universities will provide many options for tackling some of the difficult barriers that private industry cannot spend resources on. It will be a collective effort of our diverse society that will move us forward. Our very national fabric pushes us to try to do our best to be the best. The technological path forward is loaded with powerful new tools to do our work: nanotechnology, genetics, artificial intelligence, aerospace expertise, to name a few. No matter the problem being tackled - climate, health care, trade, technology - risk takers, technical, social, and economic, have shown time and again that they are willing to back the hard choices that move us forward. We have a history of this type of inventiveness and there is no reason to think that will change. Think of the last 200 years in this country and look at all we have done in business, social justice, science and technology. Risk takers will keep us at the forefront. Our best days still lay ahead.