I always thought having good relations with other countries was much better than to constantly be branding them as enemies. I also believe there is something wrong with a system where our legislator’s first round of business is to do away with their ethics committee. This try was not successful, but when they did away with punishment for themselves for insider trading that should have been a clue to us we should have voted out anyone who voted for this measure. It is time the members of congress are subject to the same laws as we are, without exception. What’s next on the agenda, exemptions for committing violent crimes? You have to wonder what others think of us when they read what is going on. It should be a tip to us when things like this happen. People who are willing to do these things certainly do not have the best interest of the American public at heart. These people are only there for two reasons and this is to enrich themselves and become powerful.

There are plenty of problems in the world these people should be tackling. One of them is how to make sure Americans will have jobs in the future. Besides lousy trade deals, automation is killing jobs on a grand scale and many believe it is only a matter of time before having a job will be a luxury. I have talked about guaranteed incomes before, but in all fairness this is not the entire solution to the problem of disappearing jobs. Eventually homes will have to be provided and people will have to be given something to do. One of the worst things which could happen is having a culture where people are idle, even if they have a place to live and money. What could they be given to do? That is a real sticky question and will require much thought by many different experts, but it will have to be something which they don’t hate and has some interesting aspects to it. The guaranteed income should come from business which save money by not having to hire employees. Some sort of scale would have to be developed to figure out what contribution is needed from each company.

One of the biggest problems we have today is the genie has been let out of the bottle. What I mean is many countries want their own nuclear weapons, not only because they are so destructive, but also because they feel it gives them status. However a couple of these countries do have an agenda and that agenda is to destroy the U.S., at least it seems North Korea would love to do that since we hear their threats all the time. It is very hard for the United States to handle this problem without using force. One would think the North Koreans would keep a lower profile, but their goal is not only to get nukes, but to give them to other countries. It is too bad the world can’t be convinced to give up nukes, since they really serve no purpose. The reason I say this is if anyone uses one it could cause a nuclear war which might destroy the earth.

As we sit here we see the debts of this country increasing while companies keep trillions of dollars out of the country. Can American companies be convinced to come to the U.S.? Some believe they can including Trump. I have to wonder how the countries which these companies are in would react to losing so much business. Would they enact tariffs against the United States and would this cause a trade war? We have to remember we have a lot of foreign companies in the United States. One has only to look at the foreign car companies which are here. Toyota has plants in Mississippi, Kentucky, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, and West Virginia that I know of and there could be more. A Toyota Camry has 80% American parts while a Ford Escape was said to have 65%. Toyota claims it created 365,000 jobs in the U.S. In February 2015 it was said Ford employed 50,703 workers and General Motors 50,300. In case you are wondering about the big difference between these numbers and the Toyota numbers, these numbers do not include other jobs this creates, but the Toyota numbers do. It is possible when all is considered the numbers of jobs this creates could be equal or more than the Toyota numbers. The point I am trying to make is if we chase out the foreign companies by demanding all the U.S. companies come back with all their plants will we really gain anything or could this cause a net loss in jobs? I don’t know the answer, but it is something to think about.

There are quite a few temporary jobs the government could create, those jobs would be used to rebuild the infrastructure. If we do rebuild our roads and bridges this way it could be the last time human labor en mass was used this way, because the same automation which is causing us to lose jobs would probably be used in the future for big projects like this. There will be some automation used however so the amount of people required for this task would be far less than would have been needed say in the 1950s to do the same thing. While temporary jobs are not an answer to the lack of permanent jobs, the money they generate would be a help to many people including those people in commercial areas around where the work was being done. When the Alaskan highway was being constructed it generated a lot of money for the businesses in the area, which in that case were few and far between.

We have a lot of problems which we have to solve in order to improve our lot in this country, but there are other things we should do for national pride and one of those is buying back the toll roads we sold to foreign companies. Yes we have sold some of our roads which seems to me to be inconceivable and un-American. We also have to prepare for the change in our power structure since oil and coal are on the way out and other forms of energy are taking their place. Also we have to prepare for other new technologies. Let me give you an example. Children born today may never actually drive a car, it may drive them. This means all those driving jobs will be lost and they amount to millions. It will eventually mean a truck will drive itself, a robotic device will unload it and store the items in a warehouse in some cases without a human being necessary. Things are changing and society will need to change with it. Answers will be needed and they will be needed soon.