You talk the talk but do you dare this walk?

Dear candidates, you who aspire to become the next President of the United States of America, do you not agree that your voters have the right to get a feel for how you would answer some different and not beaten around questions of our time, so that they can get to know you better? - Even though some of these questions might not have an answer, much less a totally correct one, we hope you will at least try to advance the beginning of a comment. - Would you be so kind?

Division is the real weapon of mass destruction!

A divided country is a weakened country but yet the discoursers that divide seem to get so much more primetime access than those that unite. There is a political thriller waiting to be written about the conspiracy to end the world by seeding and promoting the extremism on both sides and that is founded on that false sense of solidarity that stops decent people on each side from asking their own loonies to shut up! What can be done about that?

Outsourcing!

Humans have always outsourced; to their neighbor, valley or next state, and few have complained, which is something we should keep in mind when discussing outsourcing to other countries. If I earned 50.000 a year and spent it all on living I would not mind my salary falling 20% if also my living expenses dropped 30%, and I then had now 5.000 to save, and so we must make sure the benefits of outsourcing are well distributed. Might the intellectual property rights be taking more than a fair share?

On the ethics in an aging society

The President’s Council of Bioethics recently published its report Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society, but it does not give sufficient attention to what could be the most unethical behavior today, namely that of not anticipating and providing timely solutions for the increasingly older population, which perhaps would then require to move the frontiers of what is currently considered ethical caretaking... just to make room! What do you intend to do about it?

Centralized oil revenues are lethal for democracies!

According to the Iraq Study Group Report redistributing a portion of the oil revenues directly to the population on a per capita basis has the potential to give all Iraqi citizens a stake in the nation’s chief natural resource. Should not the US ask Iraq to introduce a transparent oil revenue sharing system that obliges the Iraqi leaders to lean on their electorate for the honor of serving them and not, as usually happens when the oil curse reigns, to lean on oil, to serve themselves?

You need an insurance against whatever the genetic research could discover

We get our health insurance by sharing the risks with others in similar risk categories; men, women, smokers, non-smokers, old, young. But, if any future genetic research would come to indicate a special propensity for any especially onerous illness, who would then like to share those risks. It seems that what the society most would need, right now, before any shared sense of solidarity breaks down, is an insurance against whatever the genetic research could discover. Do you agree?

An in-between option for Iraq?

In the discussions on whether the US should stay in Iraq or go home there is peculiar little attention given to the possibility of something in between, like getting out of the way while still hanging around in the neighborhood, close to the borders of Iraq, so as to see how it goes. Not only would this allow the Iraqis to take more ownership of their own destiny but also, if things go really haywire, for the US to return and help, something impossible if they have all gone home to Kansas. Any comment?

About the de-facto American Union

The USA—surreptitiously perhaps—has nonetheless gone through its own European-style enlargement which can only mean that the current debate in the USA on immigration reform could only benefit by being split into two parts: immigration reform as such; and a debate about the laws and regulations that affects cohabitation in the de-facto American Union created jointly with the Central American countries. Would you agree?

How do we best tackle global warming?

There is much talk about the climate change and since the risk of doing something about it even if these warnings are exagerated seems to be smaller than the risk of not doing anything at all, we should proceed… to do what? It would truly be a shame if and when the world finally gets it will together, that it would then only end up doing useless things. How can we make sure to get the objective information that keeps us from falling into the traps of the so many peddlers of green magic potions?

About any fence

Since you might favor fencing the borders, you could thereafter run the risk of falling calmly asleep only to wake up to see that it was a useless fence; that it could bring on an isolation even more dangerous than any original threath; that you could get caught with the wrong people on the right side or the right people on the wrong side; and that, when all things are said and done, you are never really sure about who are in and who are out. How do you intend to manage these risks?

Should not higher education be a joint venture?

We hear about kids who pursuing a better future have invested their time and money in order to study, frequently taking on debt, only to find themselves left alone holding the short stick. In the pursuit of better aligned incentives should higher education providers share more in the risks of the future instead of collecting all their dues, cash upfront, as they do now? What would you say if a student would sue his Alma Mater for failing to deliver upon the services promised?

A big tax on gasoline?

The USA has a large fiscal deficit; it has a huge current-account deficit; it is by far the world’s biggest oil consumer; it seems aware about the problems of the environment; and it has confessed an addiction that has made it dependent on foreign oil supplies. Any other sensible country would, in similar circumstances, increase the taxes on gasoline consumption and substantially help to solve all the above-mentioned problems. Would you as a leader dare to raise the issue of a tax on gasoline?

One child one vote!

The graying of the nation diminishes the representation of those who have to live the longest with the consequences of today’s political decisions. To combat a baby-boomer’s dictatorship would you favor a one child one vote reform where the mother, father or older sibling would be authorized to exercise that vote, as a way to further a more complete democracy?

About a minor but major healthcare reform

With relation to the health issue, currently the non-insured that need to negotiate on their own always end up paying many times more for their medicines and healthcare services than those whose price negotiations are handled by knowledgeable insurance companies. A one line law, “thou shall not charge the weak and lonely any higher prices than you would charge the strong defended by a strong insurance company”, could eliminate most of the current injustices. Would you agree with such law?

The mother of all systemic risks!

If you agree that the true value of a market is that is searches out the opinions of many participants with so many diversified criteria, would you then not think that the latest fashion of turning over so much power to some very few credit rating agencies to decide so much about the financial flows in the world, is setting us up for the mother of all systemic risks? By the way where were these sophisticated agencies when mortgage loans were awarded on clearly not sustainable terms?

McPrisons!

Just throwing an immigrant criminal over the borders in the hope that countries with much less resources will know what to do with them, does not sound smart as it could come back to haunt you. Would you consider helping the Central American countries to build more functional prisons and perhaps help to pay for it by keeping there some of the Central-American prisoners that have been condemned in US courts, at a much lower cost?

I am a foreigner... so what?

I am not an American citizen and so I cannot vote, but in this small global world that should not really matter, since it is just as important for all us foreigners to try to make certain that at least the American voters know fully well whom they will be voting for. Never forget that we are all indigenous to this little planet earth and so in fact your backyard, depending on the lens we use, might very well be in my very own backyard, and or vice versa.

I will of course never opine on the answers, that could be taken as meddling in your own internal affairs, which is the last thing I want to do.

Anyone interested?

Any university or foundation who might be interested in having someone like me on their team to work on issues like these please say so, and let’s talk. Nonetheless let me warn you that though I have an MBA plus over 30 years of working experience, that includes having been an Executive Director at the World Bank (2002-2004), I have no PhD. Sometimes I have even been toying with the idea of promoting a “Guaranteed free of PhDs’ University”. . . But then who knows, I might even go for a PhD at your university!

Who am I? - The United States of America and I (1)

My mother is from Sweden and my father was from Poland, and I was born in 1950, in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, close to the Colombian border.

In a world where everything is radicalizing and so many believe that if you are not 100% for, you have to be 100% against, I need to make a very personal comment about the United States. My father, as a Polish soldier taken prisoner of war by the Germans, spent five years in concentration camps, from the last of which he was liberated by American soldiers. I was brought up on a pro-American diet and for many years counted To Hell and Back, the 1955 movie that recounted the life of Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier in the Second World War, among my favorites. There is no way on earth that I could suffer from any sort of real anti–United States of America phobia. If I criticize, make recommendations, or observe some things that I believe could be improved in the United States, I always do so as a sincere friend who truly wishes for that much-admired country to live up to those very high standards of which I feel it is capable. And when it doesn’t, I am just a much-saddened friend, but never a foe. The United States should not ignore the fact that out there it has many true friends who truly wish it well. It should never confuse them with all those who are plain bootlickers.

Also, if the ongoing globalization is to stand a chance to end in something good for the world, this will also very much depend on the willingness and the ability of the USA to do the right things right.Let us not also forget that we all are also indigenous to this small planet earth, this last as you are all too.

1. From Voice and Noise, Booksurge, 2006