The Denver Post

In the city of Denver, in downtown, literally on the pedestrian mall/ 16th street, is a curved glass building that used to be home to the first Starbucks I've ever been to in Denver, and the Rocky Mountain News. RIP Rocky, I really did like the cool tabloid covers you had. The Denver Post is the only one left now, besides a right wing-extremist paper that no one subscribes too. Oh well. Anyway, The title of this post is called, the "Denver" post because the post is dealing with Denver, not because I really like the Denver Post, but because this is, in fact, a Denver.... post...

Anyway...

In the city of Denver, a few blocks from the downtown 16th Street pedestrian mall, is a rather imposing building in the Greek revival style. Around this building are hundreds of people with cameras, and numerous police cars. Its a pretty cool place.

In the city of Denver, a few feet from the downtown 16th Street pedestrian mall, is a rather imposing building in the Romanesque style. Around this building are much smaller numbers of people with cameras, and a police car or two, a large amount of buses, and trains - mostly late trains.

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These two buildings that exist downtown have an interesting similarity. Granted, they are both in the downtown, urban core (yay!), but the sheer purpose of these two buildings is much more, and the purpose of one of them mutually benefits the purpose of the other, and vice versa. In fact, the mutual benefit can save the entire economy.

What?

Yep...



What's Wrong?

The American economy is obviously struggling. As banks created more and more money out of thin air (after caps on how much this could occur were removed by the Bush Administration), making frivolous loans, the ability to repay the government for the money they ordered was lost. This is called a "bank FAIL" or, when your bank runs out of money, it can't make loans. And no bank WANTS to make a loan. Why would they? No one can pay anything back because they don't have a job because the company they worked for had to default on a loan because of bad banking practices giving loans to people who can't pay them back. Its a viscous circle, that continues to make itself worse. Thus, the late 2000's recession was born- the worst since 1929.

Reconstructing America

The two buildings that I mentioned earlier are, in short, the answer to our economic issues- Plain and simple. Conservatives argue that we can't possibly keep spending money to solve all of our problems, whilst democrats argue that we have to spend in order to save our businesses and our workers from certain failure- those same workers and businesses that require markets from Americans to stay buoyant. Thats where the first building, the federal mint, comes in. We must understand a few principals of our economy- that is, our money only has the value that our American citizens- and the citizens of the world put into it. The principal of a "balanced budget" in Washington is a bit of a misnomer, then, because as long as the dollar still has value, it will be used to purchase things. Now, I am all for fiscal discipline- don't get me wrong. We really do need to have an income for every dollar that is spent in Washington. But, for the most part, that isn't easy to do- Especially now that we're fighting a war and we have a huge economic crisis on our hands that requires government help to keep basic services and businesses providing millions jobs soluble. Yes, fiscal discipline is great and it prevents inflation as we saw during the Clinton Administration, but sometimes- especially in an economic hard time, we must spend more to get more.

Reconstructing America can, and arguably should be our foremost goal in approaching the solution to America's economic crisis. America's infrastructure is the key to making our industries and corperations tick. If our railroads, roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation systems were up to snuff, we'd all be moving more efficiently. We'd import less oil, soften the blow to our planet, decongest our roads, foster urban development and use suburban land for farming or sustainable development. But, that is an INCREDIBLE amount of infrastructure to build. Here's how all of it could be a single-fell swoop to save the economy, once and for all.

Aside: If WW2 got us out of the Great Depression, that means we'd produced millions of... stuff... and put millions of people to work making that stuff. This is similar.

Yes We Can

So, yes, millions of people, with jobs putting cash in their pockets, building the high speed rail system of tomorrow, building double-track mainlines to haul goods faster, more efficiently, all the equipment, locomotives, rolling stock, train stations, maintenance centers, the steel rails putting rust belt Americans back to work in the nation's steel mills- modernizing them because producing steel in the US, close to rapid demand for steel in large amounts is profitable- to Colorado, where gravel would be mined for road beds, to Maine, where Portland Cement would be poured to make the sleepers for the rails- to Detroit, where skilled auto workers again put locomotives together instead of cars, to Rhode Island, the nation's largest construction economy- building thousands of train stations throughout the nation.

All these people, industries, would have money in their pockets, would modernize and be able to compete in the global economy again like Germany after WW2- again, the USA would top the EU in GDP, and we'd do it efficiently. We'd save the economy, modernize our industries, making ourselves competitive again for businesses to move in, and maybe save the planet while we're at it. Sure, it'd cost billions, but the gratification for such a project would easily pay off in a decade after we're done. And surely in this time of war, if we can find all this money to kill people, we can find money to help people.

Why not print the new money on recycled paper, too?