Seven Simple Tenets to get the Economy Back on its Feet

1. Identify what is most important and invest in it. That’s right! Actually spend money as long as it is for what is important. During college I went through some very lean years. I ate more meals of ramen noodles than I care to remember. It would have been very easy to cure my financial situation. All I needed to do was to drop out of college and get a job. All of my other expenditures were very modest compared to the dramatic costs of college, but that was what was important to me and what I believed would lead to better days to come. As a State and a Country we need to go through this same evaluation. What is important and what are we willing to invest in? Things on my list include infrastructure investment, reduction in the national debt, and education, but let’s open up the discussion.

2. Make sure that people are paid a reasonable wage for their work. A good example is the construction industry. Transportation contracts are being let on average about 20% lower than they were being bid a few short years ago. This has been going on for more than three years now. I have even seen some jobs bid for installed prices that are lower than the cost of the materials themselves. This is not sustainable. Although in the short term getting these bargain prices for our infrastructure may seem to be advantageous, in the end we will loose good contractors, good people will be needlessly laid off, and money earned, but not paid will never be spent within the local economy. These practices will ultimately contract our economy and prolong the recession.

3. We need to stop beating each other up. Witch hunts seem to be getting very popular. It is the Democrats or the Republicans or "government is too big" or Wall Street is to blame. We need to each take our portion of the blame and then focus on how we can work together to make things better. It won’t be easy, but working together it won’t be as bad as we think.

4. We need to demand more from our Leadership. Here is a pledge I want my next candidate to take, “I will agree to take no pledge that will prevent me from considering all options to solve the problems faced by the people of New Hampshire” or “I will agree to make the tough decisions even if it means that I must go from door to door and town hall to town hall to reach the consensus that we need to move forward.” Candidates, I really don’t care what the other party did, let’s hear what you are going to do to fix it.

5. We need to understand that laying off hundreds of State employees arbitrarily does not improve the unemployment rate. Certainly, take on the inefficiencies and challenge our state leaders to make their programs more efficient, but cutting employees by quota or by percentage is too easy. Do the work! Stop the rhetoric. It is too easy to tell everybody they have big government to blame for all of their problems. We are losing a lot of hard working people needlessly and many of the ones we are losing are often the youngest with the least tenure (often the most cost-effect staff). Also having people work for months and sometimes years under the threat of termination is not a strategy for bringing out their best.

6. We need to find out where we lost our integrity. After years of collective bargaining with the unions, it is suddenly acceptable to back out of the deals that were made. I guess because the state of the country is now the union’s fault. I do not disagree that some of the agreements made over the years do defy logic, but two sides made those agreements. To change the agreements through legislation is not right and defies who we are and what we are about. I have been watching a stream of talented individuals taking voluntary retirement years early to avoid steep cuts in their retirement benefits. The State is losing some of its greatest institutional knowledge and talent by these attacks on the retirement system. I couldn’t believe the proposal that called for forfeiting all historic contract terms if a new contract agreement could not be reached by a certain deadline. Talk about unfair labor practices. Why not just suggest holding a gun to their head? We are better than that.

7. We need to listen as much as we talk. I was amazed at how low our country had sunk during the healthcare debates. Everybody was so busy yelling their opinion that there was no chance for understanding. We have become so bi-polar. We need to spend more time understanding all sides of the discussions. I was in Washington a week or two after the healthcare bill had passed and was amazed at the number of bomb threats that encumbered the City. We need to take a step back and rediscover our common ground.