Book Review: Back to Work, by Bill Clinton

This is a book review. I am interested in Bill Clinton’s newest book because he has always been a very serious thinker about complex matters affecting our nation. There are big ideas he has championed. Those have been ideas that move us away from the little ideas that tend to draw us into debate and argument.

Big ideas. We tend to steer clear of them. Too bad because they force us to see the world differently, often more clearly. To help see what I mean, let’s take a look at his book.

An outline of the book Back to Work by Bill Clinton

Premise: we need to get into the futures business. Get away from the current problems by creating the future we need and deserve. Do so consciously.

Caveats:

1. A huge antigovernment political movement has been operating in America for at least 30 years; it has distorted our public discussion, policy setting and political functioning
2. Antigovernment ideology is not productive for the citizens. It is a political tool designed to win elections and amass power
3. The beneficiaries of antigovernment ideology are wealthy people and corporations. They increasingly gain larger ownership shares of the economy and earn a disproportionate share of national income
4. We need government for those issues that are universal to our needs:
1. National defense capability
2. National banking, finance and commercial system
3. National courts and justice system
4. National regulations to avoid fraud and misuse of power
5. Education standard setting; research, development and technology needs
6. National health, housing and quality of life issues (welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.)
5. National debt should be minimized and fit our needs; not runaway and irresponsible; when and how to repair operating deficits and accumulated debt is a goal of financial system policy; not political system
6. Our comparable rank with the rest of the globe: it is poor, and declining among developed nations

How to turn this around: Focus on job creation. We can do this by building a smarter government.  Here is a list of the ways we can do that:

1. End the mortgage mess as quickly as possible
2. Let people with government-guaranteed mortgages who aren’t delinquent refinance their mortgages at the current low interest rate
3. Federal Reserve should give the banks an incentive to lend
4. Give corporations incentives to bring more money back to the United States
5. Let companies repatriate the cash now with no tax liability if it’s reinvested to create new jobs
6. Pass President Obama’s payroll tax cuts
7. Build a 21^st Century infrastructure
8. Speed up the process for approving and completing infrastructure projects

Use energy differently and more efficiently; make this an industry and:

9. Launch an aggressive, 50-state building retrofit initiative (comprehensive energy savings)
10.  States and localities should have their own retrofit initiatives
11. Get pension funds involved by investing in the retrofit projects
12. At the very least paint roofs white
13. Reinstate the full tax credit for new green-technology jobs

Additional job creation ideas:

14. Finish the smart grid with adequate transmission lines
15. Geothermal energy (using underground heat) should be increased
16. Turn more landfills into power generators
17. Develop our natural gas resources
18. Keep developing more efficient biofuels
19.  Keep the tax credits for producing and buying electric and hybrid vehicles

Further energy strategy supports needed:

20. The military can and should do more to speed our energy transformation; global warming is a national defense threat
21. Speed up the issuance of new energy efficiency rules for the most common household appliances
22. Spend the rest of the rapid-rail money, but spend it where it will do the most good
23. Support state and local innovations and encourage their adoption across the country
24. To speed up innovative process, we should pick one or two US states or territories and work to make them completely energy independent

Other ideas for improving American competitiveness:

  25. Concentrate on high-end manufacturing and get smaller companies into exports
  26. Negotiate long-term contracts to sell food to China, Saudi Arabia, and other
        nations facing food shortages
  27. Pass pending trade agreements with South Korea, Columbia and Panama
  28. Enforce trade laws
  29. Concentrate on increasing the export potential of cities, not just states

  30. Export more services

  31. Get to emerging opportunities before others do

  32. Sell, sell, sell. We say we do but don’t do the deals; close the deal!

A few other ideas to share:
  33. Increase the role of the Small Business Administration

34. Promote ‘crowdfinding’ to help small businesses raise needed capital (use of Internet to find small amounts of money from individuals to invest in small businesses)
35. Fill the three million jobs that are already open faster
36. Provide an extra incentive to hire people who’ve been out of work more than six months
37. Give employers an incentive not to lay off workers in the first place
38. “Insource” jobs we’ve been outsourcing
39. To support insourcing we need to increase the number of empowerment zones and expand the reach of the New Markets Initiative
40. Increase the preparation and recruitment of, and incentives for, more young Americans to get degrees and take jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields
41. Keep pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, and in the meantime grant more H-1B visas to immigrants in STEM fields until we have enough qualified citizens to fill the openings
42. Bring more tourists to the United States
43. Promote affordable opportunities to ‘buy American’
44. Support National Jobs Day
45. Offer an X Prize or its equivalent for ideas that promote innovation and job creation
46. Replicate the prosperity centers

To get more information on each of the numbered items, read the book! But clearly Bill Clinton has many ideas that will address the immediate and long-term needs of the nation. Each of these ideas is incremental. Some are revolutionary. Taken together they will support job creation and economic recovery in a manner that will fuel generations of continuing prosperity.

These are things we can do today. They are not pro-government or anti-government. They are means to manage our affairs with intelligence. This is the way to build smarter government. Will the elections of 2012 help this along?

December 30, 2011