The Way Out: Ideas from a friend in Chicago

"1) Overhauling the U.S. healthcare system. Putting in place a system that provides healthcare to all Americans all the time, with quality controls and cost controls, will have a huge free-market effect. All businesses, but especially small businesses, are severely handicapped by the constantly-escalating cost of providing health insurance, which reduces their ability to hire and buy equipment. It has become axiomatic that Ford and GM spend more on health insurance than they do on steel, but it is often worse for small companies. The burden on individuals workers is even worse, since their reliance on employer-provided health insurance gives them limited ability to change jobs or to become entrepreneurs, and even with insurance, out-of-pocket expenses can be tremendously burdensome on all but the wealthiest families. Worse, all of this money (our per cost is nearly double the next-closest country in the world – Switzerland) goes toward comparatively poor care.

2) Energy Technology. As I said, this has been talked about an awful lot recently, but I truly believe that the United States is in the best position to focus its attention on developing and building the technology for the world’s energy future. Small fuel cell generators for homes and businesses will be great domestically, but nothing compared to what they will be to the vast world population that isn’t already connected to an energy grid. Our vast geography and unmatched university system makes the development of wind power, solar power and tidal power, among other things, ours for the taking. Add in the development of high-temperature superconductors and desalinization technology, and we will transform the world.

3) Biotechnology. We are just at the beginning of a revolution in the application of biotechnology to medicine, agriculture and material science that will change the world. Once again, we already have the infrastructure to become the world supplier of all of these things, and if we make it a national priority, I know we will." Sphere: Related Content