I've submitted the following proposal to the incoming federal government through the form at change.gov.  Will it make a difference?  I don't know.  Is it worthwhile?  I don't know that either.  I do know that it's worth, at nothing else, me taking the time to write it all down.  I've attached the full PDF to this blog entry; below, I've reproduced the introduction and written a conceptual overview of it.

 It’s no secret that the US economy is in turmoil, and Americans are struggling.  Our manufacturing sector has been in decline for decades as jobs move overseas.  Our education system is falling in comparison to other countries.  Real wages are down, prices are up, people are hurting.

ne of the proposals made by President-Elect Barack Obama during his campaign was a refundable tax credit to students – up to four thousand dollars of guaranteed tuition in exchange for 100 hours per year of community service.  This is a very good idea and will certainly be productive.  However, it is this author’s opinion that it simply doesn’t go far enough.

These are difficult times; perhaps the most difficult in many ways that have hit this country in my 38 years.  In such times, radical new thinking is called for;  while prudence is always in order, we can no longer afford half-measures or hesitancy.  It is quite clear that how we deal with the next few years will make – or break – the future of this country for generations to come.

What I am proposing, in a nutshell, is a national public service barter system, whereby the government provides tax-free, interest-free loans not only to students but to startups, small businesses, and even established industry.  It calls for the establishment of a National Service Database that would include all government agencies, registered non-profits, and participating students that would allow all participating groups to make contact with each other and leverage the system to meet needs and goals, including the obligation of repaying the loans in question.

This is a complex system, and I'm sure that I haven't managed to cover all of the possibilities, but in concept at least nearly every US citizen could benefit directly, and every US citizen would benefit directly and indirectly from such a system.  It contains components of the Obama plan and other existing state initiatives, and rolls them all up into an expanded meta-plan that created an entire system of public service that could be taken advantage of by huge numbers of people, grow our economy, expand our tax base, and make people feel - and be! - useful and productive again.

I think it's just the sort of thing that we're ripe for - a sort of twenty-first century version of Roosevelt's "New Deal" - and I cheerfully invite folks to look it over, either in the attached PDF or at this web page, and let me know what you think.

Radical-Problems-Radical-Solutions.pdf (141.96 kb)