New Ideas

I have begun to breathe again. I also feel no need to check my Twitter feed incessantly. I am hoping for less anger, less nastiness and more positive conversations and that means more agreeing to disagree.

I saw on Twitter this week that Rahm Emanuel said that Biden should tell people laid off from JCPenney to learn code. There was a serious uproar on Twitter over this but it is a new idea. And instead of giving shit to Rahm perhaps we should ask ourselves do we really think that all these people are going to get their jobs back? What kind of jobs are going to be available to a large group of blue collars workers in cities across America when their old jobs won’t exist anymore?

Everything has changed. Everything. We will have the first bi-racial female VP in the White House with a Jewish husband. It has become less expensive to use renewable energies. During Covid, educators and students had to figure out how to get online in weeks and unfortunately many are still figuring it out. People have stopped going to the office but are finding themselves more productive at home. Once you have flexibility in your life, you aren’t giving it back. We have seen how fragile our economy is. Our supply chain need helps and our restaurants need support. As cannabis becomes legal in all the states, we should be taking a deep dive into our jails and let many out for minor crimes. We should help these people return to society with job skills and a support system. Millions are without jobs and too many of them will find themselves without a roof over their head and no food on a table.

Everything will not be a tech company. We need local jobs to change economy’s in each state.  How do we get people to buy local and not Amazon?  What’s the creativity there?  Local crypto currencies with incentives?   We need to think big and we need to think creatively.  We should be A/B testing small areas with universal income to see how that works before we make these new ideas permanent. This isn’t socialism it is progressive.

I could go on and on but now is the time for new ideas not a reconfiguration of old ways. I am talking about new people around the table being creative and thoughtful about how we move forward in 2021. Experts in their fields being advisors to the Biden team pushing for change and that includes having youth around that table.

The narrative for the past four years has been chaos in a blender. We are at a crossroads and must commit to new ideas and change. Rahm might have been crass but he’s on to something.