The Concept

WikiSolver is a free collaborative depository of constructive, feasible, specific, detailed solutions to political and economic problems in the United States, and by extension, the world. Wikisolver is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, any political party, religion, or special interest group.

The Reasons

The facts are undeniable. As a result of human action, our planet has a fever and a global mass-extinction of thousands of species throughout the entire biological spectrum is underway.  Either we change our ways radically -but gradually and imperceptibly- or future generations will pay dearly for our transgressions with their health and wealth, perhaps even with their very lives.

Energy

Fracking has caused a boom in domestic oil and natural gas output which is sure to increase exponentially as production is expanded to and in vast unexploited fields throughout the world. Competition and the law of supply and demand will keep prices low and encourage greater consumption at an accelerating rate, particularly in India and China as their per capita incomes improve. And it’s going to happen precisely when the world urgently needs to reduce, not increase, the production of greenhouse gases. For political and economic reasons, governments, including ours, are under heavy pressure to do what they can to create well-paying, middle-class man-jobs. Since fracking does precisely that, it is unrealistic to expect politicians to oppose it without a superior alternative at hand.

Water

Global warming has exacerbated drought that no amount of fracking can relieve, particularly in inland areas far from the ocean where desalination is impractical. Plan A (main menu, above) postulates that it is possible to use a never-before-tried method not under the control of any special interest to simultaneously and permanently eliminate drought at user-defined locations, generate a net surplus of exportable green energy, and create millions of well-paying middle class jobs that cannot be relocated or outsourced. Furthermore, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Italy, France, Croatia, Serbia and Sweden, among others, also have competitive topographical, geographical and geological characteristics to do the same. At a minimum, it would help them achieve or maintain energy self sufficiency, create well-paying domestic jobs for their working classes, reduce their outflow of U.S. dollars, and generate profits by producing and selling the only energy carrier with zero carbon emissions -hydrogen- to potential user-buyers like China, India, the European Union and desert countries in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. They would use it to simultaneously generate electricity without polluting the environment and manufacture pure water at a mutually beneficial cost/benefit ratio.

Inequality Gap

There’s also the issue of the yawning, growing gap in the distribution of current income and wealth, denounced by eminent economists and courageous elected leaders as a clear and present danger, not just to the United States but to other countries as well. We believe that while our featured solution should create jobs and reduce the high non-participation rate of the labor force, additional measures are indispensable to ensure that the fair share of future income and wealth of the middle class is not diverted to the top 1% of the population. Specifically, real estate reforms are necessary to encourage mass construction of single family homes for middle class individual borrowers so that mortgages can be paid off in 30 human-years (as was once the case when 30-year mortgages were introduced), not 60 or more human-years as is now commonly the case due to the high price of real estate relative to the median income of the middle class.

Conclusions

For reasons detailed in Plan A, the United States, though a land of extremes, is key to the solution. It still has the civil tranquility, global political/economic influence, and all the required natural and financial resources to implement it.  As for gridlock, a form of domestic cold war, it can be defused; not by cosmetic or half-measures that create additional problems and saddle subsequent generations with all of them, but by genuine common-sense facts and solutions.

This is a work in progress. Problems are added as they are solved.