WA4: FINAL

To President Barack Obama,

We (as Americans) face many problems of our own as well as international issues. I seriously suggest you consider my advice on certain matters.

I'll give you a hypothetical situation. I am the newly elected President of the United States of America, and there are many things I must try to solve, which do I choose? I have promised to help the American people in terms of the economy, healthcare, and other issues. As President I think the best way to help the economy is to lower taxes (without raising others), cut government spending (something Bush didn't do), give tax incentives to encourage small business (ex. tax break if your company upgraded their technology), let large businesses fail (such as General Motors, no more government bailouts), and if more money is needed impose tariffs. By doing this I would be shrinking the size of government, which I know can't do anything well, and encouraging small business. To fix healthcare, I would get rid of all government run healthcare which is ineffective and expensive. I would instead replace Medicade with volunteer pro-bono medical care and support private medical savings accounts. If, for some reason, the government was in dire need of money I would impose tariffs. As we have the largest consumer market in the world, tariffs are a very good way to not only protect our own American workers but also a means to acquire capital to pay off our debts. In times past, as you may know, the entire government could be run on tariffs alone, this would be a real accomplishment.

I cannot reason why nowadays people talk of government bailouts to help our economic problems, is it the job of the government to buy up huge corporations that have not been successful? If you want socialism this is great, but in capitalism bad businesses, no matter how large, are meant to fail if they are poorly managed and unproductive. A bailout won't help these businesses in the long run because they are encouraged to do the same thing that they have done before: do poorly and wait for a bailout.

As far as moral problems, I believe that abortion is the biggest issue. Even though I believe abortion is wrong, I would still let the states decide if they wanted it be legal or not. I'm against the federal government making the decision for the whole country. I suggest you do this as well, as it constitutional. On the environment, all I say is that as the U.S. government is the one of the largest polluters, you could really do something about that.

I strongly believe that limiting government is something that should be done. I hope some of your goals will be to stop government meddling in our economy, help small businesses, and to cut taxes. America is really hurting and you have the potential to help it. Thank you for reading my letter and please consider my ideas during your presidency.

Most sincerely,

Oskar O.K. Strom