dlq04

My top two are:

1. Education

Long term I believe a country's best investment is and always will be education. As a country we always seem to be dealing with some short term crises and have pushed education down the ladder of priorities. Just maintain seems the norm. But we are not maintaining with the rest of the world. This is not good. Over one-half of the CEO's in Silicone Valley are foreigners. That should tell us something. We may be able to get by with importing other countries best and brightest in the short term but what about longer term, say 20-30 years. I realize that it will take more than money to fix some of the problems in our educational system.

2. Alternate Energy

Alternate energy in today's climate needs no explaination. We either get ahead of this curve or we will be on a fast track downward. China and the rest of the developing countries are going to be sucking resources faster than we can imagine. For example, GM is already selling more Buick's in China than the USA. The low cost of labor in China with millions moving from bikes to cars is not going change anytime soon.

Those would be my two top priorities for investing in America's long term future. What are yours?

Warren J. Dew

My top two would be:

1. Excellence

We need to encourage excellence, not mediocrity. Our school systems need to start paying as much attention to allowing the strong performers to reach their full potential as they do to trying to get weak performers up to average. We are sending the wrong message to people who work harder or smarter by taking more than half their extra income away in taxes. Rather than telling them, "don't bother - mediocrity is fine", we need to send the message that excellence will be rewarded.

2. Responsibility

Although saying so will get you in trouble on the campaign trail, the truth is, this truly is a nation of whiners. Hurricane? Subsidized insurance! Made some bad loans? Government bailout! Bought an exorbitant house that you couldn't afford? Easy bankruptcy is the answer! People need to start taking responsibility for their actions - and that can only happen by letting them live with the consequences of their bad decisions, as only then can good decisions be rewarded.

RC - Ryder

The last poster just stole my two bullets. Good job though. We have to invest in our people, but that's hard to do when ever near half of them are on one entitlement or another and educating them and others is akin to herding cats.

boltonblue

Dave,
expand your alternate energy to include the infrastructure improvements for a hydrogen based transportation system and we are definitely on the same team.


Warren,
Your in mass so you know all about the special needs programs.
As kids we had tracking where smart kids who would excel were grouped together and fast tracked. Your peer group was almost always smarter than you were and although you excelled you only felt average. It trained you to try harder all of the time. you right we're not building leaders in our cultures.
BUT.... I think these are values to be encouraged but are not truly investments.

RedY2KS2k

I would buy for each of my fellow Americans two things that are in short supply in our country:

1. A spine
2. A brain

cordycord

1) reduce the size of the government

2) energy independence

Wildncrazy

AMEN!!!

Ohhh, but you are going to make all the Dems hate you for saying that. They don't like name calling

paS2K

[QUOTE=RC - Ryder,Jul 24 2008, 07:12 PM] ....We have to invest in our people, but that's hard to do when ever near half of them are on one entitlement or another and educating them and others

paS2K

Dave, this is a good and valid question. Why don't you do another thread to include a REAL POLL for the most impt idea....using the contributions to this thread so far? Some folks won't write a comment ( ) but WILL hit a POLL button

dlq04