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Folks: I’ve drafted an economic recovery plan for the U.S. and would appreciate comments/corrections.

Thanks.

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I would appreciate comments and suggestions on a new Web site: hanscomcharter.com. I won’t say too much about this except that it is for people who want to charter private jets out of Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts.

[p.s. Yes, I know that this is a pretty ill-time business venture. We ordered the jets a year ago when the world looked very different.]

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My apartment in Harvard Square had a 300-gallon aquarium filled with African Cichlids. With the new house in the suburbs the challenge is keeping Nature out of the house, not bringing it in. The fish have been given away and the tank sits in a moving company’s warehouse. Now the question is whether anyone knows of a school or charity in the Boston area that wants a 300-gallon tank, which includes a nice stand with maple doors. The tank is complete with filters, lights, cover, etc. I will pay for delivery, including a crane if necessary, to the school. The tank is about 8′ long by 2’x2′.

[Update: I also put this on Craig’s List and ended up with a flood of inquiries ranging from the local zoo to a bunch of schools. Sometimes the Internet really is useful…]

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In February 2006, I published “Women in Science”, a response to the theory that America’s smartest women were too dumb to spend years getting PhDs in science when the prize at the end was a $40,000 per year job. A loosely related New York Times Article appeared this weekend: “What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science”. It is an interesting read, but possibly could be summarized in one sentence: “It is better to be an MD or cardiac nurse collecting Medicare reimbursement checks than one of the 6000 laid-off engineers from Sun Microsystems.”

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This Wall Street Journal article, “Just Say No to Detroit”, by David Yermack, a finance professor at NYU, has some interesting calculations. The author claims that Roger Smith was prescient for realizing that GM should diversify rather than putting more money into making cars. The figures in the article are impressive, with about $465 billion invested by Ford and GM since 1998, enough to have purchased Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and VW. Presumably he couldn’t scratch up the figures for Chrysler because they are now private.

Favorite quote: “If the government diverts our national savings into businesses that have long track records of destroying investment capital, eventually we’ll end up with an economy like France’s — or Zimbabwe’s.”

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This New York Times piece talks about a Web site that teaches math to American kids using a curriculum from India. “Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States, where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook.”

This echoes some of my recommendations to computer science teachers in Africa.

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“I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.” — Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina

The complete Wall Street Journal piece has some interesting points, including “There’s something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt.” and “Those [states] that have been fiscally responsible will pay for or lose out to the big spenders. California increased spending 95% over the past 10 years (federal spending went up 71% over the same period). To bail out California now seems unfair to fiscally prudent states.”

Some similar points are made in “Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail.” The author points out that “Every dollar [Congress] injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy.”

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I’m driving a new Chrysler Sebring convertible right now. The weather is beautiful so I leave the top down when parking for an hour or two, putting my bags in the trunk for safe keeping. I walk away from the car. I click the “lock” button on the remote. Now the car’s computer systems know that I have walked away from the car and said “lock it up”. How secure is my stuff in the trunk? A perpetrator can walk up to the car, touch the trunk release button on the left side of the dashboard, and the trunk will pop open withou sounding an alarm.

Two lines of software in any of the microprocessors filling this car could have prevented this security risk. Do we want to give people who engineer products like this $50 billion of taxpayer money to play with?

[Recession Tip: In the pre-Meltdown days I splurged on Hertz #1 Gold, which would have cost about $90 per day for this car. This rental came from 30 seconds of comparison shopping on Expedia and cost $32 per day.]

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Politicians are debating an economic stimulus package for the U.S., with a figure of $150 billion being tossed around. Can this work?

Let’s consider the question from an employer’s point of view. A company needs to decide whether to invest in a new factory and whether or not that investment should be here in the U.S. In deciding whether to build a factory whose useful life might be 20 years, the company would look at long-term economic prospects, not short-term ones. In deciding whether to build the factory and create jobs here in the U.S., the company would look at tax rates, the education level of the workforce, and the costs of employing that workforce.

Based on tax rates, education, and costs, the U.S. is not looking competitive right now. Corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world. The quality of our high school graduates is stagnant or slipping while other countries have enjoyed big improvements. Our workforce is expensive to employ if only because employers are required to pay for health care costs that are now certainly the highest in the world.

Let’s consider the question from a consumer’s point of view. The average consumer has a crushing burden of debt and, unless he or she is one of the 40(?) percent of Americans who work directly or indirectly for local, state, or federal government, is concerned about being laid off. The consumer has been informed by the recently elected Democrats that new and higher taxes are forthcoming. The consumer thus reasonably expects his or her long-term spending ability to be lower than it is today. Anyone in that position would be reluctant to incur a long-term obligation, be it a car loan, a mortgage, a lease on an apartment. If the government sent a private sector employee a check, he or she would most likely use it to pay down some debt, not go on a spending spree.

Maybe the right answer is to send stimulus checks only to people with government jobs and/or think about actions that would give companies long-term confidence in the U.S. economy and consumers long-term confidence in their spending power.

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In the last couple of weeks, I have used priceline.com twice for hotel rooms. In big cities where higher-end hotels were asking $250-400 per night on their Web sites and through Expedia, I was able to get rooms for $125 per night. It seems that hotels are afraid of tarnishing their brand by offering deep discounts at the last minute, but they are happy to do it through Priceline where only the buyer knows that they sold off a room that otherwise would have gone vacant. In a growing economy there would be a serious risk of ending up with nowhere to sleep, but in our current depression there is virtually no chance of all of the hotels in a town selling out. Unless you need to stay in a specific hotel for an event, priceline.com a day or two before seems to be the way to go.

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