Some of the todays email exchanges with my friends made me think why I support Senator Barack Obama over others. After all, the others who remain in the race- Clinton and MC Cain- are liberal enough and carries more weight around in terms of experience.
I think the major reason is a fresh air of thinking coming out of Obama on the pressing issues the U.S faces today. These issues are often not understood by the voting public and seldom the candidates bring them up in their stump speeches. I had opportunity to listen to Obama in person multiple times and at least once in a very closed gathering of 200 people where he went on to discussing his plans in detail. I also met many other presidential candidates, including Clintons, in person in their stump speeches here in Iowa. After the first meeting with Obama, I told Scott, a friend of mine who joined me to hear Obama, that it needs a lot of historic understanding about the economy, health care and washington politcs to understand many issues Obama discussed that day and Scott agreed with me.
My primary concern is protection of democracies around the world and I am against any forms of war that threatens peoples life. I believe a powerful democracy like America plays a big role in protecting democracy and preventing the genocides around the world. So its important for me that America remain strong economically so that they maintain the influence they have in international organizations like UN.
The Democracies around the world are being threatened and the so called pro-business strategies are benefiting the countries like China and as we see now they are aggressively spreading their businesses to Africa and Middle East. Dictators in those countries welcome China and prefer them to US as they will not ask a thing about democracy. Also at domestic front, the pro-business strategies are creating more unemployment - look at Ohio and Detroit and the blue collar worker who are unemployed .
Its true that some businesses here are benefiting a great deal from outsourcing ( IT and Manufacturing). Its also true that the consumers here get goods cheaper than anywhere else. But this model is not economically viable as unemployment means less purchasing power and in this consumer driven economy less demand for goods means a recession. On the other side, the corporations who benefited out of outsourcing shared the wealth with their shareholders and paid millions of dollars as bonus to their executives. A recession would impact the businesses first and the vicious circle starts from there.
I am not in favor of protectionism. The problem specific to the US now is the free trade policies once highly favorable to them started backfiring. Main reason is Chinese pegging the exchange rate of dollar and flooding their goods in the US market. This will slowly destroy the local manufacturing base create more unemployment and less purchasing power. I am in favor of bi-lateral free trade as if thats based on the comparative advantage. Also I should point out here that Americans enjoy a great price advantage now because developing countries compete for dollars and often the manufacturing in such places are done exploiting the labor class. So we are not talking about a free bilateral trade here . The U.S businesses , out of greed, do not ensure that China and other developing nations adhere to the high standards that are maintained in the US.
I am slightly worried about China strengthening its position in international business(I have nothing against China and some of my close friends are from that nation- I just disagree with the Government there as they lack transparency). Its perfectly OK for them to develop economically but there should be some parallels like the US so that interests of international communities are not compromised. The way China creating a new generation economic colonization in Africa, heavy investment in Middle East, large scale investment in Wall Street banks and US treasury bills - All these tell me soon China will have similar influencing power that America enjoys now in UN and other International organizations. The US government is at least transparent to their citizens and that's a great relief.
Also look at the way the health care and insurance companies running their businesses - surely there is a clear lack of Government policies as the corporate greed is undermining the citizens welfare. Primarily the government is a welfare provider to the citizens and laissez-fair , as we see, is benefiting the top rank officials more and not really the ordinary citizens.
Strong democracies like America should not fail because of business greed. Republicans ( read the current leaders clearly lack the vision for the future. There was a time free economy produced fantastic results but that time America was leading the manufacturing and services sectors. Bush and MCain do not understand the economics and made more enemies than friends around the world. Finally a war-lover like MCain is the worst thing that could happen to America.I know from Indian experience that how terrorists are born - you need diplomacy not war to stop them. America's past involvement in Middle East created the every threat America face now and a war probably cannot eliminate that threat. Also, the new ways of fighting- like suicide bombers - are hard to fight back.
Obama seems to understand what the real problems the U.S is facing right now. Whether he has the ability to deliver what he promises is a debatable topic. In case of republicans, they even refuse to accept the required role of government and need of diplomacy to solve the international conflicts and make the country safe for the citizens. As we have seen so far, Obama is a shrewed politician who wants to get to the top of the establishment so that he has the power to deliver on his promises. The way he stood up against Clinton machinery so far definitely tells something about this guy. Its not just the oratory skills, its the dedication of backing up with groundwork and winning against tough opponents is what I bet on.
I think the major reason is a fresh air of thinking coming out of Obama on the pressing issues the U.S faces today. These issues are often not understood by the voting public and seldom the candidates bring them up in their stump speeches. I had opportunity to listen to Obama in person multiple times and at least once in a very closed gathering of 200 people where he went on to discussing his plans in detail. I also met many other presidential candidates, including Clintons, in person in their stump speeches here in Iowa. After the first meeting with Obama, I told Scott, a friend of mine who joined me to hear Obama, that it needs a lot of historic understanding about the economy, health care and washington politcs to understand many issues Obama discussed that day and Scott agreed with me.
My primary concern is protection of democracies around the world and I am against any forms of war that threatens peoples life. I believe a powerful democracy like America plays a big role in protecting democracy and preventing the genocides around the world. So its important for me that America remain strong economically so that they maintain the influence they have in international organizations like UN.
The Democracies around the world are being threatened and the so called pro-business strategies are benefiting the countries like China and as we see now they are aggressively spreading their businesses to Africa and Middle East. Dictators in those countries welcome China and prefer them to US as they will not ask a thing about democracy. Also at domestic front, the pro-business strategies are creating more unemployment - look at Ohio and Detroit and the blue collar worker who are unemployed .
Its true that some businesses here are benefiting a great deal from outsourcing ( IT and Manufacturing). Its also true that the consumers here get goods cheaper than anywhere else. But this model is not economically viable as unemployment means less purchasing power and in this consumer driven economy less demand for goods means a recession. On the other side, the corporations who benefited out of outsourcing shared the wealth with their shareholders and paid millions of dollars as bonus to their executives. A recession would impact the businesses first and the vicious circle starts from there.
I am not in favor of protectionism. The problem specific to the US now is the free trade policies once highly favorable to them started backfiring. Main reason is Chinese pegging the exchange rate of dollar and flooding their goods in the US market. This will slowly destroy the local manufacturing base create more unemployment and less purchasing power. I am in favor of bi-lateral free trade as if thats based on the comparative advantage. Also I should point out here that Americans enjoy a great price advantage now because developing countries compete for dollars and often the manufacturing in such places are done exploiting the labor class. So we are not talking about a free bilateral trade here . The U.S businesses , out of greed, do not ensure that China and other developing nations adhere to the high standards that are maintained in the US.
I am slightly worried about China strengthening its position in international business(I have nothing against China and some of my close friends are from that nation- I just disagree with the Government there as they lack transparency). Its perfectly OK for them to develop economically but there should be some parallels like the US so that interests of international communities are not compromised. The way China creating a new generation economic colonization in Africa, heavy investment in Middle East, large scale investment in Wall Street banks and US treasury bills - All these tell me soon China will have similar influencing power that America enjoys now in UN and other International organizations. The US government is at least transparent to their citizens and that's a great relief.
Also look at the way the health care and insurance companies running their businesses - surely there is a clear lack of Government policies as the corporate greed is undermining the citizens welfare. Primarily the government is a welfare provider to the citizens and laissez-fair , as we see, is benefiting the top rank officials more and not really the ordinary citizens.
Strong democracies like America should not fail because of business greed. Republicans ( read the current leaders clearly lack the vision for the future. There was a time free economy produced fantastic results but that time America was leading the manufacturing and services sectors. Bush and MCain do not understand the economics and made more enemies than friends around the world. Finally a war-lover like MCain is the worst thing that could happen to America.I know from Indian experience that how terrorists are born - you need diplomacy not war to stop them. America's past involvement in Middle East created the every threat America face now and a war probably cannot eliminate that threat. Also, the new ways of fighting- like suicide bombers - are hard to fight back.
Obama seems to understand what the real problems the U.S is facing right now. Whether he has the ability to deliver what he promises is a debatable topic. In case of republicans, they even refuse to accept the required role of government and need of diplomacy to solve the international conflicts and make the country safe for the citizens. As we have seen so far, Obama is a shrewed politician who wants to get to the top of the establishment so that he has the power to deliver on his promises. The way he stood up against Clinton machinery so far definitely tells something about this guy. Its not just the oratory skills, its the dedication of backing up with groundwork and winning against tough opponents is what I bet on.
I found this article in New Yorker months after i wrote this blog. Thought it brilliantly summarised why Obama should be the choice.
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