How to Fix America

How to improve America in five easy steps:

1. Build up our failing infrastructure. What does that entail? Let's develop a plan to fix all our decrepit bridges and highways for one thing. Then, let's upgrade our railroad system to add more bullet trains and high-speed rail services. Let's also upgrade the mass transit systems in all cities where an upgrade is needed, and build new ones in cities that are lacking this service.

2. Fund higher education and increase funding for local school systems. Students need not only the best teachers money can buy, they also need proper books and supplies, including well-equipped science labs and music departments. States subsidize their public colleges and universities, but the Federal government needs to step in and fill the gap with a 100 percent subsidy of its own. Going to public college should be a no-cost endeavor. Students should be graduating debt free. If you want to go to a private school, then pay their tuition, otherwise, it should all be free to the student.

3. Increase scientific research in space exploration, climate change, medicine, and technology. The U.S. needs to be the leader in scientific research. This is where our future lies. We need to not only attract students from Asia and Europe, we need to make sure they stay here when they graduate by investing in the creation of technology jobs.

4. Develop a single-payer health care system so that all basic health care needs are met free of charge to the patient. It's important that we as a nation maintain the health of all citizens. It should be a basic human right.

5. Get rid of poverty. It's just bringing us down. But how to do it? Make sure the minimum wage is at least $12 per hour. Make sure everybody who is not able to work is paid by a federal program, such as Medicaid. And make sure those who can't find work get a government job making the minimum wage instead of paying them any form of welfare.

Who's going to pay for all that, you might ask? It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Paying for it is a detail. If a terrorist group or enemy nation attacked us, we would go start a war without hesitation. I can say that because we always have done so. George Bush did it twice, and once was without provocation. There would be few people against going to war with an enemy who attacked us, from either party. So let's just pretend we started a war and use the money we would have spent on that to build up our infrastructure and to fund education and scientific research.

Don't worry. The investment in science and education will pay us back over and over again. And the best place to start looking for the funding is by taxing the ultra-rich. Then borrow whatever else is needed. The borrowed funds can be paid back eventually through the return on our investment in higher education and scientific research.

There is only one fly in the ointment. Just one problem with this solution to fixing America - the GOP.

The solution to the GOP problem can be solved at the voting booth.