Our microbusiness incubator is working. We're not just creating jobs, we're creating businesses & revitalizing an old Albertson's which sat empty and underutilized for several years which is helping the whole community! We have rebranded the marketplace to Community Renaissance Market, which better reflects the work going on within the space. At this time most of our businesses are sole proprietorships or family-run businesses. We are also working with Disaboom [http://www.disaboom.com/] to create jobs/businesses for people with disabilities [PWDs] and returning veterans. I have a special connection to the PWD community because of my late husband Keith Hogan [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiwHyeY9QRM]. He didn't let anything stop him and went on to graduate with a finance degree from the University of Texas at Austin, founded a bank and was a successful builder & developer...all without the use of his arms or legs. We began developing the vision which has become Community Renaissance Market before his death because we knew that there was an underserved population which wants to actively create financial sustainability in their lives. This can be achieved through the use of accessible technology within a community of like-minded individuals. Community Renaissance Market now houses a variety of locally-owned microbusinesses with products ranging from antiques, organic dog treats and fair trade jewelry, to locally-grown food and art to a disability resource & job training center. We have already been approached about duplicating this model in other cities and will be very happy to share information as it develops.

Don't cap executive pay at a dollar amount - but tie it to the median wage their workers are paid. For example - pass a law that says no executive can make more than 20 times the median and 50 times the lowest paid worker in the company. That way - execs can give themselves raises whenever they want - but if an only if they give EQUITABLE raises to their workers. If the boss gets, a raise, everyone gets one - and if the boss gets a raise of $1000 a week, the median worker would get $50 a week and the lowest paid would get $20. It's still disparate, but right now execs are earning HUNDREDS OF TIMES what workers are making, and it's increasing, and there's no end in sight - and that doesn't even count stock options.

Our country is founded on hard working people that have the fortitude to take care of themselves and their families if offered a job. As Roosevelt did in the 1930's with the WPA, we should now create government jobs to rebuild the infrastructure of this country. This is true usable money in the hands of people that will directly benefit all of us (not a bank stimulus). We could not only rebuild roads and bridges, but also use the program to create new industries like high speed rail, alternative energy and improved means of using our water resources. A beginning structure, backed by government, can lead to the establishment of numerous private sector businesses and jobs. A good example is NASA, which has lead to countless new materials and businesses.

In as much as the the USA corporate community owes it's prosperity to the middle and lower classes and this same corporate community has seen fit to shift, more and more, the bulk of it's prosperity (profit) to the executive levels of upper management, Corporate (an entity, non-citizen) taxes (according to gross income) should be set as high as possible and corporate tax deductions provided for the direct creation of jobs. The additional revenues provided to the US Treasury as a result of non-performing corporate job creation could then be used for the creation of jobs at the federal level. This could also be done State by State.

1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.

2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.

3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.

4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.

5. Consider an "American job elimination tax" on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.

6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.

7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.

8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.

9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.

10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.

11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.

12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.

13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.

14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.

15. Create an hour period each school day for freshmen high school students to study any subject for a month (9 months-9 subjects) that they would have not normally have taken. It may be the hardest of subjects in which students would have been afraid in failing like algebra, geometry, calculus, languages, music, or any other subject including learning sports, like golf, football, baseball, or tennis as examples. There are many retired people who would like to teach what they learned in life. There could be a test at the end of the month, but this would only to see if the student learned anything in that subject and would not count against him in his grade average. The point is to have students learn as much as they can on different subjects and to see if they like a certain subject that they did not anticipate.

16. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be appointed as president for a couple of years or more. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.

17. One final point. I have tried to think of everything to preserve the middle class. I am afraid that the elites and the republicans and the economists will have their way, and their way to create jobs is to have you do away with the minimum wage and and all wages and pay people a dollar to five dollars an hour. The forces of a potential 2 billion cheap laborers is too powerful for any economic response on our part. Only then, according to them, will we have an equilibrium capable of producing jobs in our country. At the loss of the middle class.

This is an intitative called Doing Well By Doing Good that is currently being developed in the Greater Pittsburgh PA region.

It is a partnership between the public, non profit and charitable organizations, companies that offer home based microfranchise opportunities, government, and educational institutions.

The initiative is designed to offer the opportunity to anyone that wants to earn money working from home through a microfranchise. The partner companies donate a percentage of the revenues generated by each new microfranchise to partner charities and non profit organizations.

Microfinancing, educational and political support is also being developed for the initiative as well as a comprehensive marketing campaign for the initiative

Doing Well By Doing Good is designed to a self sustaining, self funding initiative once it is fully implimented. It is also designed to be a template that can be utilized anywhere in the US. Anyone that would like more info about our initiative, please feel free to contact me.