Why I decided to take on this project

During the course of 2008, the Obama campaign was dogged by attacks from many quarters, almost all of them of no relevance to the larger issues of our time or the good of the nation. The most problematic involved allusions and even outright lies which, even now, many still choose to cling to, though totally respected third parties have gone to great pains to demonstrate how bogus those assertions were. I'm not going to go through a shortlist here; one has only to turn the radio dial to a right-leaning talk show where the general public can call in and get on the air and, in due course, you will see what I mean.
Meanwhile, dealing with the issues of enormous import has been deferred so that an effective rearguard action against these fabrications and innuendos can be maintained, lest they gather momentum and undermine the credibility and standing of the administration.
Even as it prepared itself for an election victory, the Obama team (and the nation) would have been better served had it been allowed to direct the attention of Americans more toward how the team intended to use the powers of the presidency to deal with these difficult issues. As it was, the general mode of the contest precluded such detail.
That need for a deferment was unfortunate. Precious momentum was lost. Even then, the economy was beginning to manifest considerable damage, not just in the investment and financial sectors, but throughout, from Main Street all the way through to state operating funds. A more timely increase of attention might have helped to stem some degree of the hurt that subsequently spread like wildfire to all parts of the globe.
The trouble wasn't just psychological, as one hapless senator tried to assert (and far too many reiterated with each precious day that passed): there was real systemic damage out there in the complex that was bringing us all the wherewithal to survive, demanding substantive investments in repair before that great engine of enterprise could once more be considered fully operational.

With respect to such investments in repair, permit me to propose at least one set of ideas that could be of use in that regard. They apply to a time beyond that of immediate damage control.
When the Obama stimulus programs are all tapped out and their effects are beginning to fade into the background of our daily doings, unless we have something better to segue into, that huge investment will be judged to have been in vain by the millions hoping for something better.
These ideas, therefore, pertain to how we might harness the inherent forces of the American socio-economic complex in a systemic way and allow them to go to work and gradually heal the nation from the corrosive - and still worsening - plague of wealth dichotomization that has is relentlessly eating away at the social fabric of this country and its intertwined economic structures.
After-taxation redistribution of public revenues has been pushed by some as one kind of remedy for inequity and, to be fair, that approach has its place in the comprehensive toolbox of initiatives we need to deploy. Nevertheless, redistribution, alone, is not a cure-all for fixing the country's problems relating to disproportionate personal wealth. Americans are doggedly unimpressed by the idea of government being the Great Re-equalizer. Further, they are decidedly averse to unfunded mandates being imposed upon them from on high. So, while the potential in that kind of direction is still significant, it is far from sufficient to the cause of creating meaningful levels of social equity.

My own search for ideas has been focused more on correcting where things first go wrong; namely, at the point of pay. What I was looking for were ways to use positive and negative reciprocals on the pay distribution processes of companies that would promote greater social equity.
For more than a decade, beginning in the early 1990's, I struggled to envision scenarios whereby free market institutions, responding to ambient opportunity, might actually become leaders in a trend to reverse social inequity and gradually close the current yawning gap between rich and poor, a way where a purely private sector approach, free of government involvement, would permit a stronger middle class to evolve out of present conditions.
After much musing and countless discussions, I had to give up on the notion. The more I looked at what drove the decision-making processes of people of all different kinds in the economy, the more it became apparent that conditions were never going to get better as long as the job of fixing things was being left to the private sector alone. In fact, they were only going to get worse (interestingly, just as the population's paramount religious icon, Yeshua Ben Josef, predicted, nineteen plus centuries ago. It makes you think, how did he get it so right?).
It became clear to me, if there was to be any improvement, government would have to bring its unique strengths into play and begin to participate more constructively.