Solutionomics: Innovative Solutions for Achieving America's Economic Potential

by Chris Macke

Overview

It’s about solutions for achieving America’s economic potential.

In Solutionomics, Chris Macke delivers innovative, specific solutions for achieving America’s economic potential. Macke’s solutions are based on delivering a better return on investment to the American taxpayer and small business owners—the backbone of the American economy.

Solutionomics addresses five key issues that will impact America’s economic future:

Winning the Game of Global Trade

Solutionomics reveals the twelve global trade myths keeping America from winning the game of global trade and the truths we should be basing our trade policy on instead.

Creating an Incentive-Based Corporate Tax Policy

Discover how making company tax cuts contingent on companies hiring more Americans and raising wages would generate stronger job and wage growth at a lower cost to American taxpayers.

Expanding the American Middle Class

Solutionomics outlines key ingredients to more efficiently grow the American middle class, including getting a better return our postsecondary education funding.

Reducing Financial Crises

Financial crises impede economic growth for years. Solutionomics details how to reduce the frequency and severity of financial crises creating a more reliable source of consumer and company loans.

Increasing Congressional Transparency and Accountability

Solutionomics outlines specific measures that would increase Congressional transparency and accountability.

You are a crucial ingredient in transforming the solutions into reality. Awareness leads to action. Tell your friends, coworkers, and family about the solutions you like. Post the solutions on your Facebook page, tweet them to your followers, or post them on Instagram. Call in to your favorite talk show or attend a town hall meeting asking the show host or candidate about the solutions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642930962
Publisher:	Post Hill Press
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

For more than twenty-five years, Chris Macke has worked in America’s financial sector seeing firsthand what drives the American economy, employment growth, wage growth, and business investment.

He has advised the U.S. Federal Reserve providing market updates and analyzing impacts of monetary policy changes on asset valuations and market distortions. He has been a contributor to the Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District (colloquially known as The Beige Book). He has worked for Fortune 500 companies including General Electric as well as working for small businesses as well as advising one of the largest U.S. pension funds.

His perspectives on economic and employment growth, interest rates, investor sentiment, business investment, global trade, and the political environment have been used by firms in devising investment strategies. Macke most recently directed the research and formulated investment strategy for a ten-billion-dollar institutional investment manager analyzing economic trends, financial markets, and the political environment.

Macke earned a B.A. in political science focusing on political campaign strategy at the University of Southern California and an M.B.A. from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. He has guest lectured at Harvard, Columbia, and Georgetown Universities.

He is a member of the National Association of Business Economists and the University of Southern California Economic Leadership Council. Macke has served on the boards of the Seattle, Chicago, and Indianapolis chapters of Big Brothers, Big Sisters and has been a Big Brother.

Table of Contents

Index of Solutions 9

Index of Global Trade Myths 19

Introduction 21

Part 1 And Now for Something Very Different 27

Part 2 Solutions 45

Section I Creating an Incentive-Based Corporate Tax Policy 47

Section II Winning the Game of Global Trade 86

Section III Reducing Financial Crises 174

Section IV Expanding the American Middle Class 206

Section V Increasing Congressional Transparency and Accountability 253

You've Got the Power 289

Editorial Reviews

"Solutionomics is a must-read guide for educating the American public about the current state of our economy and offers some intriguing solutions that can help us rebuild the American Dream."

Cary Correia

"Solutionomics breaks America's stubborn political divide in a refreshing way. It illustrates how simple, yet powerful changes in economic incentives and Congressional transparency can motivate CEOs and politicians, both Republican and Democrat, to elevate the competitiveness of the U.S. economy, raise the earning potential of American workers, and reset American democracy so that it once again drives national prosperity."

Phillip T. Powell

2019-08-05
A sweeping plan for political and economic reforms in the United States, pragmatically based on policies' rates of return.

According to debut authorMacke, the principal problems that beset the United States are politically generated—a series of unforced errors made by politicians who elevate partisan considerations over practical benefits. He proposes a new "action plan" that replaces "today's established system in which the spending of taxpayer dollars is based on campaign donations, lobbying dollars spent, and which special interest has more power" with a decision-making process based on return on investment. First, Macke supports an "incentive-based corporate tax policy" that ties the availability of tax breaks to a company's performance in hiring and providing wage increases. Second, he formulates a trade policy that emphasizes the enormous leverage of having the "largest, most affluent market in the world" that every nation want to access. The government should use that incomparable advantage to renegotiate fairer trade deals globally, he says, even if that means the judiciously deploying protectionist instruments, such as tariffs and quotas. Macke proffers some boldly original suggestions; for example, in order to avert a future financial crisis, he recommends that executive compensation at banks should be linked to the repayment of loans they approve. He also argues that congressional pay and pensions should be pegged to the overall performance of the economy. The author covers an impressively broad swath of political terrain along the way—proposing a four-step strategy to reform Congress, a new approach to the funding of higher education, and a road map for the expansion of the middle class. This remarkable breadth, however, is also a vice, as Macke covers too many subjects to address any of them in convincing depth. He also has a tendency is to reduce complex topics to a tug of war between common sense and "myths" to be dispelled, rather than empirically engaged. Although his arguments are consistently provocative, they're disappointingly dismissive of political reality. Indeed, the author seems uninterested in how significant legislative reforms would be passed by a Congress in which he has so little faith.

A refreshingly unconventional anatomy of the nation's economic ailments, but it presents its remedies too quickly and stridently.

Kirkus Reviews