Fifty years from now when your grandchildren and mine, or their children, gather around the dinner table, what will anyone tell them when they ask, ”What was it like back in the olden days when the virus of 2020 was killing so many people?” Or, “How did it happen that one person with very limited abilities became President,” and “why did he go about trying to turn Americans against each other in a period we call the ‘Days of Ignorance’ with only bankrupt ideas and where thousands of lives were lost daily? Did he actually believe himself, was he on drugs, and did he think he was above the law, or a Messiah? What role did you play in bringing the virus under control, and in getting that monster removed from office?”

There will be more questions, and good answers but only if we survive the next 50 years. I think we had better start by having some good questions and answers ready now, lest “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Biden administration taking office on January 20, 2021 will have a heavy load to carry. At this writing we only know that two remaining Senate seats are being contested, and the outgoing administration is littering every pathway out of Washington with disdain and contempt for everyone but themselves. Among his actions Biden will have hundreds of Executive Orders to revoke; old Alliances to rebuild around the world; trade wars to end; an economy to overhaul and rebuild; inequality of wealth and income to quash; health care for all to reassemble; student loans to forgive; public education to shore up; and the continuing task of appointing highly qualified people to run every cabinet position and every agency instead of ideologues and puppets hellbent on tearing them down.

For starters, we know with a lot of certainty that our school system needs a healthy injection of facts, knowledge, and the ability to think inserted into curriculums and into the minds of students everywhere. An ill-informed, mis-informed population is what we have, and that is exactly what we cannot afford. We need well-educated students graduating from our schools at all levels. Everyone needs to understand that unless we learn how to compete fairly and honestly with each other, we cannot expect to do so with our friends and allies. Assertions have no place in any society, least of all by our leaders. Opinions have their place, but not as substitutes for facts. And facts, alone, will not carry the day in a world where progress in the sciences and technology is moving in leaps and bounds. We need more scholars, more men and women of vision, more creative thinking, Education is at the heart of all we do, all we achieve, and of how well be live together. Excellence is a banner that needs to be emphasized as a continuing guide throughout our schools.

We need to do a lot more than put America back to work. We need a culture change in which everyone gets an opportunity to learn and to earn and find a better life for themselves and their families. Economically, three changes are needed: 1. Restore the inheritance tax. 2. Adopt the MIT Fair Wage Scale for all workers. 3. Grow the economy. It takes vision and wisdom to see how they can work together to improve productivity, jobs, wages, and taxes. Today, 70 percent of all new money created by our central bank finds its way into the wealth accounts of the ultra-rich. Only 30 percent of new money finds its way into circulation where jobs, growth, and prosperity take place. We need to reverse those two money flows. A $5 trillion change in those flows can lift our economy by $25 trillion dollars. A $10 trillion change can result in a $50 trillion of GDP growth. Our nation’s health care, education, and equitable prosperity—and all our poverty issues—are linked to them.

Many objectives are packed into this short narrative. You and I may never see them realized. Still, “a more perfect union” depends on achieving them.