If I were running my country, what would I do?

This is an enhanced version of an answer that I produced on MyLot.com nearly two years ago. Much of the original thinking has not changed, but there are one or two necessary gaps which needed covering.

The country could be any country incidentally.

1. Do everything possible to get the rate of unemployment down to zero - without resorting to underemployment (i.e. no sending qualified scientists to work at McDonalds, just to get them off the dole queue).
2. Do everything possible to ensure that nobody was living below the poverty line.
3. Ensure that all local authorities had a policy to house the homeless and provide more effective treatment to deal with alcoholics and drug addicts.
4. Bring in a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for dealing in hard drugs (the jury is out on "soft drugs", though the words "Joran van der Sloot" come to mind when I hear of people being "stoned" on marijuana. It is very much a bad advert for legalisation). Possession should require treatment, though, not incarceration.
5. Ensure that any pedophile who had ever molested a child would be jailed for life without the possibility of parole.
6. Ensure that the armed forces were spending money efficiently.
7. Double the salaries of teachers, but ensure that there was an annual test to see that they were competent to do the job.
8. Make sure that every school and hospital in the country is fit to serve the people who had to go there.
9. Make sure that banks are forced to behave like banks, not like casinos.
10. Introduce a minimum kilometres per litre (miles per gallon if you must) for any car that was sold.
11. Ensure that the government did not run up a deficit of any kind. And while we are there, discourage private debt, which is the road to poverty.
12. Ensure that juvenile misfits cannot wreck the educational system for kids who are willing to learn - if that means restoring corporal punishment (very likely IMHO, and for both sexes incidentally), so be it!
13. Ensure that the justice system at all levels was both effective and fair - which means giving the police and the prison system everything needed to maintain necessary law and necessary order, increasing manpower and training staff effectively. Jailbirds should be given the chance to reform and educate themselves in skills that they can use outside, but they must also be aware that they are being punished, justly, for the crimes that they committed - no soft options should be available.