Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Here's an idea

The Business section of the St. Petersburg Times newspaper asked readers for ideas on "How Would You Fix the Economy?" As you can imagine, they received some pretty clever responses, but this one is my favorite. Enjoy!

Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the 'Patriotic Retirement Plan'.

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1. They MUST retire.

This will create 40 million job openings, theoretically fixing the unemployment problem.

2. They MUST buy a new American car.

40 million cars will be purchased and/or ordered, theoretically fixing the auto industry crisis.

3. They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage, theoretically fixing the housing crisis.

It can't get much easier than that!

And if more money is needed, have all members of Congress pay their back taxes.

Crush du Jour: Glenn Howerton

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Only problem is that would cost $40 trillion dollars if my math is right. But it would be a hell of an economic stimulus!

Bob said...

Where do I sign up?

Miss Ginger Grant said...

Miss Ginger's not very good at math but it sounds like we'd be spending a lot to save a little....

Unknown said...

My God that's a brilliant strategy. And cheaper and quicker that what's going on now.

Peter Maria said...

Ya, I've seen this before. The economic answers are actually very complex (I'll let you google it), but the short answer is NO. Sadly, I'm a social libertarian, and TRULY wish this would work. However, anyone who has taken ECON I & II can point out the immediate fallacies better than I can. To sum up: sounds good, but could never happen.

Joy said...

Too bad. I like that idea.

Steven said...

Sounds like a plan. Especially the Congressmen paying their back taxes.