How to fix the economy

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

Posted by net.net @ fansforchrist:
[edit: as a joke]

This is from an article in the St. Petersburg , FL Times Newspaper on Sunday.
The Business Section asked readers for ideas on “How Would You Fix the Economy?”

I think this guy nailed it!

[quote]Dear Mr. President:

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America 's economy.
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 apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

  1. They MUST retire. Forty million job openings -
    Unemployment fixed.

  2. They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered-
    Auto Industry fixed.

  3. They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage-
    Housing Crisis fixed.

It can’t get any easier than that!
If more money is needed, have all members of Congress and their constituents pay their taxes…

If you think this would work, please forward to everyone you know.

If not, please disregard. Then shoot yourself!!! 1 job opening
[/quote]

#2

Typical Keynesian bullshit…

#3

Uncle Entity: I wouldn’t think he would be serious on making sure this gets done, I would think he’s aware that a fix this quick is only a pipe dream.

I read in USA Today that the world’s economy is starting to resemble an (american) football team made up of nothing but quarterbacks, many nations want to fix their economy through increased exports, but no one wants to play the importer.:rolleyes:

#4

Salman Khan (http://www.khanacademy.org/) had some much more realistic ideas that don’t cost $40 trillion like this “Patriotic Retirement Plan,” and he actually explains why things are the way they are…

#5

Too bad it is proven to work.
WW2 anyone?

#6

What’s that, the post WWII depression the keynesians predicted due to the reduction of gov’t spending that never happened?

The only thing Keynesian dogma is proven to do is increase the size of the welfare/warfare state…

#7

um…40 million million is 40 trillion dollars…I know politicians aren’t real good at math, but…

#8

The economy is fundamentally flawed as a measure of success of a country.

The only way the economic model will measure is whether you are “Creating more”. this is entirely unsustainable, and is exactly what yeast does before it kills itself from using all its resources (then we drink it, yum yum)

controversial, and wild claims disclaimer.
We have recently changed society to produce more, and more. Suddenly houses had two incomes, so we earnt twice as much, produced twice as much, consumed twice as much, and houses cost twice as much, and we are twice as stressed.

How about we all slow down a little, work less, consume less, produce less, and measure our success on something other than selling more. How about everyone looks after their own kids and their own gardens. We simply will not get out of this recession without changing our attitudes to money and the economy.

I’m going back out into the garden to chip some more mortar off my bricks so that i can re-use them to build some more veggie gardens.

Enjoy the simple things.

#9

I agree! The economy and ecology seem inversely proportional… make products which will break so that you must buy a new one, and this feeds the economy and wastes resources on the other end. But in the end, you can’t drink or eat green pieces of paper. You could wipe your ass though.

#10

And me thinking I was posting a rather dumb joke. I should’ve known better :stuck_out_tongue: Anyway…

You have problems in both camps. a) Neo-Keynesians attempt to balance the money supply. If they overregulate, leading to higher production costs and price raises. They also increase taxes, working doubly to cut down your acquisitive power. Their ‘spread the wealth’ schemes seem to ignore, voluntarily, that the rich always find ways to take it out from the poor. b) Post-Friedmanians underegulate to keep production costs down, but if they overdo it, it could lead to capital flight, salary reductions, unemployment and an increased money supply that risks inflation. Their economic incentives to the wealthy attempt to increase the money flow (the rich have more, they spend more, they create jobs, etc.) but in doing so they’re giving more power to the mighty, which is chaotic.

You can never win. Not in economy, it seems. What’s worse, these two camps feel like two guys fighting to navigate a baloon – and one of them believes only in adding ballast while the other only believes in dropping it.

#11

We’ve got to come up with a better system, soon enough nuking the rain forest and dumping baby corpses into our water supply will be economically profitable.

#12

How can we keep from stealing ? How can we keep from stealing !!!

Saving the economy is like creating and destroying matter, it can’t be done.

#13

You can convert it to energy though.

So, if this concept is applied to money, we could burn money for fuel! Yay, problem solved!

#14

only bring you back to square one, why bother. Can’t stand these robots that keep jacking off the economy for there perfect children. They exploit free will, there is nothing more evil then playing football with the will of the people.

#15

Option B would be to work harder, smarter, make more money. This will generate more taxes, cause the government to hire more staff for useless report writing status updates (information which has no relevance to anyone), who will spend their money and cause the economy to grow.
Someone will become richer - might as well be you since you put your extra money in shares/properties that some losers will likely to invest in when it’s overvalued (ofcourse that’s when you sold it to them …)
So the next global crisis, you use your saved money to … ahem create more wealth . . .

#16

While giving away money would be incredibly stupid, I think the most importing thing to focus on is jobs. Look at the jobs that exist here in the US and compare them to other countries. The majority of jobs in the US are sales-oriented. Fewer than 15% are manufacturing jobs. Simply put, 15% of the people here make stuff while 85% of the people here sell that stuff. The reason that number is so out of whack is because the manufacturing jobs have all migrated overseas. The money that is supposed to pay our workers goes to workers overseas, paying to ship things, and paying foreign suppliers. US-owned corporations are shipping our entire economy out of the country. We all sell crap and then we all go out and buy all the crap that everyone else is selling.

Just look at what they’re trying to do to ‘stimulate’ the economy: They’ve given people money so they will go out and buy crap. That’s our entire economy. That money isn’t going to other US citizens. You go out and buy stuff and the only economy your stimulating is China’s or Korea’s. All of thet money goes out of the country to pay for the manufacturing and shipping of those goods so that people here in the US can buy them. They’ll have to keep ‘stimulating’ the economy over and over because none of that money comes back. WE DON’T EXPORT ANYTHING. We import EVERYTHING. The only thing we export is our money, and we’ve been doing it so long now that we’re totally broke, and they’re inflating the dollar to compensate.

You want to ‘stimulate’ the economy, Stop shopping at Walmart, start going to the local stores owned by local people and buy the stuff that’s made in the USA. Even if it costs an extra buck. At least you’ll know that that extra buck stays here.

People used to make a big deal about foreign auto sales and they used to tell people to buy american, but those factories are located here and employ and pay US citizens to do the work, and many of the parts are also supplied from US parts dealers. It’s the little things that you buy every day that are killing us.

Seriously, this is a huge huge problem, and it’s the one that will end up destroying us. When we start running out of shit to sell and all of those sales jobs start collapsing, then you’ll see layoffs and unemployment skyrocket. When companies start downsizing like they’ve been it means fewer people to buy stuff, which means less sales jobs needed, which means cutbacks in sales positions, which means fewer people to buy stuff, which means less sales jobs needed, which means cutbacks, etc etc etc. Once we get onto that cycle it’ll be really hard to break it. We need to increase domestic manufacturing and we need to stop importing and start exporting.

#17

That post from Squiggly P. brought to you by a Nanjing based word processing system and hand typed using that in Shanghai:p

But I agree, we need to encourage more manufacturing here in this country with materials made here, at least there would be less risk of stuff like lead getting into children’s toys and bottles.

#18

Yeah thanks S_P for your wonderful and long story about how we ought to spend local. It’s a good idea but . . . no sir I won’t be doing that.
Why ?
The stuff from outsourced labour is cheaper, with the savings I can . . . well save for my retirement instead of getting the jetski (made overseas ofcourse) the local manufacturer’s executive is planning for with help from his/her cronies at the government level who subsidise their product.
And look after yourself - your taxes will go to the government for their limo’s and chaffuers and keep these folks in business. I contributed my time to the government in my younger days, and no, this hasn’t helped with the utopia I so much dreamed for. At least I have my blender.
Until the coruption at home ends, I’d rather have my monies going out elsewhere in that country where $50 buck is more appreciated especially if it’s your monthly income.

#19

You end up paying for the subsidization through taxes, tho.

This is a republic. The only reason it’s getting bad is because people are too jaded and apathetic to make things better. Your attitude is only contributing to the problem. Waiting for it to get better before you do anything is a good way to ensure that it never gets any better, and I don’t understand that whole thought process. Who are you expecting to make things better?

#20

Don’t worry, soon we will all be without clothes, we will all be equal and us chickens will finely be set free from this tome we call a country.