Economic problems solved

I received an email this morning about an article in the St. Petersburg Times about an solution to the problems in our economy.

Great Idea...!

This was an article from the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper on
Sunday..

The Business Section asked readers for ideas on "How Would You Fix
the
Economy?"

I thought this was the BEST idea....

I think this guy nailed it!

Dear Mr. President,

Patriotic retirement:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force - Pay them $1 million apiece severance with the following stipulations:

1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

3) They either buy a house/pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress and their constituents pay their taxes and have to live on social security like the rest of us…

I'm a journalist of the old school at heart and I have learned to check things out first. I discovered the the email had gone viral and it was just one of several suggestions mentioned in the original article.

Although I love the idea of retiring from work with a million dollars in my hot little hands and getting the economy back on its feet, the idea will cost quite a bundle to get started, forty trillion dollars to begin with. That's how much it would cost to pay $1M to 40 million Americans over 50. Yes, the money would get back into the economy quickly, but how many people are smart enough to bank the money at a good interest rate and live off the interest once they bought a new car and a house, or paid one off?

Of those who responded to the newspaper's query my favorite was:

MAKE STUFF OURSELVES: The only way to fix our American economy is to get back to America and American-made products and American jobs. No outsourcing of any work or any goods or services, no foreign cars or goods allowed in America. We invented cameras, radios, cars, phones, TVs, record players, light bulbs and the list goes on and on. They should be manufactured in America and bought by Americans and sold to foreign countries who want our stuff. … Please CC the president on this one. How could we have become so clueless?

Jeannine Gallagher, Largo

Ms Gallagher is right on one point and right in line with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It's all about industrialization and getting back into the business of producing. It's what we did better than any other country in the world, but we have handed jobs and our economy over to Taiwan and China and other third world countries and now they are buying our bonds and expecting a return on their investment, and China is demanding a new world currency that does not include the U.S. dollar.

Did you know that the symbol for the dollar is a combination of the U and S in United States laid over top each other?

Check out the suggestions and I'll bet you'll find a few that make you laugh and a few that will make you think that someone was definitely home when they wrote it.

The best part of the article is that whoever initiated it got people reading the newspaper. It's a gimmick, but it shows that newspapers are not dead yet -- contrary to popular thought.

That is all. Disperse.