|
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 02/06/2009 : 21:59:27
|
Put on your thinking caps, boys and girls, it's time to get creative. Think up a way to stimulate the economy that's both simple and new, and will have multiple direct and near-immediate stimulating effects. For example,The "Let's Go to the Park" Plan:
Rather than allow banks to use worthless foreclosed-on properties as collateral for new loans which the banks will never repay, the Federal government should use Eminent Domain to take possession of all properties that have gone through foreclosure, destroy the structures upon said properties, and declare them to be National Parks.
All home values will immediately increase given the reduced supply. Neighboring properties will increase in value even more, as "overlooks a park" in a home listing demands a higher price. Not only that, but millions will be employed in demolition gangs, landscaping efforts, and thousands of new park rangers will be needed (note: preferentially hire the jobless who were foreclosed on because of their wealth of "local knowledge"). Offset costs by fencing in the new parks (employing more millions) and charging usage fees by acreage. Or...The "Icy Hot" Plan:
Pass legislation mandating the upgrading of all home climate controls systems to digital, with an electronic display of thermostat data remoted to the same location outside the house as the power/gas meter. The law will further demand that households set the thermostat to 90° in the "Winter" and 50° in the "Summer" (the dates of the season change-overs to be determined by home latitude).
This will, of course, result in a massive influx of cash into - and job creation within - the power and gas/oil companies, whose newly cash-fat employees will spread the wealth through their freer spending (call it "trickle-sideways economics"). Not only that, but literally overnight a massive new economy will be created in the manufacture and sales of illegal devices with which one can set the thermostat to a comfortable temperature, but have the outside display read whatever the law says it should read. This plan will also invigorate the sweater and swimwear industries, whose prospects have always been minimal during the Summer and Winter, respectively.
Note: all fines collected for non-compliance should be used to develop "green" heating and cooling technologies. The author of the best suggestion will win a cookie.
|
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2009 : 22:03:28 [Permalink]
|
Legalize pot and tax it.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
 |
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2009 : 22:10:51 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Legalize pot and tax it. |
Geez, get with the spirit of the thing, will you? Maybe The Onion will pre-emptively fire you.  |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2009 : 22:20:26 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
Geez, get with the spirit of the thing, will you? Maybe The Onion will pre-emptively fire you.
|
 I knew I was going to get yelled at for not be creative enough. Glad I didn't bring up taxing churches.
Ok, how's this: hook up exercise gyms to the power grid. All those countless calories burned pedaling bikes and rowing machines to nowhere--pure wasted energy. But convert it to electricity and we can make America healthy while easing our dependence on foreign oil at the same time! Yeah, it's not great, but it's all I got.
|
"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2009 : 22:51:38 [Permalink]
|
It's time we trimmed the fat!
I propose a National Liposuction Administration. Americans collectively (and sometimes individually) have an enormous excess tonnage of adipose tissue.
The NLA would establish Defatting Centers in every metropolitan area and rural district. I estimate that the fat that could be harvested from Americans to be at least 3 billon (3,000,000,000) pounds, or 1.5 million tons.
This fat would constitute a wonderful and renewable national resource. Rendered and refined, it could lubricate and fuel our nation's motor vehicles, heat our country's homes, and provide glycerine for producing America's soaps, cosmetics, bombs and ammunition. And delicious food for human consumption. Liposucked impurities of a non-fatty nature could be collected and added to dog food.
Many jobs would be created. Workers would be needed at the Defatting Centers, drivers would be required for the tanker trucks, engineers to design and construct a national pipeline grid.
It's time, fellow Americans, that we rendered ourselves!
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 02/06/2009 23:45:22 |
|
|
|
Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2009 : 01:15:43 [Permalink]
|
Now that we have transcended from the Computer Age through the Desktop Age into the Laptop Age, we could use the analogy of simple sweeping computer repairs to fix the economy:
Treat the national debt as well as unemployment as if it were a corrupted hard drive and set up an alternate, ideally sound economy at a "staging site" outside of Washington D.C. Then "download" the new economy by simply closing Wall Street for one month, mandate everyone in the country who lost their job, (except baled out bankers and investment managers of corrupt bale-out firms,) be rehired on the first of the upcoming month (with a raise), reprogram the national debt to zero, change the US currency to a new currency and value it at a self-proclaimed improved exchange rate, mandate all mortgages be reinstated in the new currency which is proclaimed economically viable. Insert the new "hard drive" of a vibrant economy and erase the old economy, outlaw the Republican Party, and sing the new jazzier version of "Happy Days Are Here Again."
|
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
|
|
|
DtheB
New Member
USA
22 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2009 : 02:18:16 [Permalink]
|
10 Ways To Improve America:
1. Remove tax-exempt status from all places of worship.
2. Trap the hot air expelled from creationists, politicians, truthers, etc. and use that to heat homes in place of oil.
3. Legalize and tax prostitution and marijuana.
4. Lease National Parks to the Indians (the asian variety).
5. Declare war on China long enough to confiscate all the borrowed money.
6. Bring back indentured servitude.
7. Get rid of the minimum wage.
8. Join the European Union.
9. Give federal funding to orgies consisting of at least 10 participates (one of them being of a different species).
10. Harvest the organs of Republicans. |
The misuse of a tool does not negate its existence. |
|
|
|
Hittman
Skeptic Friend
134 Posts |
|
|
Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2009 : 21:40:11 [Permalink]
|
| A state lottery should be issued where you have a 50% chance of winning at least 100,000 dollars. Loosers, preferably the unemployable, will be put down. This will boost the funeral business and increased government revenue through the taxation and legalisation of contract killers. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2009 : 08:38:07 [Permalink]
|
Dave are you saying you didnt get me anything for Emergency Christmas? This is the worst Emergency Christmas ever! Oh and your prizes should be arriving any day now, I finally took them out of my trunk and mailed them.
As for the economy, I suggest a total scrapping of the stock markets and publicly traded entities. We could use a good dark age to put things in perspective. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/19/2009 : 09:02:40 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
John Hodgman has some good ideas, including cocaine at check-outs (to boost confidence) and "emergency Christmas."
|
Hodgman is a greatly underrated comic. And a hilarious writer. I've got his The Areas of My Expertise. That book is worth buying just for its list of hobo names.
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Stimulate us!
