Fixing Canada’s economy
p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- Below is an anonymous email doing the rounds.
Sent to me by my friend John Chalmers in Ontario, it’s a bailout alternative.
It’s meant as a satire, but it makes a whole lot of sense.
“Dear Mr. Harper”, it says, going on >>>
Please find below my suggestion for fixing Canada ’s economy.
Instead of giving billions of dollars to the car industry 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 10 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. Ten million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They MUST buy a new CAR manufactured in Canada. Ten million cars ordered – Automotive Industry fixed.
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – Housing and Mortgage Crisis fixed.
4) They must send their kids to school / college / university – Crime rate fixed.
5) Buy $50 of alcohol/gas a week – there’s your money back in duty / tax etc.
It can’t get any easier than that!
“PS”, it adds — “If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances.”
JN
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
April, 2010
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April 6th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Ha, but they already owe Canadians for both instances of prorogued parliament, as I doubt the MP’s stopped receiving a salary.
April 6th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I am generally a conservative person, but any kind of government bailouts make me ill. Any money the government borrows to spend to “stimulate the economy) is already in the economy. The only difference is, this government money does not produce wealth or produce productivity, and has to be paid back later through more taxes or inflation. Yes, it “sort of” prevents a bad recession by trying to keep things the same, but why would you want to prolong conditions that brought us to a receission in the first place?
Ugh. Haper sometimes pisses me off, but sadly I don’t think the current Liberals, NDP, or Greens would do any better.
April 6th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Whoever started this email failed his/her elementary math class: 10 million x 1 million = 10 000 000 000 000 which is greater than the GDP of all countries combined.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
@Person:
Yes, the “math” works out to 10 trillion dollars.
But, where does it say that someone figured it out to be different?
Though I haven’t forgotten this is a satire to begin with, I have to admit, it makes more sense than what’s being done by anyone anyway. Instead of stealing billions of dollars from the many needs of the People and giving it to the corporations, with much of it ending up as supposed debt, give trillions toward a new “early retirement”, with conditions that return a lot of that money back to the economy itself, rendering repayment unnecessary.
In the end, this type of “bailout” would cost the country far less money, and the money used couldn’t be squandered by the corporations, as it would be in the hands of the People, where it came from in the first place!