Mr. Fix-It - Economic Whoas!: Vice to the Rescue

It's time for this quarter's edition of Mr. Fix-It. And I'm here to lend my services to the Obama Administration once again, just like I did when I fixed immigration back in November. The economy has been super shitty for the past couple of years. I have solutions to fix the problems with the economy and if somebody wants to forward the link to this blog to their local congressman we can let the healing begin. It should be noted that historically, economics, to quote Austin Powers, is "not my bag, baby". I got a C+ in Dr. Yi's Microeconomics class at Xavier University. That's the second worst grade I ever got at Xavier. However, that's because this was "micro"economics. I'm a big picture guy. Throw me macroeconomics and I think I'd do better. I can see the forest through the trees and that's that reason that I'm the person to tackle this economic crisis. I've got some credentials. I read TIME magazine and have read both Freakonomics and Super-Freakonomics. But there's something that I lay claim to that is even more important. I might be the world's best Monopoly player.

Nobody really understands economics all that well except for Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan, and they haven't been able to do shit about the economic crisis. This is because Monopoly has failed us as a nation. It's possibly the most popular selling board game in the capitalist world, and yet it fails to teach us many important economic principles. It's so simplistic. It fails to teach us that if there is neighborhood gentrification and a little creative gerrymandering of districts by the city council of Marvin Gardens then Ventnor Avenue is going to depreciate in value. It fails to teach us that the key to making Pennsylvania Avenue as lucrative as Boardwalk is a top-notch school system. There are so many important economic factors of real estate alone that Monopoly ignores. And I'll be the first to admit my Monopoly dominance can be credited less to my economic brilliance than the following factors:

• I roll dice like it's my god damn job.
• I can talk Ben Hewett into selling me Park Place for 40 cents on the dollar so that I can put hotels on it because we both want to see Nick Rosati throw a hissy fit.
• I know that when the properties are all bought up and hotels are in play...stay in jail. Near the end of games I have done everything from light littering to sexually assaulting Nick to get thrown in the Big House where I'm safe from hotel fees and have won literally dozens of games while my Cannon was sitting in the clink.
• I know that, just like in real life, he who controls the utilities...controls all
• When I was young and cute I was able to talk my babysitters into letting me keep houses that I owed to the bank by invoking "squatter sovereignty". They thought a 7-year-old using "big people words" was adorable so they let me have them.
• I realize the lunacy of a community beauty pageant runner-up prize paying out 50% as much as a multi-hotel development contract from The Community Chest.
• If we are playing on a phone, I will cheat and sell myself States Avenue for $12 on your turn while you aren't paying attention (sorry, Tim).

There are only two things that I never could totally make myself remember when playing Monopoly. The first is what happens when you land on Free Parking. Seriously, everybody has a different rule for this. The second is the reason that we're in this financial crisis and that is that once you've bought a property or a house...it's not worth what you paid for it. Whenever I would take stock of my assets, I would always appraise my worth using the price on the front of the property cards. I could never remember that if I fell upon hard times that the property I was holding would have to be sold to the bank for the price on the back of the card, which was usually 50%. Because of this I would feel confident in my standing and would engorge myself on new properties and live outside of my means. And because I can roll dice like it's my god damn job and because Ben loves to see Nick in tantrum mode as much as I do...this never came back to haunt me. However, this did come back to haunt America and that's why we're where we are now. We should have learned from you, Monopoly. It would have saved us a lot of trouble. But we couldn't take Uncle Pennybags seriously with that monocle, so really...this is your fault.

Ronald Reagan once said, "There are simple solutions, -- not easy ones." I think that that's the message that I'm trying to bring here today. There really isn't any reason that we can't pull out of this economic crisis. We just have to have the want to. We have to understand cause and effect and we have to realize that the recession we're in is just a wake up call. Nothing major really changed in the Summer of 2008 when the recession began to hit full swing. There was no natural disaster. There was no government coup d'etat. There wasn't a major event that started it. We as a nation were just privy to new information which made us look back at the trail of breadcrumbs that we'd left over the past several years and say, "Well, fuck this noise." We brought the recession on ourselves because we realized that over a couple decades our spending had been spiraling out of control and we were no longer living within our means. If we didn't have this information...we probably wouldn't be in this position right now. It's a major defeat for the "Knowledge is Power" crowd and a major victory for the "Ignorance is Bliss" crowd. However, we were going to need to re-set eventually before we hit a point of no return...so I guess this is as good a point as any.

But it's important for us to remember that the recession is all in our minds. The problem is that it is in our collective minds. You can't end it by thinking about the economy differently and getting yourself out of the funk. You have to bring your fellow man kicking and screaming out of that same funk. Our economy, at it's most basic level, is based on numbers. And if these numbers say the right things...the floodgates to a healthy market economy will open back up. Things don't need to change outside of the acceptable parameters of these numbers because as I just illustrated: economic perception is economic reality. So my plan will simply be to put in place ideas that will bump these various numbers in the right direction. And for those of you that are worn out with all of the political bickering over what we need to do...fear not. I will tackle this issue without bashing Democrats or Republicans and I won't be pointing any fingers as to whose fault the economy is. The time for finger-pointing has long past. That won't fix anything. So I'd like to introduce my 8-fold plan for fixing the economy. These aren't your congressman's economic ideas. They're not mindless hopes like: "Cut spending and raise taxes." These are ideas the way that only Mr. Fix-It could produce ideas. And also note that I named this blog post long before I realized that Vice would only encompass one fold on the 8-fold path. But it's too late to go back and fix the title card because I have to venture ahead to fix the economy. So please ignore that I won't even be talking about "Vice to the Rescue" for another 15+ paragraphs.

Step I: Invoke Some Actual Trickle-Down Economics

I am well aware that I am not the best at segueing and that it takes me forever to get to where I'm going, conversationally speaking. So please just sit back and listen to my recent brunch escapades in West Hollywood and I swear that I'll get to Trickle-Down Economics by the second paragraph. Jen's roommate Jessica L. recently left to spend several months in Rome. So myself, Jen, Jessica H., Burrows, and Mark all took her out to brunch for her final American meal. We parked at Jen and Jessica L.'s apartment and walked several blocks to an establishment called Dough Boys. We had a delightful brunch despite the fact that Burrows and the girls got very uncomfortable when Mark and I made up the statistic that 1 out of every 10 people in Los Angeles County is in the porn industry and somewhat noisily played a game called "Which Three People in this Restaurant are most likely in Porn". It's a very cerebral game that takes into account fashion choices, food orders, and a person's general aura. I recommend you all play it while out to dinner sometime. So on our way back, Mark and I continued this inane conversation as we passed by a place called Crepe Republic. Mark wondered if the gimic behind Crepe Republic was that everybody voted on what to put in the crepes at which point Burrows and I were forced to point out that it was not called Crepe Democracy. Everybody would have to elect a Crepe Senator and then that person would decide what should go in the crepes. It was at this point that I decided that my life's ambition was to be elected Crepe Senator. And now that I've spent a whole paragraph letting you know that I want to be the Crepe Senator...I'll segue into how America should be a little less republic and a little more democracy.

In America we rarely get to vote on issues. We vote to elect leaders, and they vote on issues for us. Hence, we are a republic. Occasionally, Americans will get to vote on Propositions and Ballot Referendums, but these are often on the state and local level and almost never on the national level. Well, I think that we need to change that if we're going to fix the economy. A major complaint of politicians (be they congressmen, assemblymen, or Crepe Senators) is that they are controlled by special interests. Big private sector wallets donate a lot of money to their campaigns to get them elected, and in return these special interests expect that they will be rewarded with lucrative government contracts. This is why I propose that on any contract that is over one billion dollars (or some more reasonable number that encapsulates the fifteen or so most lucrative contracts voted on by congress in a given year), we shift from a republic to a democracy and have American citizens vote. Bring that vote directly to the people and then you'll limit the sway of special interests. Special interests won't be able to line politician's pockets so they'll have to butter up the American people by lining our pockets. Huge campaign contributions to gain favor with politicians will become huge hospital contributions to gain favor with local charitable guilds. If Halliburton wants you to favor it's contract bid despite it being a little pricier, it's going to need to kiss some babies and donate to some churches. Not only will this get money directly into the hands of Joe TaxPayer and out of Senatorial campaigns, but having campaign coffers be emptier will help in and of itself. With less money for their campaigns, members of Congress will be forced to switch from big mammoth ad agencies to smaller boutique agencies. And politicians who are already forced to use boutique agencies will have to switch to blog agencies like The Hot and Bothered Effect Agency...where I'll pimp your campaign for $40. Hence, Trickle-Down Economics.

Step II: Lower the Gas Standard

It's a little known piece of trivia that The Wizard of Oz was a giant metaphor for America's need to abandon the Gold Standard. Every US dollar used to be tied to a fixed weight of gold that was held in Fort Knox. To our credit, America did eventually shake the gold standard. However, somewhere along the line we replaced it with The Gas Standard. Our national currency no longer fluctuates based upon the price of a pound of gold. We are now graded by the price of a gallon of gas. Gas is really high right now. The dollar doesn't buy much of it at all anymore, and more than a few people will take this to mean that the dollar is weaker than it used to be. This is bullshit. Why are we tying our economic happiness to the price of a gallon of gas? I realize that there will always be a standard. As humans we're programmed to have one. We have to tie our dollar to something. But gas is something that's too volatile to be our standard. We can't allow the perception of our economy to be tied to a resource that is so powerfully controlled by people who don't like us. Iran and Venezuela shouldn't be able to have any bearing on the way that we feel about our dollar. But because we worship at the almighty numbers above the pump...they do. Now, America is no slouch when it comes to oil reserves, but they won't last forever. And Saudi Arabia's might last close to forever. Donald Trump apparently thinks that we should march over there and take it all because we can. But I'm here to tell you that that is not the answer. Trump, we've come to an international understanding that possession is 9/10 of the law. And if this understanding is ignored, then me and my band of vigilantes are going to take the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City for our own.

The trick here is two-fold. First, we must ween ourselves off of our dependence for foreign oil. Second, we must then find a new, less volatile standard with which to affix our dollar. The first part is substantially more difficult. We've been trying for forever to become energy independent, but Big Oil has thwarted us at every turn. We should have had a substantial electric car over a decade ago. Ed Begley Jr. has been driving one for years and he's never missed a day of work. The problem is that he's motivated to do it for environmental reasons. And the average Joe doesn't really care about the environment. But he does care about the economy. So we have to make the electric car somehow economically friendly...and possibly sexy. If the US government is willing to pump money into the electric car, it will pay off substantially for our nation with an increase in the value of our dollar. Unfortunately, Big Oil makes major Senatorial campaign contributions to stop this from happening. But as my last step extrapolated...maybe we can work around that. The question now becomes: What do we replace the Gas Standard with? I'm thinking we should use the McChicken sandwich. The McChicken Standard would be beneficial because the McChicken is a very stable commodity that really should always hold at $1. And if it does move slightly to accommodate the legit rise or fall in the value of the dollar...at least we'll know when we're back to normal. It will be a lot like The Doomsday Clock. And by that I mean that nobody will understand the McChicken Standard (just as we don't understand the Doomsday Clock) but we know what's good and what's bad. 

Step III: Get More Americans to Fill Non-Citizen Immigrant Jobs

One of those "numbers" that I talked about us having to push in the right direction is Unemployment. This might actually be the most important number to push. And with good reason. A good economy has to have a good job market. Unemployment is hovering around 10% and that just isn't working for anybody. Unfortunately for illegal immigrants and non-resident aliens...they don't count towards this number. The big rip on illegal immigrants is that they take jobs that could go to American citizens. This is a pretty lame criticism. Most of them are taking jobs that Americans don't want for wages that Americans won't work for. If you want to go bust your hump as a migrant vineyard worker for minimum wage...I'm sure that there is a spot for you. These jobs are also jobs that I refer to as "resume stains". I've worked as a gas station cashier and a driving instructor. These jobs aren't on my resume because the very fact that I was ever willing to settle for them tells some people that I'm not cut out for the top. But I don't care...money is money. But illegal immigrants do have some jobs that I think that American citizens could get behind. The trick is how to make American citizens more desirable hires than illegal immigrants when they require a little hitch called minimum wage. The trick here is to tailor the job into one that works towards skill sets that American citizens have that most illegal immigrants would not. Oftentimes, this means revolutionizing an industry to work to our strengths. I don't have any real problem with illegal immigrants. They want some Land of Opportunity, so they're grabbing at it. Good for them. But I have to watch after Americans first if I'm going to fix the economy. So, I have several ideas to rework the illegal immigrant heavy trades of donut proprietor, nail salon worker, and dry cleaner employee to better suit Americans. However, these can all wait for another post. Today I will share with you my ideas to Americanize the backbone of the illegal immigrant job market: the cab driver.

I know that whenever I get in a cab there is going to be an 80% chance that the driver will speak something only marginally resembling English. This number jumps even higher when I'm at the airport. But wouldn't it be nice if you had a good, friendly conversationalist as your driver. That's why I'm introducing "Conversation Cab". It's a cab featuring a fluent English-speaker who is naturally well-versed in many areas of conversation. Each cab will have information on the side letting you know the driver's areas of expertise from Politics to Travel to Sports to Pop Culture to Business to Science to Literature to Technology and Beyond. I envision it to look something like a Trivial Pursuit pie with different wedges to let you know what the driver is competent in conversing about. It should be noted that I originally thought this idea up when I contemplated combining a taxi service with a phone sex hotline. I was going to call it Naughty Talk Cab Company, but I thought it might be too tawdry to be a commercial success. And I thought that it was a sexual assault charge waiting to happen. A cozy fiber-optic line connection keeps the caller's grubby hands off of the phone sex operator when it's a phone call. That distance would not be present at Naughty Talk Cab Company. However, aspects of this idea will probably be present within "Conversation Cab". I also want to launch a non-televised version of Cash Cab. How has this not happened yet? Your driver will ask you questions every two miles, and for every one you get correct one mile will come off of your fare. Cabs have a high enough profit margin that it could still be a success even with very intelligent riders. And costs could be subsidized by having corporations like Coke or T-Mobile pay to have questions asked about their products to passengers. We could also apply for an education grant on the grounds that we're educating Americans with trivia. Boom. Profit Margin Restored.

Part IV: Make Unemployment and Welfare Work

A lot of people want to cut welfare and unemployment completely. These people have almost certainly never needed welfare or unemployment. I have never needed welfare or unemployment, but I'm not as hasty as these people. I do think that both of these programs have gotten out of control. I was eligible for unemployment last year, but did not accept it on the grounds that I didn't want to leech off of society. Everybody told me to take it. But I didn't want to because, while it's free money...I didn't actually need it. I say "leech" because that's what is happening with both of these programs. Sometimes leeching is necessary. I don't have a problem with somebody who has fallen on hard times using taxpayer money to prop themselves back up. However, I do expect that they'll do just that: prop themselves up and move forward in life. That doesn't happen more often than not. There are people that have been riding the welfare bus for what seems like forever. And unemployment usually cuts you off after a year and a half, but that's easy enough to work around. I don't want to shut these programs down completely because they are still useful and needed. I don't mind people getting a ride. I just don't know how I feel about that ride being a free ride. Nature has lots of relationships where one organism leeches off another. However, many of these are called symbiotic relationships. It's time to turn America's relationship with people on unemployment and welfare into a symbiotic relationship.

I don't always believe in making blanket generalizations about people. But I think it's fair to generalize people on "unemployment" as having a surplus of free time. I can think of about 50-60 hours a week that I don't have that most of them do have. And I say that they should be using a fraction of that to give back to the tax payers that are providing them with their livelihood in this time of need. I don't think that that's too much to ask. Tons of places are always looking for volunteers and I'm really only thinking that 15 hours a week be requisite to receive such benefits. And I'm sure that the government can find them suitable service sites should they be as bad at finding placement sites as they are at finding jobs. By taking money from welfare and unemployment they are establishing a debt with society. And just like prison inmates must pay their debt to society through labor...so should people that are taking government money. All I ask is a light quid pro quo to help out during the recession. I realize that there are several people who might not be able to work in a variety of jobs or placements due to physical or mental handicaps or various illnesses. And I'm not suggesting that we slam the door in the faces of these people. Unlike the Eskimos who sent their weak and elderly to die on ice drifts...I believe that every person has value. And I believe that no person should be left behind who is willing to make the necessary concessions to not be left behind. So for these people, just let me know their situation and I'll let our uncreative government know how they can help in creative ways.

V. Quit Worrying About the National Debt

A lot of this recession is mental. The enormous national debt that the United States has amassed is doing just as much damage to our economy through the minds of our citizens as it is actually inflicting on our government's checkbooks. Therefore, take a breath. Relaxing is literally half the battle. Chill out. People really don't understand the national debt. And if you think that there is a worst case scenario in which America defaults because of massive debt, then you clearly underestimate the importance that our allies place on our financial strength. Our debt really isn't that bad in the scheme of things. America's national debt looks pretty daunting when you throw that  "trillion" word out there after a number...but please realize that it is still less than our GDP. This means that if our government was to cut spending by 33% and apply that towards paying the national debt, we could have it paid off in about 10 years. I realize how Christly absurd that last statement is. It's hard enough for our government to not raise spending by 3%, much less cut 33%...so this will likely not be happening anytime soon. Which is good. Because if we paid off the national debt in the next 20 years...we would wreck the World. Our international creditors have very little interest in us paying off the national debt anytime soon. They are receiving their interest payments and that's the way they like it. And I'm pretty sure that if we threatened to pay it back in a couple years, they'd lower the interest rates in order to continue suckling at our financial teet. If we were to pay France everything that we owe them this year, it would cause such massive inflation that France (which according to TIME has the World's second most stable economy) would be endanger of a massive double-dip recession and teeter close to financially defaulting. And since they've tied their currency to the rest of Europe through the Euro, there would be an even wider ripple effect. Such is the power of the mighty United States economy.

This doesn't mean that I'm saying that we should keep borrowing and borrowing until we really have dug a ditch too far. We should try and live within our means as a country and get our spending under control...even if we're just doing it to set an example for our citizens. We've set a bad example. Also, there are certain creditors who we can't scare by threatening to pay them back. China's government has it's finger solidly on it's financial floodgates, and therefore is in complete control of their creditor situation with us. So I would recommend that we try and pay off the foreign debt as we can. The more of our debt that we can internalize, the better. That's part of why we are so stable...more than 50% of our debt is internalized. Likewise, Japan's debt is several times it's GDP, but only 7% of that debt is foreign. So they are able to maintain a pretty steady financial situation since it would not behoove 93% of their creditors if they were to stagger financially. Greece is in the worst shape. Their debt massively overwhelms their GDP and it's all controlled by Germany. Germany basically owns Greece. It's like World War II all over again. We should work to internalize our national debt and quit letting China, who is the only country that can economically pressure us, grow as a creditor.And I think that it would be nice if the International Monetary Fund came to some sort of debt transferring agreement that could help to internalize debt. There's no reason for the United States to owe Italian creditors billions of dollars and for Italy to owe American creditors billions of dollars when we could transfer those debts to internalize them and benefit everybody. They should get on that if they're not to busy sexually assaulting chambermaids.

Step VI: Regulation, Bitches

That's right. I said that what this economic crisis needs is more regulation. And there are a portion of you that are getting angry and thinking that I'm a Godless commie for jeopardizing your free market economy. That's because you don't know what I mean yet. Government regulation is all good and well, but we all know that the government isn't that good at it. And I don't fully trust them with it. I'm talking about taking regulation into the hands of the people. We need to be more watchful and more vigilant. And we need to whistle-blow when shady shit is going down. When you get invited to a pyramid scheme (and who hasn't been)...call in a "raid" on that shit. It's your job to watch out for our well-being. People aren't going to police themselves and oversight boards have been doing a shitty job. So it's time for vigilante regulation. Remember "vigilante" is just a permutation of the word vigilant. That's all that I'm asking you to be. But if you want to go towards the common perceptions of vigilante, you have my full support. As long as you have all the facts. Vigilantes tend to lose sight of those too often. By taking regulation into your own hands...you get to be The Regulator. That title feels pretty good, doesn't it? You feel kind of like Warren G right now. Except without the possession with intent to sell arrest.

But there is one instance where I think good Old-fashioned official government regulation is necessary. That is as it concerns bail-out money. Nobody likes bail-outs except for Wall Street, banks, the auto industry, people in leaky row boats, and Kobe Bryant. So quite a few people I guess. But bail-outs shouldn't just be a Get Out of Jail Free Card (as I mentioned above...what a useless card...Monopoly jail is the place to be). Bail-outs shouldn't allow screw-ups and ne'er-do-wells to re-set everything so that they are free to screw up and ne'er-do-well all over again. That's not fair to the rest of us who are paying for their mistakes and who feel that we have not been regularly afforded a second chance. We demand our pound of flesh. This doesn't mean I don't think we should have bailouts. I was told that some of them were necessary, and I'll believe the economic experts. But there needs to be conditions. Hand these defaulting idiots a delicious bail-out bagel? Ok. But wait! What's that attached to your bail-out bagel? Is that a string I see? Good. Strings need to be attached. If I'm digging you out of the ditch you dug yourself...then you'd better dig these new rules that I'm throwing at you. And the rules will be plentiful. Let's also remember who's money is being used for these bailouts. Mine. And yours. But also mine. Which is why I think that the American people deserve to financially benefit from these bailouts. I realize that 700 billion dollars is a lot to have to pay back, and that there is literally no way in hell that it can be done by the people receiving the bailout. But not all of that money should just disappear into corporate re-building. I say that at least 10% of all money used to bailout a corporation should be turned into credit that needs to be paid back. However, it doesn't need to be paid back to the US Government. It needs to be paid back to the American people. But not every American person. If I lend you $10 and you give me back $1...well, that's just idiotic. Instead we need to re-install the draft. Only this time you want to be drafted. Being drafted means that you are a randomly chosen citizen who just became a creditor of $10,000 to an American corporation and they will be forced to re-pay you this loan in a timely manner as determined by a pre-arranged agreement of their bailout. This means that for a 700 Billion dollar bailout, 7 Million Americans will receive a hefty some of change in return. Sure, the other 300+ Million of us will get dicked, but seeing as only people who filed their taxes will be eligible for the draft...your chances are a hell of a lot better than winning the lottery. And I think that this is something that Americans can get excited about. 

Step VII: Cut Spending Across the Board

Everybody knows that we need to cut spending if we're ever going to pull our economy out of its current nosedive. Everybody also knows that our government is sensationally wasteful. So I thought that this step was going to be pretty damn easy. I was going to peruse the government budget, and I was going to attack the weak programs like Dave, in the movie of the same name, until I had cut what I needed to cut to make shit work. However, this is example #9427 in my life of how the life of Ray O'Brien in no way, shape, or form resembles Hollywood's depiction of reality. I'm not trying to cut a few million dollars in order to save an orphanage so that Sigourney Weaver / Jamie Lee Curtis will sleep with me. I'm trying to cut trillions of dollars so that we can save the economy. See how I just skipped right over billions there...from millions to trillions. Yeah, shit just got real serious, real quick. So I sat down with the budget and a red pen and got ready to get my Dave on. However, the problem was that I was trying to cut a substantial percentage of our budget and 70% of it is tied to five specific programs: defense, interest on the federal debt, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And these are all things that Americans can't agree on. Almost all Americans accept that a good deal of money needs to be spent on our educational system and civic maintenance. However, Democrats think that defense spending is utterly unnecessary and Republicans think that Medicare and Medicaid spending is unnecessary. Now you might think that it sucks to live in a country where the government takes a sizable portion of your income and spends 70% of it on five such debatably necessary expenses. But count yourselves lucky. In North Korea the government takes all of your income and spends 100% of it on the following five expenses: elaborate birthday parties for Kim Jong-Il (sometimes not on his actual birthday), avant-garde high-tech ghost towns on the border to try and make South Korea jealous, huge North Korean flags, paying Chinese nationals to cheer for North Korea at the World Cup because their own people aren't allowed to leave the country, and production costs on re-makes of American movies to star Kim Jong-Il made by his  private director who he keeps locked in his basement. So really, wasteful spending is all relative.

But things do need to be cut. And quite frankly there's a big chunk that could be taken out of any of the five aforementioned money-gobbling programs. Defense spending is wasteful as hell, but I think that a good amount of that can be controlled by public-voted defense contracts per Step I. We can't just give up on our military spending. We need to maintain our status as the World's Big Poppa Pump. Our military might provides us with countless benefits that you don't even think about. And it's a major reason that, despite financial crisis, the American dollar is still the Worldwide monetary standard. You can say that we're entangled in costly foreign wars so that Big Oil and defense contractors can make big money with the real cost coming to American soldiers and Islamic citizens. I'm not saying that you're wrong. You're probably right. But I think that we are doing the right thing for the wrong reason. We may be over there because we want oil, but if we're not over there then nobody is going to get any oil... because it's pretty hard to build oil rigs on top of mass graves. We may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but I'm pretty sure that over a million Kurdish people in shallow ditches prove that something was afoot. Our big defense budget is needed on the World stage. However, so too is our large medical budget. People deserve to be taken care of and while the medical industry is just as bad as the military at spending money, it doesn't mean that they don't need a lot of it.

The big expense that definitely needs to be adjusted is Social Security. I don't understand why Social Security is the massive demographic time bomb that people say that it is. I realize that the Baby Boomers are hitting Social Security. I also realize that there are a lot more of them than there are Lost Generationers or Silent Generationers or all of those other stupid names that we gave to people born around the turn of the 20th Century. But Boomers have been paying into Social Security their whole lives. So theoretically there should be more funds in Social Security to accommodate them. My general understanding of the way that Social Security should work is that you are basically paying into savings for yourself for the future. However, I realize that wasteful as we are...more than one person's payments are going to each retired person. And this would create a problem if everybody received Social Security. But they don't. People die before the age of 65. It happens every day. However, too many people are living to receive Social Security. Social Security used to be a reward for living right, taking care of your body, and surviving. It was a tribute paid to survivors of life for making it to a certain age. Now that age is below the norm. Dying at 65 in 2011 means dying young. We need to raise the age at which people start receiving Social Security. We can't coddle these 65-70 year old Junior Citizens. We should raise the average age to 70, at least. But we should actually stagger it so that the age at which you start receiving Social Security will be contingent on the life expectancy of the profession in which you have spent the most time working. Lumberjacks and Crab Fisherman can retire at 50. Lazy-ass government pencil pushers won't be able to retire until damn near 95.

Speaking of lazy-ass government pencil pushers...let's get rid of pensions. I'm not an unreasonable person. I'm more than willing to look into the circumstances and allow certain professions within government to keep their pensions. I have no intention of taking any money away from Veterans or injured firemen or anybody else who need it and have earned it from years of service. I just don't think that DMV or IRS employees have done anything to earn one. Their bureaucratic BS means that my life has to be more difficult. If the California DMV could get me a Driver's license in less than eight weeks than I'd consider it...but they didn't, so I won't. Seriously, just because you landed a cushy government job doesn't mean that you should be set for life while the rest of us have to pray that our investments pan out. And while we're at it, unions can bite my ass as well. They had their purpose back when Laissez-Faire economics were running rampant and the works were Upton Sinclair were current social critique. However, now they are corrupt and a burden on the system. Protecting somebody's right to work in a safe and fair workplace is righteous. Protecting somebody's right to keep their job when they are no longer useful and are a burden to their employer and society just seems like something that shouldn't be built into our system. Do you have any clue how hard it is to fire a teacher that has tenure? Ridiculously hard. How is education supposed to improve in this country if we can't hire the best because we can't fire the rest? You shouldn't want to be a burden to society. We should all aspire to be good at what we do. And if we're not we should get out of the way when we're told to, not leech off of our fellow man with some misguided sense of entitlement. Hone your skills until you're irreplaceable and you'll have nothing to worry about.

Step VIII: Vice to the Rescue!

We're here. Vice has finally presented itself as a candidate to bail us out of this economic crisis. We just have to let it. The moralist blowhards in this country think that mankind cannot be trusted to ration their own levels of vice and thus it must be so heavily regulated so as to take half of the fun out of vice with all of the extra stress. I'm not saying that vices are good, and I'm not saying that too much of any of them is healthy. But I don't think that they're something that should be able to be Constitutionally legislated so harshly. And there is also a pile of money to be made from them. So let's welcome the big three: gambling, drugs, and sex into the fold with open arms. Let's start with gambling. I won't try and defend the criticism that gambling has ruined countless lives. However, I view this as a form of natural selection. If you lack self-control, something that you should be able to force into yourself, then I refuse to pity you. If you married somebody who gambles away your mortgage...then I feel a little bad for you, but you still made a poor decision somewhere along the way. Quite frankly, if it weren't for the children of degenerate gamblers being the real victims, I would say that we should go with no regulation at all. But even with any potential hazards associated with gambling, I still don't think that there should be strong opposition to legalizing it nationwide and building casinos in all 50 states. Nevada is one of only a handful of states that carries no state individual income tax. Why do you think that is? I'll bet that it has a good deal to do with the fact that Las Vegas rakes in revenue hand over fist for the state to meet its needs.

And it's more than just income. It's about jobs. When I first graduated from college there was a pretty severe job shortage in Ohio. Before I landed a cush desk jockey job at Clubessential, I would have done just about anything to make a buck. And I did. I was a driving instructor! There are teens who were taught the rules of driving by yours truly. I really should look up how many of them are in the clink for vehicular manslaughter. But I had significant hope back in that summer of 2008 because there was an initiative on the ballot to open a new casino in Cincinnati. It would create a slew of construction jobs initially. And then a few months down the line there would be several openings for blackjack dealers, bartenders, and (my dream job) pit bosses. So I prepared my menacing scowl and vicious backroom backhand. I started trying various shirt and tie combinations in preparation to take some hustlers behind the woodshed and beat the shit out of them. So imagine my despair when the idiot voters of Hamilton County slapped down this Proposition like so much volleyball. There were commercials about how the casino would use some backdoor loophole to avoid paying the state and how hard-working citizens would lose their paychecks. Well, how about allowing some of us citizens without paychecks to get one. Nobody is forcing you to hand yours over. Try not doubling down on 16, jackass. If we look at states that allow gambling, the research shows that there is no way that increased casino presence will not be economically beneficial. There might be a few other unfortunate side effects of rampant gambling. But I don't care about those because the economy will boom back way strong.

Then we come to illegal drugs. I would like to make it clear that if gambling were legalized I would partake of it on a semi-regular basis. I would, however, not partake of illicit drugs. I like to think that I'm way too damn smart for that. I'm smart enough to know what drugs do to people, and I'm sensible enough to know that I'm not the exception in this case. That having been said, I don't have a problem with your drug use. You can use drugs all you want...so long as your drug use does not negatively impact myself. And there lies the hitch. How do we make a debilitating bad habit into a positive? It's easier than you think. The war on drugs already takes a monstrous toll on our nation. We just need to lay down our armor in the war and ramp up the incentive for those people who do use drugs to be responsible with their drug use. Drug convictions are over-loading our prison systems with non-violent criminals. Let's take some of the stress off of the legal system by allowing them to deal with people who are a danger to society. Drug trafficking also creates a surplus of crime. We as a nation have to decide which is the greater evil: drug usage or violent crime. Because if we legalize drugs, then almost nobody is going to risk getting stabbed in some dark alley to buy from a shady dealer when they can get their fix from their local CVS. And we'd put in place laws to try and curb irresponsible use. It's more realistic than trying to totally outlaw them. We'd raise accountability for illegal actions while under the influence. If you kill somebody while you're high...that's no longer vehicular manslaughter or 3rd Degree Murder. It carries Murder in the 1st time. We lock you up and forget about you for 25 to Life. We'd also regulate that drugs are still illegal for minors. That's easier to control. Please remember that Prohibition didn't work. It was a dumb idea and only led to more crime and an unhappier populous. I think the same could probably be said of our current war on drugs.

But how will legalizing drugs help our economy? First of all, drugs are a luxury item. So tax the ever-living fuck out of them like you do with cigarettes. That will rake in a lot of revenue for the government which should allow them to lay a little bit off of income tax. And while only establishments with a license will be allowed to sell to the public...allow anybody who can grow it to sell to the distributors. This will allow people whose houses are about to be foreclosed on to put their backyards to good use. We have a surplus of lots that are going to waste because they're not going to sell anytime soon in this economy. Put that land to use growing a crop that can help the owner ride out the terrible housing market. And I think that Adult "Bake" Sales could be a pretty sweet fundraiser as well. The moral high-grounders will see this as promoting drug use. I see it as taking money that is going to Colombian drug lords and re-distributing it to American communities. I'm not saying that the government should push drug use. I'm thinking the opposite. We should still push anti-drug programs. But junkies are going to be junkies. We don't need them clogging up our prisons and sending their money to cartels so that they can decapitate DEA officers in Mexican border towns. In 1989 Pablo Escobar was the seventh richest man in the World. His net worth was over three times as much as Colombia's national debt (which was over 10 Billion US dollars). And that's when cocaine was illegal. Imagine the money to be made with a legal illicit drug industry in America. Legalizing just cocaine and marijuana would provide such an economic stimulus that I have to think we'd be massively better as a nation if we just declared the war on drugs over.

Now we come to the final member of the vice triumvirate that is here to save our economy: sex. This is another vice that I don't think that I'd take advantage of if it were legalized, any more than I already do. I'd go to strip clubs and buy porn, but I wouldn't pay for actual sex. This has nothing to do with me looking down on people who do. I just don't think that I should have. I value my charm enough to think that I'm too good to pay for sex. Attractive women should pay to have sex with me. Alright...that might be pushing it. However, there are plenty of people who can't find the type of sex they want with the type of person that they want it with for free. So who are we to tell them that they shouldn't be allowed to pay for it? Legalizing illicit drugs in America will change a lot of things. I don't think that legalizing prostitution will change much. In essence, it's already legal and we're spiraling our way towards it being a way of life if we don't pull out of this economic nosedive soon. While Andrew Smith and I were reveling one night, I coined a term for a not-too-distant future that I refer to as "Blowjob America". This could either be a dystopian future or a Utopian future depending upon your feelings on casual sex. "Blowjob America" is what will happen when we have reached Economic Hindenburg and the dollar no longer has value whatsoever. It's at this point that we'll turn to a society where all transactions will be based upon sexual favors. I'm not completely sure that we aren't there already. I'm partially convinced that somewhere in the chain of every transition of every good from producer to final consumer, there is a sexual favor that helps keep price discrimination in check. It's impossible to quantify whether sex is paid for or not without seeing an actual cash transaction, because, in a way, all sex is paid for. There's some give and take in sex: be it between strangers, friends, or married couples. One party always wants sex more than the other at a given point and is willing to somehow sweeten the pot in some way that represents an opportunity cost in order to make sex happen. We're all whores for something.

And the great thing about "Blowjob America" is that you can literally print your own money. I'm pretty sure that just about everybody has a mouth. Some people will be "richer" than others. I think that the title of wealthiest human will transfer from Bill Gates to Reese Witherspoon (sample polls show her to be the theoretically most appealing oral sex provider). So attractive people will be able to set higher rates...but there's always a market for ugly people who are really good at what they do. And nothing stimulates the economy like sex. Be it directly or indirectly, I'm pretty sure that nothing moves disposable income quite like sex. Once your immediate needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) are taken care of...pleasure comes next. This is why I'm somewhat against tax breaks. It's because if you give me extra money that I didn't know I was getting...I'm not going to spend it on rent. If I find ten dollars in my couch, Alexander Hamilton is not going to be wisely invested. I'm going to shoot my wad, shooting my wad. I'm going to blow my load, blowing my load. I'm going to use my stimulus package, to stimulate my package. You catch my drift. Legalized sex sure seems to work for the good people of Amsterdam. Imagine the new foreign business that we'd bring in if we legalized prostitution. Foreign businessmen flock to do business in Amsterdam because they know that they can toke up and then get their knobs slobbed on. But why would you do that in Amsterdam when you could do it in Los Angeles or Chicago? Seriously. Bless the comical stereotyped horny nature of our Japanese, Russian, and Italian business associates and let's bring them to America to have them spread their Yen, Rubles, and Euros in our Red Light Districts.

So that's how I plan to fix the economy. If you thought any of these ideas were the kind of classic outside the box thinking that we need...then forward this link to Obama or your Congressman. If you are generally disgusted by my hedonistic notions and think that my ideas will never work...then you'd better hope that nobody ever elects me Crepe Senator of Blowjob America.