Sunday, January 31, 2010

THE FIX

The fix is this:

You have slightly less than 40 million Americans over the age of 50. So let’s just say it’s 40 million.

Have the government give each man and woman 50 and over one million dollars.

The stipulations are these:

1. They must retire.

2. They must buy a home and move from the home or apartment or place they live now but must continue to live in The United States.

3. Each person must buy a NEW AMERICAN CAR.

4. Each person must buy at least 3 major new appliances in the first year.

5. You must be an American citizen, a legal one, for 5 years.

You solve the housing industries problems. They will have to build new homes and banks will have to loan money to the builders, keeping banks happy.

You solve the car industries problems and create a huge market for American auto builders bringing new employees into existing or reopened factories.

You solve unemployment because so many people retire from work, creating jobs everywhere in all facets of the economy.

You decrease energy use by people buying newer cars, electric cars and more efficient cars.

You get better than half of congress out of Washington because they’d have to retire.

All at a cost of less than 500 Billion dollars.

Yes, I know this is something being talked about and it’s not new.
I still would like you to share your thoughts. Comments? Questions?

2 comments:

Teresa said...

Good Post!
I definitely like the idea since it would force half of our politicians to retire. It is most certainly an interesting idea. But, wouldn't forcing something like retirement on persons go against a person's privacy, liberty and pursuit of happiness? I believe that the forced retirement would go against our Constitutional rights. Gee... This sounds a lot like what the current health care "reform" bill does. the bill forces citizens to buy health insurance or be fined and/or jailed. That is in fact unconstitutional.

Eric Graff said...

You are right. I do agree that this may not be constitutional on its face but this is the conundrum we face. The fact is about 5% of those over 50 years of age are already millionaires and would not fit “The Fix” as stated. Maybe this could be handled like a company buy-out. You can opt for this plan or opt out.

When you look at what the government is spending to repair the economy, it is going to break us if we continue to put good money after bad: The fact is government is the problem. I’m not interested in forced retirement. It’s a proposal to fix something the people’s money can fix. It’s not Washington’s money. It’s yours and mine. I don’t feel this is an invasion of privacy. I do not feel if this is an option chose by the individual that you’d be inflicting any real detriment to the individual. Sure, you’d have to live here, in the greatest country the world has ever seen, but I fail to see that as a problem. The dollar being so weak right now you’d soon discover it’s worth more here then anywhere else. You could leave after fulfilling your obligations to the proposal after say five years. If you’re married and both over 50 you’d double your money. Investing it makes stocks go up and that makes those younger more inclined to invest in stocks.

Please ponder this fix. I am wondering if it just might work with some tweaking here and there.

Thank you for your keen advice once again Madam Rice.