3 Ways to Fix Our Battered Economy

Criminals run everything. That’s an undisputed fact. Like, 100% undisputed. And that’s why the American economy is sicker than I get the morning after Tequila Tuesdays at my neighborhood taco shop. They love me there. The owner always calls me “Gringo” and “Pendejo” which he says mean “Friend” and “Stellar Guy.” I love that place…

But back to the state of our current financial hell. We certainly seem to be up shit’s creek. And much of the world seems to be right there with us. Somewhat because of us, in fact. And then there are the countries that aren’t suffering so badly, but those aren’t great places to live anyway. Look at China, for example. The chief reason that their economy is doing so well is because they’re totally fine with cutting down every tree they have just so they can build one more factory, smog is their number one export, and they haven’t spent any money on fuel since they discovered that peasants and excess baby girls burn as efficiently as coal. There’s no way Americans would want to live like that. Plus, we don’t have that many extra babies.

What we need to do is focus on our own specific problems, analyze them in minute detail, and come up with sound fiscal plans. As it stands, though, identifying our problems is about as difficult as putting your whole fist in your mouth (i.e. fairly easy), but coming up with a plan is as difficult as getting your fist back out of your mouth (i.e. “Itth acgualllly wullly hawd”).

You can look at the situation that’s been going on with questionable business practices and how that translates to trading on the stock market. Everyone agrees that there is a problem related to corporations and Wall Street (slide that fist in the mouth…), but then half the analysts argue that we need more oversight and stricter regulations, whereas the other half of the analysts call for no oversight and complete de-regulation. Oh, look at that. Your fist is stuck in your mouth. Wow. It’s really jammed in there. And since we’re America, we slathered that fist with bacon grease thinking that would make it easier to pull out, and now… Hey! Hey, stop that America! Quit trying to eat your own fist! God damnit, America. How embarrassing.

The baby can get his fist in his mouth. Now you should try it to prove 

you're smarter than the baby.

But I, for one, can’t fix that problem with Wall Street and big business. I wish I could. I could have gone to business school, studied macroeconomics and the ever-changing dynamic global capitalistic market, but I didn’t. I studied English Literature and got an arts degree instead. Sorry mom and dad. Now I can dexterously discuss Proust and Shakespeare, I can provide an in-depth critique of postmodern texts, and I can even delve into… wait for it… gender studies. GASP! But I don’t have the necessary skills to talk about most of the economic problems we face right now that are all the rage in Washington debates. I briefly considered going back to school and earning a business degree in research for this post, but honestly, it takes me long enough to write one of these articles as it is, so I nixed that plan. Not to mention the fact that you’d have to be a complete fucking idiot to go back to school in this economic climate and incur more debt*. (*Note: this author just wasted TONS of money applying for grad school (Sorry mom and dad. Again))

No, I can’t help with those problems, but maybe I can still find my own ways to help with America’s economy. There are things we can all do, really, like saving our money, buying only practical items and not wasting our pay on frivolous purchases, making sound investments that help up-and-coming businesses grow, or eating healthy and exercising so we don’t spend all our money on doctors bills and shitty insurance plans that really don’t help us much anyway. But those are all common sense ideas. Anybody could come up with those. In fact, I’m sure 90% of Americans already do all that stuff. So our economy needs more than that. It needs some fresh ideas that no one’s thought of yet, and I just might be the man for the job.

1)   Get rid of the anti-smoking ads.

What used to be America’s best export? Not cars, not electronics, not steel. It was Cool. The best thing we gave the world was our Coolness. It started all the way back when the first travelers came across the Atlantic. They had the balls to sail uncharted waters in shitty weather and tell the kings and queens of their old countries, “Fuck you, I don’t need your shit anymore.” That’s the attitude of a teenager leaving their parents’ house to move in with some slutty boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s shortsighted and immature, but it worked out. This spirit continued with the badass pioneers and cowboys, which is when other countries really started to sit up and take notice of our crazy balls-to-the-walls method of doing things. We risked our lives to do shit that hadn’t been done before. Then some drunk hillbillies and blind black dudes got together and started a kind of music called Rock’n’Roll. There are countless other examples showcasing how absolutely Cool we were. It wasn’t perfect, by far, but Cool never is. That’s part of what makes it Cool though.

Somewhere along the way, we lost that. Now we have people on the left making us look like wussy babies, and people on the right making us look like cranky scared old fogeys. Now, when Americans feel that familiar impulse to be reckless, instead of plugging in an amp and playing a guitar chord so powerful it blows out our neighbors’ windows, we just Big-E-Size our fast food meals and get fat.

I was going to tag something scathing and political, but I got hungry and forgot.

We need to start smoking again. Everyone. Men. Women. Kids. Bring back the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel. Start airing commercials for filterless Lucky Strikes again. How cool was it that Obama used to smoke?!? We had a president that smoked. And then we lost that again. Well, kind of. I have a sneaking suspicion that Obama still smokes on occasion, just not in front of Michelle or his daughters, or any cameras. Think about it: you know in your heart that when they saw the footage of U.S. troops kill Osama Bin Laden, Barack and Joe Biden lit up two huge cigars, drank beers, and laughed their asses off all night until they both puked. My point is, if we get rid of the anti-smoking ads and get everyone smoking, then the rest of the world will start to think we’re Cool again. They’ll want to be like us just the way they used to. If they think America is badass, they will buy all of our other shit so they can emulate us to the max!

Residual Effects: With the anti-smoking ads gone, pro-smoking ads will return, along with other reckless, crazy, cool ads for other bullshit, and after all it’s really advertising that has always driven the American economy. Also, due to the abysmal health problems associated with smoking, we will pump all of our money into the healthcare and insurance industries which can become the new backbone of America’s financial growth.

2)  We need more Katy Perry music videos.

Hey, don’t get pissed at me for saying that. I hate her music more than most people. I hate her music more than your neighborhood pedophile hates it when you’re being an attentive parent. I’m just the messenger. This is the medicine, and you’ll just have to choke it down.

Why will this work? Because, sadly, there are enough people who like her music. Then, beyond the tendency of masses of people to like horrendous music, lays the phenomenon that when pop music stars are at their peak popularity, they attract the attention and energy of Every Other Pop Music Star In The Universe. Their popularity becomes a type of gravitational pull, drawing more and more trite music stars into their field of influence, regardless if those other “artists” are popular or not themselves. Eventually, the force becomes so intense that a MegaPopBlackHole forms, consuming MTV (all of them), entertainment/gossip shows, the radio, magazines, the internet, and iTunes. This is a phenomenon, called the Neal-Einstein Quantum Suckfest, in which the pop star’s crappiness is exponentially proportional to how massively popular they can become with the addition of more crappy stars. That’s a real law of theoretical physics, by the way. You could look it up, but you don’t have a physics textbook.

This SuckFest briefly formed after a rumor that Lady Gaga and Coldplay would get together for a Hamburger Helper commercial on the Opera Network.

Katy Perry is nearly at this level of super-stardom. Don’t get me wrong, I know she’s already huge and successful, but she’s not quite there. Let’s review her progression to the Quantum Suckfest. She apparently kissed a girl and apparently she liked it. That’s great. Annoyingly catchy song sure to piss off parents, make teenagers giggle, and then add to that the irony that she’s made ignorant homophobic comments in the past. Then she has some dumb and over-sexed song/video with Snoop Dogg in it for some reason. More pissed off parents, more giggling teenagers, and more pop culture paradoxes. Next, she marries Russell Brand (and is now probably divorcing him). Finally, we’re getting to the point where the pop gravitational forces are sucking so hard that I’m getting light-headed.

What we need now to push this mess over the edge is for Perry to come out with a song/video incorporating Rebecca Black and Justin Bieber. The song can be titled, “Saturday: the follow-up to ‘Friday’ because Saturday comes after Friday.” Timbaland can produce it, then Weezer can show up for some reason, and the video will have some of those “I Can Has Cheezburger” cats in it. The media will go nuts. The video will stream on the internet and play repeatedly on Fox News around the clock. Rumors of a Perry/Black/Bieber threesome will be so shocking and titillating that it will boost digital sales of the song, and the scandal will revive the printed newspaper. Finally, the porn industry will make countless movies of the “Saturday Threeway,” hiring so many “actors” that the unemployment rate will drop to negative numbers.

Residual Effects: Russell Brand gets jealous of all the attention his (ex-)wife is getting, so he continues to star in and ruin remakes of more classics like “Arthur” which keeps dumb people going to the theater. Or the world completely fucking ends.

3)  We need a tax on Douchebag Words.

Okay, so I already said that I didn’t have a solution to the complicated and troublesome relationship between corporations, the stock market, and government regulation, but this idea comes close. I know I’m not an analyst, so my idea can’t really rely on math and statistics. I can’t even use the knowledge of the past that a historian might utilize to predict and ultimately control the flow of future financial market trends. Rather, my idea has to do with holding our leaders accountable.

In the political arena you can see a lot of people standing on their soapboxes. I mean, what are they doing up there on boxes of soap anyway? And this is even worse now that it’s election season. Yet, for all the yelling, all the hot air, and all the finger pointing, these politicians have no real answers or substantial solutions. There's just a lot of that Fist In Mouth Disease going around. Like I mentioned earlier, half of them want stricter rules and the other half want looser rules. And maybe they want more soap too? I'm not sure, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Regardless, the people in government, and even the citizens of this country, are so evenly divided that neither side can out-vote the other. It’s a stalemate.

But what seem to be of agreement are the words. Both sides use the same tools, the same rhetoric, the same vocabulary. And it’s all god-damned fucking terrible! Each time I hear one of these sacks of shit say, “Main Street versus Wall Street,” it makes me vomit blood. Every single time one of these POLITICIANS on the election circuit tries to blame “those people in Washington” for the mess we’re in my testicles scrunch back up into my abdomen. This goes double for Obama since I actually kind of like that dude. But when he uses those same buzzwords to try to rally his political base, he sounds like a twat.

Oh Holy Shit Bile Just Shot Out Of My Eye Sockets!!!!

That’s why we need to institute a tax on Douchebag Words.

We keep arguing about taxes. Do we need to tax the rich, or the banks? Are there already too many taxes? Should there be a flat tax? Do we need the Estate Tax? Should the wealthy and privileged Americans pull more economic weight than people who don’t have any money? Stop asking these questions. I propose that instead of arguing about whether to tax the rich, we tax the politicians who make our mess stickier than the green-brown blob in my fridge.

Who runs for office? The wealthy. But not just any type of wealthy. They are the people who have so much excess money and time, and such an urge to tell other people how to act that they go into politics.  They make Lex Luthor look like an adorable kitten who donates millions of dollars to charity. Poor people can’t afford to run for office. And decent/sane people are afraid to do it because some opponent will come out with an attack ad claiming that the decent/sane person may have had sex with a dog while performing an abortion to fund lesbian Islamists from Mexico.

We don’t need to just tax the rich. We need to tax the Douchebag Words used by the people who happen to be rich, crazy, and full of bullshit enough to run for office. “Main St. vs. Wall St.” Oops, Douchebag Word Tax. “Our nation’s REAL values…” Oops, you just got Douchebag Word Taxed! “I think what America really needs…” Oh, you just cost yourself $400,000. Wait, you just made some speech in Iowa where you compared/contrasted the Tea Party in any way to Washington Fat Cats twenty-three times? Ah, I’m sorry, that will cost you a hundred bucks each.

The Douchebag Word Tax will force politicians to do something they haven’t had to do since long before the McCarthy Hearings: think before they speak. Before they regurgitate the same hack lines they think voters will respond to, they will have to check their wallets. The other bonus is that, unlike any of the current plans to fix the American economy, the Douchebag Word Tax has a legitimate chance of passing a popular vote.

Residual Effects: Rich douchebags go broke for talking out their asses, simultaneously paying off America’s absurd debt. Also: some goddamned peace and quiet for a change.

Disclaimer: This article is satirical. I have a PhD in Economics and in my expert opinion there is nothing that can save us from ourselves.