Self-Scamology 101
Sometimes we scam ourselves simply by not paying attention.
An email has been circulating lately entitled “I think this guy nailed it.” It’s a copy of a contest submission to the St Petersburg Times (Florida) website. It was posted February 8, 2009, by David Otterson, who suggested that the economy can be fixed in the following manner:
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with these stipulations:
They leave their jobs, which creates 40 million job openings. Unemployment fixed.
They buy new American cars; 40 million cars ordered. Auto industry fixed.
They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage. Housing crisis fixed.
This is a lot less than the billions given to banks and insurance companies.
Now I hear people railing about how the government is so crooked by not using such a logical, quick, and inexpensive way to rescue America. Washington is just giving their corporate friends and themselves taxpayer money while things aren’t getting any better. Greed! Fraud! Corruption!
Whoa, hold on there! Washington hasn’t scammed you. I don’t believe Mr. Otterson has scammed you, either; he’s just bad at math. You scammed yourself by believing this email in the first place.
One million dollars times 40 million people equals 40 million million dollars, otherwise known as 40 trillion dollars ($40,000,000,000,000). At the time of Mr. Otterson’s suggestion, the US government had pledged 11.6 trillion dollars in bailouts. Quadrupling this pledge is not exactly a cheaper, more efficient way to go. In fact, it’s simply not possible.
So let’s say the 11.6 trillion dollars that the US could barely afford in the first place was divided among Mr. Otterson’s 40 million early retirees. Each would get $290,000. That’s 40 million new job openings, yes, and many of these retirees might be able to afford a new car plus a new home, but then most of them would desperately need to find new jobs to pay next month’s bills.
Auto industry fixed temporarily (the retirees cannot afford to use their new cars and will have to sell them – and find that they can’t), housing crisis fixed temporarily (again, not affordable to maintain, too expensive to sell), unemployment still a nightmare, and the US taxpayer will not own a red cent in equity from all this. A total disaster.
Listen up, folks: Pay attention to the details. Check the math. Google the concept to see what thinking people say about it. Not just for this ludicrous plan, but for all the too-good-to-be-true ideas you get in these irresponsible emails.
People are such mindless sheep. No wonder it’s so damn easy to scam you.
Scrud Kelley
Related Posts- The Laser Eye Surgery Scam: Hold on to Those Glasses! Medicine and technology are wonderful, which in part accounts for the popularity of Star Trek for over 40 years. But in real life, medicine and technology don't quite measure up...
- Razing Babel: Creating a Universal Language [/caption]Spoken language is a wonderfully complex mystery. Human's can't seem to live without it, yet the majority of us cannot speak to each other with 100% accuracy. Even within a...
- Another Free Beer Scam Here's one of those bar tricks that confounds anybody who's weak at math. If you paid attention in high school, this is pretty easy to grasp. For the rest of...
- Top 5 Ways To Go Broke Ever wonder why some people go absolutely broke. Not like Donald Trump who had a negative net worth of a Billion Dollars but still lived lavishly. And maybe not in...
- The Truth about Credit Cards and Debt pt 2 This is part two to a series on credit cards and where our country is heading when it comes to credit card debt. In the previous post in this series...
- Best Places To Put That Tax Refund You Are Getting. Of course, the ideal thing to do is to not get one at all but that's a different story...it seems most people I know are getting a refund this year...

... so while you're here, check out our rants, ravings, snipes and gripes - and let us know what's on your mind.


















