All you have to do is...

In these trying times, when faith in the government and in American ingenuity are waning, the problems we face are apparently much simpler to resolve than the state of things would indicate. If politicians only had the insight that many people I know seem to have. Almost daily, I hear simple fixes for our problems that usually begin with, "All you have to do is..."

To remedy an overwhelming national debt, all you have to do is institute a flat income tax, with no loopholes; everyone pays 10% of what they make. The IRS disappears, because the taxes are taken out of paychecks and turned over to the treasury. No more charitable-contribution-deductions, which for most of us translates directly into no more charitable-contributions. An unexpected benefit might be that people have to face their true feelings regarding charitable acts, resulting in a renewed commitment to helping those who need help...

To stimulate jobs, all you have to do is drug test people on welfare. These freeloaders would lose there funding and be forced to go to work to get money for their next "fix." Easy-peasey, no more welfare-state. An unexpected benefit might be that people earning their own money wouldn't want to give it away so freely, but there is also the distinct possibility that they aren't all drug addicts, and drug testing might not eliminate the program at all and only add great expense.

To bring jobs back to America, all you have to do is stop buying products made in China. Try it, it's not possible. There is really no reason to delve any further into this one to discredit it. They really should celebrate the 4th of July and Lincoln's birthday in China. Imagine celebrating those holidays here in America without China's contributions...no napkins, plates, utensils, balls and bats or Frisbees, no invitations to send out for your bbq, no grill...what would we do without China? It seems that we're rather ungrateful to the country that's keeping us afloat. OR, maybe we could actually stop shopping at Satan's store (you know the one I mean...they're everywhere) and instead of wanting to only pay 59 cents for a thousand paper plates, we could pay a buck for a hundred made right here in America.

Any social remedy that begins with "All you have to do is...," inevitably leads down a convoluted path that requires the kind of personal sacrifice that we seem to have lost the taste for. When deciding if we can do without a product that a carefully produced ad makes apparent that everyone else has, our introspective rarely goes past step one of the flow chart... 1. Do I want it?

On a lighter note, I saw a t-shirt that said "In dog beers I've only had two."