I
vaguely recall leaving the
idiot box on while I
studied for some
art history final -
Kollwitz, check,
Beckmann, check... - and on came a
documentary of the
Great Depression. I didn't pay much
attention to it. I just needed
background noise and lots of it, or else there was no way that
Emil Nolde was gonna stick in my
brain.
I looked up at one point and picked up an interesting tidbit - the Great Depression's massive deflation wreaked havoc with American farmers and businessmen with loans - the loans didn't scale with the deflation, so that those $100-a-month payments were a bit tougher now that the person in question made 1/200 of his or her original salary. Inflation would work the same way, actually reducing debt, while the price of goods and services would get jacked around by any market force that comes trundling down the path.
So, I reasoned, why not make this work for the United States? Our government is about 4 trillion dollars in debt. We kinda need the help.
The plan went thusly : demand, by a bill passed through Congress, that every man, woman, and child in the United States put all of their money in material goods. Once that is done, have the Mint print upwards of 6 trillion dollars (arbitrary amount), and send that to pay off all the debt. Give the money a few days to digest, to travel through the economic system, and then have each man, woman, and child sell those material goods they bought not half a week before at a 1,000,000 percent markup, minimum. Sure, the debt was 4 trillion dollars, but now a Miller High Life six-pack is up from $3.50 to $400,000,000, so it's no longer a problem.
Sure, sure, you say, this won't work, the consequences are too great, who will buy the goods that everybody's selling if no one's got money, blah blah blah... but you got a better idea, punk? Well, do ya? I didn't think so. Thanks to the great left-and-right-wing conspiracy, this plan will go into effect next week. On your toes, people!
This was once an old Everything 1 node series. It was rewritten for larger writeup space on October 23, 2000.