Economics made easy

[therealjr]

Please find below our suggestion for fixing the UK's economy.
 
Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.
 
You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:
 
There are about 10 million people over 50 in the work force.
 
Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:
 
1) They MUST retire.
Ten million job openings - unemployment fixed
 
2) They MUST buy a new British car.
Ten million cars ordered - Car Industry fixed
 
3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -
Housing Crisis fixed
 
4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university -
Crime rate fixed
 
5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco/petrol a week .....
And there's your money back in duty/tax etc
 
It can't get any easier than that!

[Pete]

Great! Where do I sign? 

[Scimitar]

Gets my vote too

[Slacker]

The Greek economy explained:


It is a slow day in a little Greek Village . The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.
On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.
The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.
The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna.
The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.
The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.
The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.
No one produced anything. No one earned anything.
However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works

[k4blades]

Its a very good analogy, but not quite right. Theres no mention of interest of course, so by the time the hotelier gets the €100  back its only worth €80 so he gets in more debt to pay the traveller back the €100, so more debt without any way of actually paying for it as nothing is produced.
And thats exactly why every single economist over the past year has said the its almost guaranteed that the Greeks will default. And yet the traveller, a certain Frau Merkel, dragging her lame French poodle behind her, has carried on travelling from hotel to hotel, but not really spent her €100 on buying anything. Reports in todays paper though, suggest she maybe becoming more accepting of the fact regarding a Greek default.
The sooner the better because when it happens we will all suffer. Its because of the lack of confidence from banks, and the markets, that has held back some of the growth, and when Greece goes belly up, the trading in Europe will suffer, so it will be very tough economically for 12 months or so. But in the long term, as things re-adjust and balance out, it will be better for us all and if it had happened 12 months ago, we'd be on our way out of it, such a shame that it has been allowed to drag on and on as it has.