How not to fix the UK’s economy

It’s been a while since I’ve seen something this stupid in my Facebook feed, so to celebrate I’ve made this post with a terrible click bait title. Update — This title wasn’t funny, it was just terrible and I felt dirty so I changed it.

Dear Mr. Cameron,

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 a week …..
And there’s your money back in duty/tax etc

It can’t get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and second home allowances

Like a lot of stupid political things on the Internet this originated in the US (sorry Americans) and then some helpful(?) British person amended the minor details to make it more relevant to the UK. The original source for the idea could have been this Tampa Bay Times page. It then seems to have been posted around Facebook and Internet Forums by the gullible. It’s been posted on the BNP and Telegraph’s Blogs and someone even created a petition on the Government’s epetitions website. It got an amazing 8 signatures.

Let’s break down it’s stupidity.

There are about 10 million people over 50 in the workforce. Pay them £1 million each severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

Last years Government figures point the UK’s over 50’s workforce at 7.7 million, but for the point of this we will use the 10 million figure because it’s funnier that way.

So first of all, wow much would this cost? Well 10 million multiplied by 1 million is 10 Trillion, Let that sink in for a moment, 10,000,000,000,000 pounds. That’s not a small amount of money, even for a rich country like the UK. To put in the perspective The UK’s current debt is about £1.3 trillion, which is 90.6% of the UK GDP, interest alone is almost £1bn a week!

This measure would increase the UK’s debt by 1000% and undoubtedly completely collapsed the entire UK economy.

1) They MUST retire.
Ten million job openings — unemployment fixed

I assume this means, they must retire and not return to the workforce. There’s about 30 million people in the workforce. If’ve just got rid of 1/3 of them, and there only 3 million people out of work. You’ve got a 7 million skilled and experienced people to replace.

How do we replace those extra 7 million? I guess it would have to by emigration. Real mass emigration, not the stuff you read in the Daily Express and racists like to harp on about.

2) They MUST buy a new British car.
Ten million cars ordered — Car Industry fixed

I wonder what would count as a British Car? Would a Nissan Micra count as a British car as it’s made my a Japanese company in Washington, or what about a Mini or Vauxhall they are both foreign owned companies. Either way I can’t imagine this would be legal because of existing International trade agreements.

If this was to happen new car prices would increase due to this massive new demand from these newly rich people, and the second hand market would have possibly up to ten million extra cars on driving resale prices right into the ground.

4) They MUST send their kids to school/college/university -
Crime rate fixed

This one is a favourite. “Crime rate fixed” implies that a large portion of Crime is committed by children of people in their 50, and sending these children to school, college, or university will stop them committing crime. I think it’s a little bit more complex than that.

5) They MUST buy £100 WORTH of alcohol/tobacco a week …..
And there’s your money back in duty/tax etc

Households where the head is aged 50–64 currently spend about £16 a week on Alcohol and Tobacco. So this substanal increase would again lead to a massive newly created demand driving prices upwards.

So in summary; the UK economies is completely ruined. there’s a massive skills shortage leading to a huge increase in Immigration, unsellable second hand cars litter the streets and New cars, Alcohol and Tobacco is now so expensive only the very rich can afford it.

Good plan.