Widgets for America

  Recently (see: Friday) I got into a discussion with a friend about how to fix the economy and what I (and with some help, him) created is what I call The Widgets for America Campaign. See, what we need is something for the people to believe in, and thus the Widget was born.   
  Now, I know that the widget is already a thing. They're those little programs that tell you what time it is in Belgium because you found out your favorite actor is Belgian even though he's never actually been there, as well as letting you convert your units so that you can brag to dumb chicks that your unit is a whole 10 centimeters.

Believe me, I know what a Widget is.

  But those of you with class will instantly think, "But in Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, the business professor used 'widget' as a substitution for a business model!" It's not shamelessly stolen from that, but ever since that fantastic movie I've always used 'widget' as a type of product. It was also used in this book about a boy who collected bottle caps and used money to buy a widget even though he didn't know what it did (more on that later), but oddly enough that thought (even though more relevant) came just now, instead of being before Back to School.

  "Enough babbling!" is what America is crying. "What is this glorious solution you have?" "Please, tell us!" "Put some pants on!"

The face of America. What a terrible "first photo".

  How I Will Save America

  First of all, it does not have a direct use. It does a few things here and there, but nothing specific enough to spotlight for a selling point. That's fine, because second of all, it was made entirely by Americans for Americans. How is it "for Americans" if it doesn't have any real use you ask? Well that's because real Americans buy it. Patriots. Strong, hardworking, loyal American patriots. It's totally fine if you don't want to buy a Widget for America (WFA hereafter), but I guess you don't really love your country. See, as terrible as Joseph McCarthy was to the average person, he was on to something.

Or as his friends called him, "Broseph McCarthy".

  You want to get people behind an idea? Make them afraid to not be a part of something. So take the WFA for example. Everyone will buy a WFA purely because it's American. Not owning a WFA will be a major faux pas. Of course McCarthy up there was about weeding out the non-Americans, I'm out to unify everyone. You buy a WFA because that's what people do. "Don't have a WFA? Oh, well I guess you're just not American enough to own one. That's fine. I guess. I suppose you just don't love your country. And for those of you who don't indeed love your country, that's fine, it's just a shame." At that point your girlfriend knees you in your pinko and goes off to make love on an American flag with someone better than you at everything.

I call it "The George Washington".

  Now you don't want to be caught without a WFA, do you? Great! But where are these WFA coming from? They're just being mass produced in China or Taiwan, right? That's what America is about nowadays, right? It would actually make more sense for it to be outsourced to make it that much more American!

Zing! But this showed up in my "Sweatshop Workers" search and they seem happy enough.

 

  Wrong! See, that's why the WFA Campaign is going to save America: We will hire Americans to make them. Now, at this point in the conversation my female pointed out that if most of America is being paid to make them, why should they have to turn right back around and pour their hard-earned money into a WFA (Ooh, it could double as a piggy bank!)? Well, figure that worst case scenario we're paying these workers minimum wage. Round it off to 8 dollars an hour. Say the average worker works 9-5, of course with lunch break. That's about an 8 hour work day. That's $64 a day. That's at worst mind you, we in the campaign acknowledge that's shit, so you can be sure workers are being paid more than that.

We in the campaign acknowledge prostitution is tax-free though, so go ahead. Let a stranger stick it in your pinko.

We're planning on selling these babies for about $20, so even if they're paid minimum wage, which they won't be, that's only a third of their wages for one day. And you assume they'll probably be working there for a while. because the economy sucks. Which brings me to my next point!

  With all (or at least most) of America pouring $20 into the system, there's got to be sales tax. At least in Cook Country, tax is 10%. Outside of Crazyland though, the average sales tax is generally between 4 and 8%, acknowledging some states don't pay sales tax. Now let's just say that everyone taxes at 6%. That's more or less $1.20 in sales tax (I wonder if a bill could be passed to tax a specific item). According to our friends at the Census Bureau, there's about 308,745,538 people in the United States, and that's just the people who responded. Round down to 300,000,000 to account for children (though that probably doesn't do it justice). That's $ 360,000,000 right there. Now, we could just add $1.20 to all tax and collect on that, but one, there are people who evade their taxes like it was tag at lunch time and two, the WFA serves as a symbol that you love your country, right there in your living room, and a lot less ostentatious than some stupid flag.

Has this ever honestly served as a symbol of our country?

   Now, I'm not saying our debt is small by any means, but I also have a plan for increasing the WFA income. Whatever the WFA does do, maybe it needs refilling. Maybe it has an ink cartridge. Bam, that's a couple bucks right there whenever it runs out. And it's not like a printer where it has a big cartridge, maybe it has as much as a pen. Hell, maybe it has a pen in it, like a swiss army knife toothpick. There's tax on that to be gained too.

  

  It will definitely take a few months to get the ball rolling; funds need to be gained to build the factories, ads need to be placed, word needs to be gotten out to the unemployment agencies, and a few thousand WFA need to be sold to get the income flowing. Once you have people working on making these things, money just moves circularly. People buy widgets, tax money rolls in, money can go to schools, roads and paying off our massive debt, and with $20 per going into businesses and thus into the retail work force, PLUS the factory work force getting paid good money to be used to buy things, the common man can afford to put his own money back out there. Especially because he can drive his new car (with WFA adapter) on the freshly paved roads. This is assuming that Americans only buy one. What about all the major patriots that wish to adorn their entire house/trailer with WFA's? Pick an object. The first thing you can think of. There's at least one person who has gone crazy and bought a blillion of them. Now add America to that, and every red-blooded American (and blue-blooded for us normal/high class people) will want tons of them. We could even just paint the damn thing like an American flag or army camouflage if it'll make people buy them more.

For fuck's sake, nobody likes you.

Notes:

 This is amusing and I like it.

This should also be given a read, though neither served as inspiration for this, but rather when I noted how it was totally okay for them to print tons of the same poster for a 5x10 ft cork board because it pulled in production from ink, lumber, and trucking companies, just to name a few.

I acknowledge that Yahoo! answers are the worst source of knowledge ever, but I do enjoy them so.

That picture with the two girls was originally some college kids, but in the time it took to finish this article they removed it from the internet.

For the "The George Washington" picture, I searched for Sex on American Flag and I forgot to turn Safesearch to Moderate and it was terrible. It wasn't even that what I was looking for was groady, but that the groady pictures coming up didn't have anything to do with what I was searching for.

This was 8 pages. It is probably the best thing I've ever written this long, and that includes the 7 page research paper I did on webcomics last semester.