10 Ways to Reduce Our Debt

Our giant national debt is a huge issue. Huge! It has to be, because it's all our Congress talked about all summer. Even the magic of tax cuts hasn't solved our debt issue. We cut taxes all the way back in 2001, and ten years later, for some strange reason, our debt just keeps getting larger. This is a HUGE issue. If there's a problem that can't be solved by tax cuts, Republicans are pretty much out of ideas (no, Rick Perry, praying doesn't count as an idea, I'm only interested in reality based solutions).

Sidenote: Debt wasn't quite such a huge problem when we had white Presidents. It's a good thing the tea party came along when it did. They know that if we don't control the black President's spending, he'll just blow all of our money on grape soda and Tyler Perry DVD's.

Anyway, huge debt or not, I'm not convinced we should be slashing the federal budget. And even if I was convinced, America's intelligence profile indicates that we're too "stupid" to stick to a budget. So, like Homer Simpson, we need more money, and I have ideas.

Bake Sale: Everyone in America bakes a pie. If you can't bake a pie (let's say you don't have access to pie ingredients, or you don't have an oven, or let's say you're an infant), someone else will bake your pie for you. We sell all the pies to Europe, Japan and Australia at a huge mark-up, like $15 a pie. I figure that's at least $10 of profit per pie, times 300 million people (give or take), and that's 3 trillion dollars. Did I mention that any country that refuses to buy our $15 pies gets invaded?

Sloth: We all take month long vacations. That's what Congress is doing, so it has to work. One member of Congress recently explained it on TV by basically saying that's what they always do in August. Oh, OK. Where did we find these people? Is being in Congress so awful that only the craziest, most irrational, least useful people in the country want to do it. I know I've said we get the government we deserve, but holy crap. Who else could cap off two months of gross incompetence with one month of "well deserved" vacation.

Roulette: We take whatever we currently have in the treasury to Vegas and bet it on black. Or red. Whatever. Either way, that's just short of a 50/50 chance of doubling our money right there. After watching Congress take two months to raise our imaginary debt ceiling, wouldn't you take 50/50 odds over whatever our current odds are of solving this problem?

Anarchy: This is what the tea people want, right? If there's no government, there's no debt. Just freedom, horrible freedom. And zombies. I don't know how, but anarchy seems to lead to zombies most of the time. Or maybe zombies lead to anarchy. I guess we'll find out.

Real Estate: How much do you think Canada would give us for Alaska? What if we were willing to throw in Montana, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the top part of Maine? OK, all of Maine. You drive a hard bargain Canada. If they won't buy our land, we go to plan B, holding Justin Bieber for ransom.

New Currency: We could convince the world to switch to a new global currency based on something we already have in abundance. Can you base a currency on fat people? How about abandoned factories? We have tons of those. I explored the downside of cheese based money in an earlier post, but if we encased the cheese in some kind of impenetrable, inedible substance, that could still work.

Robot Hilter: I recently saw Virginia Congressman Jim Moran giving a quick summary of how we got out of the Great Depression. First, there was the New Deal. Then, in 1937, Republicans tried to ruin the New Deal for some reason (it seems stupidity was part of the Republican platform long before the tea people came along, who knew?). Then, along came Hitler and we fought our way out of our economic troubles by killing nazis.

Well, Hitler's already dead, nothing we can do about that. But, Robot Hitler can be alive and kicking just as soon as someone invents him. Of course, there's roughly a 75% chance Robot Hitler takes over the world, becomes Skynet and kills us all. But, if we win, it's mostly smooth economic sailing for like 30 years until Robot Reagan comes along and ruins it all again.

Sidenote #2: Extra benefit of the Robot Hitler plan. We finally have someone who pundits and politicians can fairly compare to actual Hitler.

Ocean's 11: Step 1: We put together an elite team of thieves to go rob all the countries that still have money. Step 2: We use the stolen money to pay those same countries back what we owe them. They'll be especially happy to take it, seeing as all their money just mysteriously went missing. "Gee Japan, I'm sorry all your money disappeared, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for it. On an unrelated note, we just found all these yen at the bottom of the grand canyon. Here you go."

Heel Turn: I loved wrestling when I was a kid. If you didn't, here's how the heel turn works. We invite China out to the ring to "talk" about that little sum of money we owe them. We're the good guys, so China doesn't suspect anything. China's music hits and they stroll on down with a big smile. As China is preening for the crowd...BANG! Chair shot to the back of the head...heel turn!

As Always: Guns n Roses reunion concert. We hold it in America and charge the world to see it. We'd easily make 14 trillion dollars with plenty to spare to pay the boys.