Making the world a better place

One of the remarkable things about retirement is all the time you have to think. Just imagine all the brainpower that is available today in the hands and heads of our retired masses and others who just wish they were retired. It is staggering! I personally manage a local “think tank” with professionals from various walks of life. The membership of this group is constantly changing, but currently we have the FedEx guy, my favorite car mechanic, anybody hanging out at the building supply store, the lady who always says “thank you” at the drive-thru burger place, and the regulars you run in to at the post office. This convocation of pure brilliance makes Fareed Zakaria, of CNN, look like a preschooler. We discuss many different issues of the day, and now we are about to release our long-awaited findings in an annual report maybe sometime this year for the first time ever, where we explore the most dangerous threats to life as we know it. After much collaboration, deliberation, and incantation, this brain trust has decided what’s wrong with America is basically two evils: Money and Facebook. First, in the chapter dealing with money, our Monetary Expert (the nice lady at the drive-thru who calls you “baby” and says thank you) reports that the problem with money is there’s too much of it, and it’s dirty. “Pennies are the nastiest,” she says “because nobody really respects or cares about them anymore, and we should just go back to using gold to buy stuff. With the way prices are going up, it won’t be long before we run out of words and zeros when we’re discussing money. We are already talking about trillions, so what’s next, zillions? How ‘bout quadrillions? It scares people. Thirty-six thousand dollars for a new car sounds terrible. It would sound a whole lot better if the sticker price just said, MSRP 12 ounces of gold.” Also, she suggests that we feature different people on the twenty-dollar bill. “Change it up from time to time with smiling, friendly folks, not hateful politicians. You could also let the big celebrities and sports stars bid for the chance to have their own picture on the big bills. No telling how much Oprah or Tom Brady would pay for that!” O.K., so that takes care of the money problem. Next is a touchier issue, Facebook. My thinkers here could not agree if Facebook was a Chinese plot or something closer to home like E.P.A., C.I.A., I.R.S., or some other threatening abbreviation but one thing they did agree on is that we need to get in on the profits. As my favorite auto technician said, “Nothing good ever comes out of something free”. Truer words were never spoken. So, the recommendations for this problem are to do like the government does on everything else; put a tax on it and make everybody buy a license to participate. If you want to post something on Facebook about your mean in-laws, that will take a $25 license, if you want to tell everybody every place you go every time you leave town, that will run you $150, and if you want to teach, preach, talk politics or just fuss, well that will set you back $550. We figure this system will also go a long way in helping take care of the money problem too. So, as you can see, this dynamic group is “steel trap” sharp, and they work cheap too. I wish I could tell you more about them, but just like all those other big outfits, I agreed not to sell any of their personal information. Besides, you probably already have a pretty good idea who they are anyway. Get your Facebook license now and avoid the rush!