Here's why you don't want to include my address when you forward that chain email.

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 10:29 AM, a relative wrote:

> Dear Mr. Swan,
>
> Please find below my suggestion for fixing Australia's
> economy:
>
>  
>
> Instead of giving billions of dollars 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 apiece severance for
> early retirement with the following stipulations:
> 1) They MUST retire.  Ten million job openings -
> Unemployment fixed.
> 2) They MUST buy a new Australian CAR.  Ten million
> cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.
> 3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage -
> Housing Crisis fixed.
> 4) They must send their kids or grandchildren to school /
> college /university - Crime rate fixed
> 5) Buy average levels of alcohol / tobacco a week, so
> 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
> allowances
>
> If you think this would work, please forward to everyone
> you know.  If not, please
> disregard.

It's Sunday morning, and I've got nothing better to do than debunk this. Well, I should be doing the dishes. But this is more interesting. ;)

> There are about 10? million people over 50 in the work
> force.  - Pay them $1 million apiece severance for
> early retirement with the following stipulations:

10 million people over 50 in the work force, in a country with a population of around 21 million? That seems unlikely. In fact the ABS estimates (here) there are slightly under 11 million people employed in Australia at the moment. But for the sake of argument, let's assume it's true.

If 10 million people receive $1 million each, that's a lot of money - $10,000,000,000,000 (10 trillion) to be exact. The same link from the ABS estimates our annual GDP at about 1 trillion. I'm not at all convinced that the current governments economic stimulus package is right approach, but at least it's an order of magnitude less than this email suggests.

> 1) They MUST retire.  Ten million job openings - Unemployment fixed.

10 million younger people suddenly promoted into positions for which they have may not have the necessary skills, training or experience. Nothing can go wrong there.

> 2) They MUST buy a new Australian CAR.  Ten million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.

I think the Australian auto industry should perhaps try competing by building good cars at affordable prices, but that's beside the point.

Wikipedia gives Holden's total vehicle production in 2007 (domestic and export) as a bit over 140,000. I know very little about the automotive industry, but lets assume that Ford and Mitsubishi are manufacturing similar numbers of vehicles (probably wildly optimistic - I don't think Mitsubishi are manufacturing anything locally anymore, though perhaps Ford makes that many Falcons/Fairlanes etc? I dunno).

If that's the case we'd need to more than double production to produce the number of vehicles you're talking about. Wonderful! However, what happens next year? Our retirees won't be buying any more cars, as they're not allowed to work anymore..

> 3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed.

Ok...

> 4) They must send their kids or grandchildren to school / college /university - Crime rate fixed

You must be joking.

Ok, I'll stop here. I won't even look into such issues as what happens to the health system when 10 million retired middle-aged people stop paying money into Medicare but keep buying average levels of alcohol and tobacco; or how much money is left for them to last another 30+ years after they've paid off their mortgages, bought brand new cars and put all their kids through university.

As usual, the first thing I did when I got this is tried to figure out where it came from. Snopes has the info: http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/fixeconomy.asp

(Who is it who keeps taking stupid chain letters from the US and rewriting them to make it sound as though they're Australian? Who's got time for this sort of thing?? Oh, hang on.. Bit of a pot/kettle situation there.)

If you agree with this email, or you don't agree but want to tell everyone how wrong I am, or you're trying to put off your household chores, please send this to everyone in your addressbook. If your address book is too small, perhaps you'd like to print out some copies and stick them to power poles around your neighbourhood. Alternatively, recite it as a beat poem outside the nearest train station.

Or, you know, hit delete and move on. Like a normal person.

I'm off to drink an average amount of neat scotch. It's after midday, what's your problem?!?

Yours,

John