I Should Have Seen It Coming

                  

We all remember when Amazon stock or Google could be bought for a buck a share. We would all have unbelievable wealth if we only knew enough to buy a few thousand shares at the time. With that thought in mind I offer some insights that might help you manage the World Economic Collapse and still be rich.

Why are dollars valuable? There really is no reason that little pieces of green paper should entitle you to take anything you want or do anything you want.  The reason that green paper is valuable is that it’s backed up by a rare mineral, namely gold.  We can’t carry around blocks of gold (they are very heavy) every time we go to get groceries or gas. Instead we carry around little pieces of green paper which tell how much of that gold you do own while it rests in Fort Knox, or at the bottom of an African mine shaft.

Look carefully at your little green pieces of paper. At the top it says “Federal Reserve Note” which is a nice way of saying you are holding an IOU. Do you really think there’s gold backing all of the money that’s printed? Take another look at the characters on the bills. George Washington on the one-dollar bill is looking you right in the eye. You can trust George; he’s only promising you a dollar’s worth of gold. However, Jackson on the twenty is staring off into space. He couldn’t even look you in the eye. He knew even back then that the bill you’re holding could never be turned in for twenty dollars-worth of gold.

Though gold is shiny and rare, we are about to see little green paper being backed up by a new commodity, toilet paper. Gold is out. TP is in. Think about it. If the current pandemic has taught us anything it’s that you can’t ever have enough toilet paper. Even as we speak, the top 1% is shifting their long-term investment strategy to toilet paper. Their three and four car garages and several summer places are now filled with, you guessed it, toilet paper. Why do you think it’s been unavailable for the last few months?  The only toilet paper you can get these days is by going into an alley trading your cocaine for TP, especially two-ply extra soft.

I know what you’re thinking. Who can cart around tons of toilet paper to buy groceries or gas? That’s what the little green pieces of paper are for. Of course, we will need to upgrade the bills a bit. A great candidate for the new one-dollar bill would be Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame.

Stop. I’m serious. Don’t be so judgmental. Hear me out. Take a look at George on the one and then Alfred E. on the one. George sits there in his formal work-casual dress with an ascot or something like that. He turns his wise, elderly, grey haired countenance slightly to the right and catches your eyes. You know he’s thinking, “I got you, you did it. Admit it.” I want to yell out “OK, you got me, I did it and I’m glad!”  Alfred E., on the other hand looks you in the eye directly but it’s obvious he doesn’t care what you did or didn’t do. He’s modest and humble in appearance due to his curly brown hair, freckles, protruding ears and big space between his two front teeth. His eyes are half closed like he’s high or ready for a nap. He would be the perfect symbol for America. Instead of all the formal language on today’s one-dollar bill we could put Alfred’s famous quote below his picture, “What, me worry?”

Now, hurry to the phone and put it all in TP futures. Between our cornering the world market in toilet paper and the image of Alfred E. Newman telling us all to relax and have fun, we should be just fine.