Issue #43
Last Update December 24, 2005
National GOPLand III by Gert Innsry Our correspondent sends us this transcript of the Customs and Immigration greeting she encountered upon entering Gopland, the newest of the Free Market Republics. This was her third annual visit. (See GOPLand and GOPLand Revisited for her earlier transcriptions)
This way to Customs and Immigration, madam. I see by your passport that you are a frequent visitor to our free-market, free-enterprise nation. I don't have to tell you the basics, but you may be interested in knowing that some of our laws have changed since your last visit. Are you married, madam? Too bad - if you were you might be eligible for our new marriage incentive payment.
Our support of marriage is much more attuned to free-market principles than the measure recently announced by your President. Instead of spending a billion and a half to encourage people to get married and to enroll in conflict-resolution classes, we encourage marriage by a direct marriage payment, scaled to the number of years the marriage has been in existence. This not only provides an economic motive for couples to marry, but also an economic motive for couples to stay married.
Since the marriage payments gradually level off with longevity, the emphasis is on beginning a marriage and getting it through the crucial seven-year-itch stage. This also makes possible a market in marriage years, as we did with pollution credits, allowing the invisible hand of the market to work its miracles with marriage. Couples who have been married, say, forty years, can trade ten of those years on the open market.This will reduce their marriage payment slightly. An unmarried person, or a couple married only a few years, can buy years on the market and increase their marriage payment significantly.
The market price would be somewhere between the small amount given up by the older couple and the larger amount gained by the younger couple, and would provide the older couple with funds to invest into our privatized Social Security. A caution, though, madam: while year swapping is encouraged, spouse swapping is not.
I'm afraid that you have come to GOPLand too soon to see our latest major social program go into effect. As a solution to both our education problem and our juvenile delinquency problem, we will be combining our Go to Mars space initiative with our No Child Left Behind program.
Enjoy your visit, Ma'am. The fingerprint machine is just to your right.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
New York Stringer is published by NYStringer.com. For all communications, contact David Katz, Editor and Publisher, at david@nystringer.com
All content copyright 2005 by nystringer.com
Click on underlined bylines for the author’s home page.