GREAT NEW IDEA!!

[MATTHEWDMETCALF]

Ok, with the economy in recession, and no end in sight, I have taken the liberty of coming up with an idea to solve the issue! Brace yourselves here, people...

Legalize pot.

It's ingenius. See, if we legalize pot, the drug money alone would help the economy. And Pink Floyd, Phish ete. CDs sales would skyrocket! Also, with the new art sure to be inspired by pot would sell for thousands of dollars! Not to mention the food! People would be stuffing themselves non-stop! 7-11s and Denny's would become bigger than Microsoft! And, honestly, how many of you people have never thought about doing some reefer?

[UnknownH]

actually people wouldn't do it any more if it was leagal but that would be kinda cool (I knew some potheads from school fun people)

[Wisemon]

Ok, with the economy in recession, and no end in sight, I have taken the liberty of coming up with an idea to solve the issue! Brace yourselves here, people...

Legalize pot.

Uh, here's a better idea for raising money. Let's tax the hell out of multimillionaires and billionaires. By the way, Phish sucks. The only decent pot bands are 311 and Weezer, and that's because they don't smoke it all the time. The coke bands are much better, Buckcherry and System Of A Down.

[Organous]

That's just like saying slavery should be legal because it helped the economy. The ends don't justify the means.
That's not to say I don't think drugs should be legal, just legal with restrictions. If people want to hurt themselves, that's their business, just as long as they don't do it around other people. That's why I hate smoking, because the secondhand smoke does hurt others around the smokers. I don't like any law that is supposed to protect the lawbreaker from himself, though.

[urban dream]

It's just a stupid idea. Pot is semi-legal in my town. A year back, there were more pot shops than shoe shops. The law has been changed now and the shops had to close again, but they've been replaced with pot delivery services. It's like pizza delivery... Only with pot. And you know what? My town is no different from any other. It's just your average Swiss town. Our art doesn't sell for thousands, the drug money doesn't make much difference on the local or national economy. Pink Floyd CDs don't skyrocket. IT MAKES ZERO DIFFERENCE apart from getting you stoned. For people who can't get any, pot seems to be some mystical solution to every problem anyone's ever had. It's totally overrated.

[ShadrachVS]

Yes Urban, you have seen the results first hand...
Besides legalising pot is a bundle of problems in and of itself, money would have to spent regulating, controlling growth, and busting illegal sales... Organizations like the ATF and TABC (or whatever your state alocohol and tobacco commision is called) would have an increased workload. So more agents, not to mention the money spent initializing farms for it. So basically even here in America, business would boom for a year at the most... then go bust again...
Read up on economic theories; If the economy Surges up, it will eventually have to surge back down to compensate. Boom & Bust is they way of the past. We now try to make the uptrends and downtrends curve slowly over a year or more. The Economy like most other things has no 'Quick Fix', it takes time.
This reminds me of the way people view the presidential candidates in office... 'Oh Our Economy is in a downtrend: It's ALL BUSHES FAULT'. The truth of the matter? It takes about 4-6 years for new laws to fully impact the economy in most cases. I won't say Bush isn't screwing up our economy, because there really is evidence Both ways...
A lot of the things that Clinton did in Office have some nasty consequences and the slump in the economy is the side-effect of one of his screw ups.
Just my 2 pence.

[MATTHEWDMETCALF]

Well, there really isn't any other idea out there that makes that much sense. Sure, we can tax the rich, but we can only go so far with that (the Trickledown effect reversed, take that Reagan) and raising taxes for the middle and lower class is out of the issue. Ok, maybe we should start to bring industrial factories back in the US...?

By the way, Phish sucks. The only decent pot bands are 311 and Weezer, and that's because they don't smoke it all the time. The coke bands are much better, Buckcherry and System Of A Down

::Laughs:: Oh, c'mon now. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Phish and Pink Floyd created and perfected mellow rock. And System Of A Down is a wanna-be Iron Maiden (and failing at it).

[ShadrachVS]

well one way we can help the economy you just hit it on the head.
Bring our factories out of Mexico and other countries where they can have cheap labor.
That is a big issue, and that would help a ton; employing millions and reviving the economy...
The biggest scariest fact of our economy... we decide what the dollar is worth...

[MATTHEWDMETCALF]

The only problem with that is that the prices of all our things will raise, probably up to 30% and I don't think the American people would like to see that. So they're going to have to decide if it's more important to have jobs than if it's more important to have cheap things.

[Gnostic Metatron Prime]

Legalization of pot wouldn't solve anything. First of all, Pink Floyd's success is attributed to good lyrics and inventive composition, not drugs. Hell, drugs pretty much destroyed Syd Barret's sanity, which was the beginning of the end for Floyd, so there ya go.

Second, our economy is in bad shape because the big corporations are all churning out different versions of the same damn things, and Bush's Christian outrage towards scientific fields like therapeutic cloning is delaying many new industry's.

Third, Americans will avoid anything that could make them fat. Pot bellies aren't stylish.

And finally, Art and Economy don't really match up. The creation of the collector's market has not really generated much money for the economy. It's only led to thousands of artists ending up broke when their works went out of style, and it damn near killed the comic book industry in the 90's.