By David (Dave) Pristash and Darwin (Skip) Monnin 

My cousin and I came up with a solution for the National Debt problem today that I think you would be interested in.  It solves all the issues of the national debt the redistribution of wealth unemployment and global warming. It also negates the need for the IRS and the FED so Ron Paul would be just as happy as Al Gore. What could possibly do this --- well we have all heard the saying of having a money tree in the back yard.  But that may not be as far fetched as one would think.
 

We all know that paper money issued by the FED is fiat currency.  That means that it is not backed by anything. And we know that the paper money we use is --- well made from paper (other things are in there but those can be ignored).  Paper comes from --- trees. So money comes from trees albeit with some tricky processing.  So let’s eliminate all the in-between steps and go directly to the source--- the trees.  Trees also harbor bees and we also know that the bees know so this also makes perfect sense.

Congress could pass legislation that makes tree leaves the currency of the realm; we can call them Revenue Trees. Giving everyone that has access to a tree the ownership of their own personal revenue tree (money tree to the older crowd).  But we can’t have people just picking leaves off the trees and so the money would only come into play with leaves that have turned color in the fall.  This would give everyone the incentive to clean up in the fall and instead of putting their old dead leaves in the trash they would take them to the bank.  This would be good for the environment.

With leaves being the new money and their availability assured there would be no crime since there would be no need for robberies.  However we would need more police to ensure that people did not pick leaves that were green.  So this would reduce unemployment. It would also help with illegal immigration since there would be no need for illegals for lawn care in the fall.

Now as to the new money --- well we need different denominations so the leaves from different trees would have different values so for example a cherry tree would have a value of one dollar and say an oak twenty dollars and maybe a hickory for fifty dollars.  There could be a national contest to determine what leaves had what values.  The US Treasury could hire Simon from American idol to run the contest.

Now everyone would want as many leaves as possible and the higher denominations in particular so they would start planting trees --- lots of trees.  And since trees pull CO2 out of the atmosphere when they are growing this would be very good for the environment.  This would make the environmental advocates very happy and Al Gore could now make a new movie about the tree movement.  They may even have to re name Arbor Day to Al Gore day since the Global warming movement is to a large degree here because of him.

The money people --- Wall Street --- would also be happy since the leaves have a short life and they would need to be spent quickly.  That would result in a high velocity of money and promote investment and I’m sure that Goldman Sacks could come up with some really neat new financial gimmicks to keep the investment bankers busy.

Now we did say that the trees would be called revenue trees and the reason is that the federal government which owns huge tracts of land would be able to get all the leaves that it needs without taxes --- or Revenue.  Further since the IRS and the FED would no longer be needed all those employees could be put to work collecting the leaves on the federal land.  There is a lot of land and a lot of leaves out there and so it would be a full time job for them making the collection.

With all the leaves that the former IRS and FED employees gather they should be able to pay off the national debt within a few years.  There are about 745 million acres of forests in the US so with a reasonable guess of 500 trees per acre that works out to about 3.7 billion trees. If we assume 50% of the trees are pines and that there are 100,000 leaves per tree that means there are 185 trillion leaves per year produced.  Only 8.1% of the annual production of leaves would completely pay off the national debt.  Just think how happy all the holders of out debt would be to know they would be paid of in such a short time. 

I’m also sure there is a lot more that we haven’t thought of here but I’m sure that the reader will see the value of this proposal and maybe it could even result in a Green world wide political movement if the tree planting caught on.

PS there are references in here that are not widely known by all but they are all very valid.