The Fruitcake Idea: One simple step to a balanced budget--GUARANTEED!

Fruitcake: the gift that lasts a lifetime

Ho-Ho-Ho, the longest shopping season of the year has officially begun, and I'm not talking Hanukkah. It's still summer and I just saw my first Christmas ad on T.V... a really clever 'subliminal' spot  by Wal-Mart. Really! You'll see it, I'm sure.

But this isn't about that. It is about balancing our national budget. I can't believe how utterly simple it will be... and it won't cost any of us one cent more than we will spend anyway. We will do it in just two years if we start now. Blow your mind? It should.

Wall Street Journal feature writer, Joe Queenan for President, please. He notes that returned goods cost U.S. retailers $267.3 billion last year in lost revenue. Yeah, enough that if Returned Goods, Inc. was a real company, it would rank Number 3 on the Fortune 500 list, behind  only Wall-Mart (of course) and Exxon.

Now here's the deal: if you, grandma Jones, Aunt Anna, your next-door neighbor and everybody doesn't return that fruitcake, or the bad tie, the windshield ice-scraper with a mitten attached, the shoe shine kit or anything for the next two years, so many problems are solved effortlessly. Don't take back that bridesmaid dress or the jumbo T.V. just purchased for the Superbowl and then returned to Best Buy. Don't take back ANYTHING! So you re-gift, ok? Uncle Herman has been freezing his fingers to the bone scraping ice off  his windshield... and if that's not amazing enough, Uncle Herman lives in Miami.

That means every retail sale is good and $267.3 billion is a real gain because it has already been spent... and every business prospers and hires more workers and the Dow Jones tops 25,000 and Social Security is fixed and the unemployment rate is down below 4 percent and all teachers get raises and education prospers at all levels and the Cubs win the pennant and... and... and...

I call it the Fruitcake Movement... a win-win kind of thing. And it is soooo simple. OK?