And a child shall lead them (if Kids ran Congress)

[Originally posted right here, in the comments, here and here.]

[Lonespark added, after saying that the post election situation was an opportunity for some Republicans to reach across party lines and "become hugely popular nationally simply for being willing to get some shit done like fucking adults",:

Which is not to disparage children. If my six-year -old were in Congress, you can bet there would be some projects underway. And I'm sure the same goes for Romney's grandkids. Kids love to build things and fix things and set off on the adventure that is the future. We could take some pointers from them.

Which led to me writing this:]


Indeed. Kids with intelligent advisers running congress could, at the very least, fix our jobs problem.

Child: Let's build three story playgrounds everywhere.
Adviser: Define everywhere.
Child: Three in every town.
Adviser: Do you have any idea how much manpower-
Child: Girl power.
Adviser: Person power *beat* that would take? We'd need designers, construction workers, we'd need to manufacture the parts, we'd safety inspectors, we'd need testing.
Child: So?
Adviser: So we'd have to pay all of those people.
Child: Then pay them.
Adviser: And there aren't enough people with appropriate training.
Child: Then train them.
Adviser: And that costs money too.
Child: Then raise the money.
Adviser: But to do that we'd need to raise taxes.
Child: Then raise them.
Adviser: But that would hurt people who aren't rich.
Child: Then only raise them for rich people.
Adviser: But the current tax brackets include not quite rich people and rich people in the same group so we can't.
Child: Then have more brackets. Have like... *tries to think of a big number* a hundred.
Adviser: But that might make it more complicated for people to do their taxes.
Child: Then help people do their taxes.
Adviser: But to do that we'd have to hire even more people.
Child: Then hire them!
Adviser: Ok.

Jobs problem solved. Tax problem solved. The IRS is suddenly the people who find deductions for you so they become the good guys in many people's eyes because they can say, "Now in theory you'd have to pay X (big number) but I found you all these deductions so now you only have to pay Y (much smaller number)."

And all it cost us was some unnecessary playgrounds.

Or, for a different issue:

Adviser: The roads, bridges and dams are broken and/or damaged.
Child: Then fix them.
Adviser: Will do.

Infrastructure problems solved, probably a big chunk of the jobs problem as well for at least a while, which should kickstart the economy so there will be more job openings when there's no more infrastructure left to fix.


[And this:]


And I left out an earlier thought:

Child: I wanna go to Mars.
Adviser: To do that we'd need to increase funding to NASA and probably invent some new technologies.
Child: Then do it.

Think of how much stuff is based on technology created for the moon program. Then again, getting to Mars might not create as much new technology, pretty sure we already have the tech to get there, just not the funding or the will.

So how about this:

Adviser: Diabetes is costing us a lot of money and hurting a lot of people.
Child: Then cure it.
Adviser: That would require us to fund medical research across the country probably for years on end and make it a national priority on the level of the space program of the 1960s.
Child: So?
Adviser: So... um... I'm on it.

-

But we should still increase funding to NASA.