When I was going through the Business and Clown College at UNR, one of our required courses was a business writing class. We were presented with two ways of fulfilling this credit requirement; Management 321, or English 321. And though I willingly chose to study and major in Economics, even I thought Management 321 would have been too dry and uninspiring…

Thankfully, on the first day of class, sitting in the building of the English department, complete with the lush, green ivy clinging to the faded red brick walls like spiderwebs, spiriling up the Roman inspired corinthian columns framing the weathered doors, worn too thin around the handles from thousands upon thousands of hands pushing and pulling the wooden gates open to a world of knowledge within…

Also weed. There was definitely the skunk smell of really dank weed…

But anyway, when the teacher walked in, she began class by informing us that she had never taught an Enligsh 321 course, and that until 5 minutes before she walked in, she had no idea that the focus of the class was on business writing. However, on her way out of her office, a colleague let slip the theme of the class, and like a student walking in to class only to find out there is a test they forgot to study for, and after the panic wore off, she embraced her situation and decided to change absolutely nothing. We would continue with her set reading list of Orwell, Woolf, and Baldwin, but when we turned in our final paper, we would just attach a copy of our resume for her to review.

We had to write four major papers; a familiar essay on something personal, a nontechnical report on a new experience, a restaurant review, and finally a proposal essay, in which we could propose anything we wanted. The following is my proposal; drawing on Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” I focused my essay to satire two topics that are dear to my heart; abortion and euthenasia. The result; a satire of shitty statistics that justify radical selfishness.

Giving Something Back

It is undeniable that in society, we are plagued with many burdens. Dwindling resources, financial difficulties, and dealings which literally suck the life out of members of the populous, all amount to such burdens. In the following pages you will find a proposal to give back resources, money, and life to those who are cursed with such turmoil.

Before the solutions to the problem are outlined, the problem itself must be examined and explained. As we are all aware in these times of economic and world crisis, valuable resources such as oil, electricity, and even food and water in some parts of the world, are in scarce supply. Currently these resources are being sold off to the highest bidder, who then sells them back to the mass populous for a substantial fee, resulting in substantial profits. But this is not the problem. The average American household is occupied by two parents and two children. If we take into account that they all drink at least eight-eight-ounce glasses of water and three meals a day, we come up with a household average of 256 ounces of water and twelve meals consumed per day. If we multiply this by the estimated number of American households in 2010 (114,825,428), we see an average of 29,395,309,568 ounces of water and 1,377,905,136 meals consumed on a daily basis.

Next we can examine that the average American makes roughly $46,326 annually, only of which $392 are saved, resulting in $45,934 being spent. If we further compute this in regards to the average household in America, we come to each person costing $11,483.50 per year. In addition, the average American household uses 11,040 kilowatts of electricity per month (multiplied out for a grand total of 1,261,711,125,120 kWh per month) and requires 2.8 gallons of gasoline each day. But what does this all mean, and how do we derive the problem from this? We now understand that the average American individual consumes a copious amount of food and resources and requires a vast amount of funds to survive and fuel this consumption each year. Now most Americans are hard-working, industrious means of production who work and earn their place in society. These people produce more than they consume. We cannot deny, however, that there are many among us who do not work, produce, or provide any benefit to society, and in fact consume more than they produce. They are the problem of dwindling resources and funds, who leech off the productive members of society and suck them dry of food, money, and if they are a dependant of that person, their very life. But how do we solve this problem? If we look at the legality of abortion in America, a woman is free to choose to terminate a pregnancy in order to regain her life and not squander it on her infant. In this instance, we are not taking the life of a child; we are giving a life to the mother. We must adopt this same policy to the burdensome members of our society, and here we reach the solution.

Simply stated; we must round up and kill off all elderly, infirmed, physically and mentally disabled, and non-productive members of our society.

There are currently 36,300,000 people over the age of 65 residing in America. On top of that, there are 7,500,000 living with a mental or physical retardation. With recent unemployment and homeless numbers estimated at 15,000,000 and 3,500,000 respectively, we see that there are an estimated 62,300,000 residents in America that serve no real purpose to advancing society.

The issues of those who are homeless and unemployed are the easiest to justify; they simply don’t produce. In a society driven by material gain and possession of wealth, these two classes fall far behind. Indeed, they don’t work to make a good or provide a service, for one reason or another. Mostly, it’s plain laziness that afflicts them and causes them to drag down the rest of us who work hard and earn our right. While not all of those unemployed are homeless, they are the worse of the two. The homeless at least stay outside and don’t consume much valuable food or resource. The unemployed and able, though, are despicable creatures that live in a house, consume such vast quantities of electricity, gasoline, and eat and drink their fill without providing anything back to our great nation. These two groups are nothing more than a pimple on the face of America. Worse yet, the homeless are so pitiful that many of us able-bodied and well-off spend our precious time working for the homeless. The able cram into homeless shelters and provide them with food and a warm place to sleep. Such an act is not economical or ethical. While it may seem altruistic, these parasitic maggots are robbing us of our time and draining us of life.

But it is not just the homeless and the unemployed. The elderly and the physically and mentally infirmed are also to blame. They are dependent on the kindness of their families, friends, and state-appointed guardians for survival. Both of these groups place heavy tax burdens on the population. We are forced to pay for their medical care, their doctors and hospital visits, their surgeries and medication! So much money is wasted on a foolish endeavor! Why spend money for the sick to get better when the money could be better spent for the able to live above their means? We squander money on their nursing homes. We pay the wages for the nursing staff. We pay for their food and for everything they consume. Their only saving grace is that some still hold jobs and work, but this is not enough to justify the time and money the able-bodied waste on them. They take and take and what they give back is not sufficient.

Some might take offense to this proposal and call me a radical. But their accusations and name-callings are trite and un-founded. They may try to attack the morality of this proposal, saying that taking a life is never justified. But I ask, is it moral to pay for someone else, to provide food and energy for an individual without receiving anything in return? Never. The greater immorality comes from the laziness and vampiric nature of these groups. If any immoralities are perpetrated by the able-bodied, it is that we have wasted too much on the helpless, the sick, and those in need. Others might try to rationalize their actions; that these groups provide some sort of intrinsic value. They may bring their care givers and tax payers happiness, or love. But can you hold love in your hands? Can you pay for gasoline and electricity with happiness? Is it possible to purchase groceries with smiles and laughter? You simply cannot. And without material production or gain, these groups are nothing more than scavengers, feeding off of the able.

As I have shown, these groups consume and consume but do not give anything useful back. We must eliminate them and stop them from their thievery! But what method of extermination is most efficient, for time and cost. The answer is fire. We must burn them alive. To dispose of this trash any other way is too costly. Bullets for a firing line are expensive, poisons takes too long, and any other conceivable mode of death is one, the other, or a combination of both. These scum have robbed us enough of our time and money, let it be no more! We must gather up these groups, corral them in the streets and set fire to them! Fire is free; they do not deserve anything else! And through this fire we will cleanse our great nation! The wind will carry their ashes away, and we will be burdened no more! The landmark court case Roe vs. Wade laid the ground work; let us follow it through. If a mother can terminate her pregnancy, we too should be able to eliminate any bothersome and burdensome individuals in our lives. For in the end, we are not taking the lives of others; we are giving something back to ourselves.