“THE MADE IN THE USA SWEEPSTAKES!"
Instead of giving away all this money to bankers and automobile barons, how about an innovative idea that would generate a whole lot of new jobs, tax-free income for the federal government and a real boost to the sale of American-made products. This is an original idea; we want to share with the American people.
The federal government issues scratch-off, lottery tickets. These tickets would be sold wherever state lottery tickets are presently sold. They would cost a dollar a piece, After you scratch-off the gummy stuff, it might reveal a $5.00 coupon good towards the purchase of an American-made product. At our present 9.9% unemployment rate, eight out of nine (8 in 9) tickets would be coupon tickets, because 1 out of 9 Americans are unemployed. The consumer could use this coupon to purchase any product that’s marked Made-In-The-USA, or any legal service performed by an American. This could mean going out to dinner, taking your clothes to the dry cleaners, getting a haircut, even buying groceries such as eggs, milk, a roast, a jar of peanut butter or something from the grocer’s bakery.
You could even get your oil changed because though the oil itself might be foreign, the labor would be American. We would have to arrive at a fair ratio between foreign materials and American labor and materials, perhaps no more than 25% foreign components. The label "MADE IN THE USA" would become coveted once again! And all of this spending would go directly back into our own economy, not a foreign economy. We would be promoting the sale of American-made products without using tariffs or anything other than the preference of the consumer. You know yourself, that if you had a $5.00 coupon balanced against a cheaper foreign product, the American product would win every time! The edge that foreign products have is that they’re cheaper. “The Made In The USA Sweepstakes”, would level the playing field.
This lottery would be more of a way of distributing these coupons, than a money-maker for the government. Americans would say to themselves, “Wow, I won this! I’m spending it on something I need and that’s made right here in The United States of America!” This would give an immediate shot in the arm to our economy, an actual “stimulus package” based upon our system of free enterprise and consumer choice. When we got the Bush tax rebate, it was money, most of us just used that money the way we use our income-tax refund, we paid our property taxes or homeowner’s insurance with it. “The Made In The USA Sweepstakes” would stimulate consumer spending.
You know that when you use a coupon while shopping, you spend more of your own money than the face-value of the coupon, and the merchant wouldn’t necessarily have to honor the coupon for $5.00. He or she could honor it for any amount $5 and above, discounting a big ticket item such as a car or a kitchen remodeling would be a marketing strategy. Car dealers would offer, $5,000 discounts on a new car when you bring in your $5.00 coupon or $500 off a living room set. Or we could make provision for consumers to use multiple coupons to buy items priced over $100 such as furniture or carpeting. Businessmen could use them for purchasing tools or raw materials such as siding or brick. Consumers might be able to save them up for a major purchase, such as a boat or a vacation. Airlines could take them toward the purchase of an airplane ticket. We could also donate our winning tickets to our churches and synagogues, our children’s schools, police and fire departments, where these coupons would be used to purchase American-made computers, books, playground equipment or anything that has a community-development purpose. People, who used them in this way, would earn a tax write-off when itemizing their deductions. School superintendents could start coupon drives rather than candy drives or bake sales, and 501C3s could use all the coupons that are donated to them to make their purchases.
Depending upon, how much unemployment America is experiencing, the percentage of winning tickets could be adjusted accordingly. At the beginning, one in nine (1 in 9) tickets would carry the statement, “Thank You for Contributing to the Retirement of the National Debt”, and then there would be a sweepstakes number for a weekly drawing. This could become a TV show like, “Let’s Make A Deal” where the manufacturers would actually donate the prizes just to get the national advertising. As our economy improves and unemployment declines more sweepstakes tickets would replace coupon tickets and more money would go toward retiring the national debt. Sweepstakes prizes could be anything: a vacation, jewelry, appliances, a free-and-clear house, or an American-made car. This would decrease the debt, if Congress would just stop spending! Perhaps we could facilitate this with a balanced budget amendment?
Right now, $5.00 would merely compensate the consumer for the time and trouble it takes to seek out and comparison shop an American-made product against an imported one. For example, we recently comparison shopped an American-made appointment planner and a planner made in China. The Chinese planner cost $8.59. It was smaller, used lower quality materials and had a plastic cover. In contrast the American-made planner cost: $17.23, was larger, bound in leather, had better-grade paper and even had gold around the edges of the paper. We also comparison shopped a combination lock. The American lock was $3.74; the Chinese lock was $2.66. Have you shopped for a hair brush lately? We couldn’t find one that was made in the USA. We have to take back our manufacturing base people, or we won’t have a base. If we’re going to save our economy, we have to start making things again! With this $5.00 coupon the American-made products would become competitive with foreign-made products! If you have ever used a coupon while purchasing a product in the store, you know that you spend more of your own money than the face-value of the coupon. We could say that the consumer would need to make a $25.00 purchase in order to redeem the coupon.
Once this got going merchants would make an American-made goods aisle for easier shopping. The quick-mart that sold the lottery ticket initially would start an American-made junk food aisle, so as to recapture the coupon before the customer even left the store. Businesses would turn in these coupons deducting their value from quarterly business income taxes. Didn’t we want to give small business and manufacturing a tax break anyway? Well here it is! And this wouldn’t be a flash-in-the-pan program like “Cash for Clunkers”. It would be a continuous program that would pay off our national debt and end unemployment.” This program could be tested here in Illinois while using our state’s lottery infrastructure to act as a bureaucracy for the federal lottery, then if it works we could go national. Illinois should expect a federal grant to get the project started, and we could let Illinois businesses send in their redeemed tickets with their quarterly state income taxes.
Some people said that this would spark a trade-war with China, or some other foreign country. We say bring it on! Let them print a coupon of their own in the New York Times, or the Washington Post. President Obama has already seen and rejected our plan for this very reason. Mariann and I took this plan to Pat Quinn’s office when he was still lieutenant governor. He liked it! So after he became governor, he took our idea to Washington. FIRST THING, and showed it to President Obama. Obama rejected it, saying it would “stir up trouble abroad”. Very few politicians have ever liked this idea, but we’ve e-mailed it to hundreds of Chamber of Commerce members and economists and they have all said it would work. We need to think outside the box here people, or we are headed for a depression worse than the one in the 1930’s. The New Deal never helped end The Depression, the increase in manufacturing brought about by World War Two did that. Currently, one in fourteen (1 in 14) American jobs is based on manufacturing, and one in fourteen American jobs is based in government. President Obama wants to increase jobs by adding even more government jobs! The "Made in The USA Sweepstakes" would increase private-sector jobs, specifically small business and manufacturing jobs.
Please help us promote this innovative idea by discussing it with your friends, coworker and family. Also, you could forward this idea to anyone you wish, we haven’t patented it, we don’t care about making money off of it, we just want to help our country. Tell it especially to people who have something to do with government, education, business, or manufacturing. Thank you. We would appreciate your feedback about this idea. Please e-mail your response to [email protected].
Yours very truly,
Mike and Mariann Evans
Instead of giving away all this money to bankers and automobile barons, how about an innovative idea that would generate a whole lot of new jobs, tax-free income for the federal government and a real boost to the sale of American-made products. This is an original idea; we want to share with the American people.
The federal government issues scratch-off, lottery tickets. These tickets would be sold wherever state lottery tickets are presently sold. They would cost a dollar a piece, After you scratch-off the gummy stuff, it might reveal a $5.00 coupon good towards the purchase of an American-made product. At our present 9.9% unemployment rate, eight out of nine (8 in 9) tickets would be coupon tickets, because 1 out of 9 Americans are unemployed. The consumer could use this coupon to purchase any product that’s marked Made-In-The-USA, or any legal service performed by an American. This could mean going out to dinner, taking your clothes to the dry cleaners, getting a haircut, even buying groceries such as eggs, milk, a roast, a jar of peanut butter or something from the grocer’s bakery.
You could even get your oil changed because though the oil itself might be foreign, the labor would be American. We would have to arrive at a fair ratio between foreign materials and American labor and materials, perhaps no more than 25% foreign components. The label "MADE IN THE USA" would become coveted once again! And all of this spending would go directly back into our own economy, not a foreign economy. We would be promoting the sale of American-made products without using tariffs or anything other than the preference of the consumer. You know yourself, that if you had a $5.00 coupon balanced against a cheaper foreign product, the American product would win every time! The edge that foreign products have is that they’re cheaper. “The Made In The USA Sweepstakes”, would level the playing field.
This lottery would be more of a way of distributing these coupons, than a money-maker for the government. Americans would say to themselves, “Wow, I won this! I’m spending it on something I need and that’s made right here in The United States of America!” This would give an immediate shot in the arm to our economy, an actual “stimulus package” based upon our system of free enterprise and consumer choice. When we got the Bush tax rebate, it was money, most of us just used that money the way we use our income-tax refund, we paid our property taxes or homeowner’s insurance with it. “The Made In The USA Sweepstakes” would stimulate consumer spending.
You know that when you use a coupon while shopping, you spend more of your own money than the face-value of the coupon, and the merchant wouldn’t necessarily have to honor the coupon for $5.00. He or she could honor it for any amount $5 and above, discounting a big ticket item such as a car or a kitchen remodeling would be a marketing strategy. Car dealers would offer, $5,000 discounts on a new car when you bring in your $5.00 coupon or $500 off a living room set. Or we could make provision for consumers to use multiple coupons to buy items priced over $100 such as furniture or carpeting. Businessmen could use them for purchasing tools or raw materials such as siding or brick. Consumers might be able to save them up for a major purchase, such as a boat or a vacation. Airlines could take them toward the purchase of an airplane ticket. We could also donate our winning tickets to our churches and synagogues, our children’s schools, police and fire departments, where these coupons would be used to purchase American-made computers, books, playground equipment or anything that has a community-development purpose. People, who used them in this way, would earn a tax write-off when itemizing their deductions. School superintendents could start coupon drives rather than candy drives or bake sales, and 501C3s could use all the coupons that are donated to them to make their purchases.
Depending upon, how much unemployment America is experiencing, the percentage of winning tickets could be adjusted accordingly. At the beginning, one in nine (1 in 9) tickets would carry the statement, “Thank You for Contributing to the Retirement of the National Debt”, and then there would be a sweepstakes number for a weekly drawing. This could become a TV show like, “Let’s Make A Deal” where the manufacturers would actually donate the prizes just to get the national advertising. As our economy improves and unemployment declines more sweepstakes tickets would replace coupon tickets and more money would go toward retiring the national debt. Sweepstakes prizes could be anything: a vacation, jewelry, appliances, a free-and-clear house, or an American-made car. This would decrease the debt, if Congress would just stop spending! Perhaps we could facilitate this with a balanced budget amendment?
Right now, $5.00 would merely compensate the consumer for the time and trouble it takes to seek out and comparison shop an American-made product against an imported one. For example, we recently comparison shopped an American-made appointment planner and a planner made in China. The Chinese planner cost $8.59. It was smaller, used lower quality materials and had a plastic cover. In contrast the American-made planner cost: $17.23, was larger, bound in leather, had better-grade paper and even had gold around the edges of the paper. We also comparison shopped a combination lock. The American lock was $3.74; the Chinese lock was $2.66. Have you shopped for a hair brush lately? We couldn’t find one that was made in the USA. We have to take back our manufacturing base people, or we won’t have a base. If we’re going to save our economy, we have to start making things again! With this $5.00 coupon the American-made products would become competitive with foreign-made products! If you have ever used a coupon while purchasing a product in the store, you know that you spend more of your own money than the face-value of the coupon. We could say that the consumer would need to make a $25.00 purchase in order to redeem the coupon.
Once this got going merchants would make an American-made goods aisle for easier shopping. The quick-mart that sold the lottery ticket initially would start an American-made junk food aisle, so as to recapture the coupon before the customer even left the store. Businesses would turn in these coupons deducting their value from quarterly business income taxes. Didn’t we want to give small business and manufacturing a tax break anyway? Well here it is! And this wouldn’t be a flash-in-the-pan program like “Cash for Clunkers”. It would be a continuous program that would pay off our national debt and end unemployment.” This program could be tested here in Illinois while using our state’s lottery infrastructure to act as a bureaucracy for the federal lottery, then if it works we could go national. Illinois should expect a federal grant to get the project started, and we could let Illinois businesses send in their redeemed tickets with their quarterly state income taxes.
Some people said that this would spark a trade-war with China, or some other foreign country. We say bring it on! Let them print a coupon of their own in the New York Times, or the Washington Post. President Obama has already seen and rejected our plan for this very reason. Mariann and I took this plan to Pat Quinn’s office when he was still lieutenant governor. He liked it! So after he became governor, he took our idea to Washington. FIRST THING, and showed it to President Obama. Obama rejected it, saying it would “stir up trouble abroad”. Very few politicians have ever liked this idea, but we’ve e-mailed it to hundreds of Chamber of Commerce members and economists and they have all said it would work. We need to think outside the box here people, or we are headed for a depression worse than the one in the 1930’s. The New Deal never helped end The Depression, the increase in manufacturing brought about by World War Two did that. Currently, one in fourteen (1 in 14) American jobs is based on manufacturing, and one in fourteen American jobs is based in government. President Obama wants to increase jobs by adding even more government jobs! The "Made in The USA Sweepstakes" would increase private-sector jobs, specifically small business and manufacturing jobs.
Please help us promote this innovative idea by discussing it with your friends, coworker and family. Also, you could forward this idea to anyone you wish, we haven’t patented it, we don’t care about making money off of it, we just want to help our country. Tell it especially to people who have something to do with government, education, business, or manufacturing. Thank you. We would appreciate your feedback about this idea. Please e-mail your response to [email protected].
Yours very truly,
Mike and Mariann Evans