Economic Crisis

As most of you well know, the financial crisis/meltdown/doomsday/apocalypse is dominating the news these days.  I can try to get a good idea of what is going on from the TV and Internet but I can’t help but feel like I am not getting the full story and am unable to feel the emotions that my fellow Americans are experiencing.  I honestly feel a bit left out, hung out to dry as they say.  It is kind of like when you’re playing xbox by yourself, and your big brother’s group of friends, are playing Dungeon and Dragons.  You know that you are having a good time playing the latest first person shooter, and you know playing Dungeon and Dragons will be no fun(them being no good at D&D), but just because you are not included in the group, you want to play anyway(-5 from self confidence)

To make myself feel more at home, I tried to draw some comparisons between the US and Nepal economic plans/and health of the economy.  To make some fair and well educated comparisons, I decided to read Nepal’s 2008 Budget speech.   I eventually had to rethink my endeavor when I found there to be no colorful graphs, or even pie charts.  Apparently an investment in Kinkos has been overlooked by the new Minister of Finance.

For now I will make only one comparison between American social economic planning, and Nepal’s.  Perhaps more to follow later.

 If I say it can happen, and I put a big enough number backed by nothing next to what I say, it will all be ok!

Nepal is no different.  The new Maoists that have taken charge of the government released their new budget a few weeks back.  One of the major points the plan features is increasing literacy rates to 100% in two years.  Just to put that into perspective, the current estimated literacy rate in Nepal is 50%, or number 162 out of 177 surveyed countries.  That be some serious Learnin! The budget calls for creating more schools and making them free for all children that want to enroll.  There are two foreseeable problems with this plan.

1.       If you build it, they will….honestly a lot of people won’t care.  Just because you build schools doesn’t mean that all the kids are going to want to go there, especially if they have managed to get a job.

2.       Nepal’s budget is based on assumed tax income and “revenue” from aid from other countries.  Neither of these two methods of accruing cash guarantees the amount of money they are asking for. 

But it sure does sound good!

Then again, who is to say that the Maoists haven’t completely planned this out and that communism might actually work…

Oh, that’s why they don’t invest in Kinkos.

 -TR