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Selling Canada to the USA

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Canadians are a pretty easy going people but there are three ways you can hork off any Canadian.

1.     Compare our money to monopoly money

2.     Claim we all live in igloos

3.     Claim Canada will one day be the 51st state.

First, our money does not look like monopoly money. It looks more like large postage stamps. Second, we don't live in igloos. We all live in brick ranch style homes huddled along the American border. Third, Canada will never, ever, ever become the 51st state. It's just not going to happen. Ever. It's not that Canada could resist an American military invasion. Heck, the West Edmonton Mall employs more security guards than Canada has soldiers. It's just that it's ludicrous to claim Canada, the world's second largest country by area, can be folded into the US as one single state. You think Texans are going to support the creation of a single contiguous state larger than itself! Not on your life buddy! Hell, you could divide Canada into the 51st, 52nd, and 53rd states and we'd still be too damn big for Americans used to calling lil dinky landmasses like Delaware a state.

So deal with it. Canada ain't ever going to be your 51st state. Assuming Canada would have to be divided into states smaller than Texas (a state with an area of two hundred and sixty seven thousand square miles), you would divide Canada's six million square miles into twenty three slightly smaller-than-Texas-sized states.

Now if you really want Canada to be part of your more perfect union, there is one way. It's long been suggested that Canada should just up and sell itself to the USA. The suggested figure has always been thirty trillion dollars. In other words, the USA can have Canada lock, stock, and Drumheller, Alberta if it gives each citizen one million dollars.

What would it gain? Well, besides a nation of curiously attractive people, America would get added tax revenues. Canada and all its provinces generate roughly 200 billion dollars a year in taxes. America's thirty trillion dollar investment would reach the break even point one hundred and fifty years later.

There are some psychological problems with laying out all that money. First, the USA has yearly tax revenues of 1.8 trillion dollars. When you're talking trillions, an extra two hundred billion sounds like a rounding error. But really, Canada is a great bargain compared to the other G7 powers. I mean what would it cost to buy the UK and acquire all those Crown Jewels and Paul McCartney song rights? What would it cost to buy France, assuming you'd want France, and cough up money for all the paintings in the Louvre? As you can see, Canada is a simple nation with simple needs. Just give us each a huge stinking pile of American dollars.  We'll even throw in our collection of Emily Carr paintings and the rights to Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic" for free.

There are other ways to make that one time thirty trillion dollar charge look like a sound investment. For example, Canada has a work force of sixteen million people. It would cost you one hundred and sixty million dollars to head hunt a workforce that size. Besides people, America is getting a heck of a lot of land. America is getting six million square miles, a lot of it is undeveloped beach front property too. That's five million dollars a square mile or about a thousand bucks a square foot. My apartment is six hundred square feet and I pay eight hundred and fifty dollars a month in rent. That works out to about a dollar forty a square foot per month. Amortized over that one hundred and fifty year period, I'd shell out two thousand five hundred dollars per square foot. America is getting Canada for a thousand dollars a square foot. That's like a two hundred and fifty percent savings!

Can America afford NOT to buy Canada? The numbers don't lie.

 

 

 

 

 

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Copyright 2002 Karl Mamer

Free for online distribution as long as

"Copyright 2002 Karl Mamer (kamamer@yahoo.com)"

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