This XKCD. – RecklessPrudence
Fifteen-year-olds can solve the world’s problems, at least on a hypothetical basis. Case in point, Trudy Mackinaw.
“You know that if they taxed money transfers at a basis of point zero one percent, they’d have enough money to destroy poverty.”
But the rest of the world in general and her parents in particular didn’t listen. Because she was a fifteen-year-old girl. They wouldn’t have listened if she was a fifteen-year-old boy, either, but that’s part of the unfairness of ageism.
But Trudy had a solution for everything.
Racism and sexism in hiring: “They should just quit wanting to see people they’re hiring. I mean, they don’t really care after they’re hired. Just have job interviews with voice modulators and give the applicants random numbers during that part. I bet everyone’d be shocked at the results.”
Racism in funding: “The best-performing schools don’t need funding. They’ve got it upside-down. The ones that do the worst should get the funding. You know, so they can afford to get better.”
The poverty trap: “You know, if they really didn’t want people to be living on food stamps, they should pay them more. A living wage means people can buy more stuff. Don’t they want a good economy?”
On abortions: “If they don’t want abortions, they aughta support birth control. That’s what it’s for. Birth. Control. And if they don’t like that either, they gotta run a foster home and be an organ donor or they have to shut up.”
On LGBTIAQ: “Everyone should have the right to do whatever the hell they want with their own body and their own identity and nobody should have the right to say a damn thing about it.”
On war: “You know, they should take all those people on separate tours through the land they’re fighting over? If they saw it was a nuked-out desert, nobody’d fight over it any more.”
On relationship drama: “All the people who read The Rules and all the people who read The Game should just pair up and leave everyone else alone.”
On the wage gap: “If everyone got paid based on how much hard work they do? The politicians and banisters would be living on food stamps and the cleaners and teachers would be driving porches.”
And even on overpopulation: “We really should colonise some other planet. Overpopulation’s a big problem and I bet loads of people would love to make a planet in their own image.”
All problems can be solved in fifteen years. Just wait for a fifteen-year-old to have an opinion. Some of it might just be workable.
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