xMighty financial institutions like the European Central Bank, Federal Reserve and other authorities in some of the biggest industrial economies are facing increasing pressure from economic circles to not stretch anymore the already overstretched limits of monetary policy incentives for the economy in the absence of desired results.
In the eurozone, the European Central Bank’s stimulus of more than one trillion euros in loans to banks appears the limit of the support the recession wary economy can expect. The steady evaporation of public welfare systems in regions like EU makes matters no better for the unemployed.I think what we need now is something more than the usual grand governmental plans, techno economic circumlocution by the stuffed neck pedant economists. We, the people, need to help the other people for our collective good. We need ideas that without actually burdening anyone of us could help many of us by our own efforts.
An SMS of small value can do big wonders for us. The idea is simple we should have a fund for people run by people in our respective countries. In countries with less corruption and more efficient government systems such a fund can be run at government’s level while in the corruption stricken geographies it can be established and run by good reputation NGOs.
There should be a universal calling number for the fund to which every mobile subscriber could donate via SMS. We may start with US still the largest and the most influential of economies in the world and an aspiration for others to emulate. Any US mobile phone subscriber should have the facility to send an SMS to the fund for which the relevant mobile phone company would deduct a dollar along with the usual SMS charges from subscriber’s balance and transfer the one dollar to the fund.
One SMS would have a minimum value of one dollar and people could send as many as they wish. US has around 327 million active mobile phones that’s actually around 103 per cent of the population. Now imagine if only one third of the subscribers send an SMS a day worth the minimum of one dollar it could be around 100 million dollars collected in the fund in just one day, on this average it could be 36.5 billion dollars a year from which easy loans of 10 year tenure with zero interest rate could be given to people at 100,000 dollars per individual to start their own businesses, this way 365,000 new businesses could be started within a year.
In the absence of accurate figures, the unemployment rate in Pakistan is estimated between six to eight per cent with around 3.5 million unemployed. There are around 114 million active mobile phones in the country, which is around 66 per cent of the population. If just 10 million of the subscribers could send a Rs10 SMS to the fund that could be 100 million a day and 36.5 billion rupees a year, if a 100,000 rupee loan is given per unemployed person for establishing his/her own business this could be the start of 365,000 businesses a year.
We need international organisations of good repute and governments of developed countries to implement this idea with the people for the people. From Turkey to Thailand, Brazil to China, smallest to the biggest country, this idea could be worthwhile almost everywhere, after all a dollar or a pound, ten dirhams or ten rupees actually mean nothing for a lot of us but could become a lot for a lot of us. Imagine if only a billion of around the five billion active mobile phones in the world send on a daily average a dollar SMS to such funds around the world that could be around 365 billion dollars a year for people by the people without burdening any of us. Anyone interested? – Khaleejnews
