The great enduring quality of Americans is that we bounce back from adversity. You may be able to economically sucker punch us, but we’ll get back up and do what has to be done. We’re a consumer economy and it’s time to get the ball rolling. We have a solution to what some are calling a stifling economy. Although the stock market is high, not everyone is invested and here’s how to fix it.
It’s the ‘Great American Bake Sale’. You’re asking me “Buzz, how does it work?”
It’s quite easy. Since we’re a consumer driven economy all we need to do is get out there and consume. We’ll have a national bake sale so if everyone baked a cake and sold it to everyone else, a lot of money would flow through the economy. It may not work if we only bake one cake, so let’s bake a cake a week!
Every person should go to his or her neighborhood grocery store. That’s right, a real grass roots program. It starts in your very own neighborhood. You may have all the ingredients in your kitchen to produce a cake but we’re on a mission here. Go out and buy all the ingredients. Make it a family project. Turn off the TV, turn on the oven!
When you buy milk, eggs and butter it helps the farmers in America’s dairy land. When you buy the flour, you’re providing work for the millers.
If one person buys a dozen eggs that’s just a drop in the bucket, but if everyone in your town bought them, well, we’ve just created a demand, haven’t we? Farmers will have a new income and just maybe be able to get out of debt and buy that vehicle they’ve wanted. Now you’re helping Detroit.
Pretend you don’t have a cake pan. Go out and buy one. Buy one made of steel. Now we’ve created a demand that will help keep the steel furnaces around Pittsburgh in business. Where do they get the steel? They produce it from the output of mines all over America. Now we’re helping the mine workers.
Here’s another angle. Make a fruit filled cake. Buy apples and blueberries from Washington, grapes from California, Peaches from Georgia, Cranberries from Maine and don’t forget the grapefruit, lemons, limes and oranges for the other desserts, right here in the sunshine state. Let’s put ‘em all to work!
Back when I was a kid, we had pen pals. Why not cake pals? Because you’ve got a cake. What do you do with it? Send that cake cross country overnight to your cake pal! That will help to bring us all closer together and it creates work for the shipping industry. Of course, the fruitcakes can go by truck. It doesn’t matter how long that takes. It’ll taste the same in 3 days or 3 weeks or even 3 months. That’s right, the Post Office!
Ship your cake Fedex or UPS or the newly formed Fedup! If you’re on a computer put your cake up for sale on the internet. Instead of Ebay, it’ll be Ebake!
It won’t stop there; someone will get the bright idea to ship something in a Jello mold. You can put anything in there. I’ve seen meatloaf in a Jello mold. Not the singer, the dish. Put the money you make to work for you. Send some to a family in need and buy more ingredients!
In a show of solidarity, Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and the Pillsbury Doughboy have gotten together and they’re behind the plan. They’re calling it ‘Rise Up America’ It’s not just the yeast, they mean it! And before too long, we’ll all be rolling in the dough!
With every family cooking, we’ll all be ‘baking a difference’.