The evils of the metric system have, for too long, infected our currency system. How can a nation built upon archaic and arbitrary measuring systems allow its financial system to be neatly divided by factors of ten? Our rich history has dozens of arbitrary units we could use instead, but we’ve never had a way to bridge the complex English system of measurement with our base-10 currency system.
Until now.
Instead of going back to the gold standard, let us go on the sandwich standard by abolishing the dollar and replacing it with the five dollar foot long. First, this makes our currency actually worth something. Instead of being backed by good faith and credit of the United States (by far the biggest joke in this article), it is backed by dozens of tasty varieties available at your local Subway. Secondly, instead of quarters, nickels and dimes divvying up our currency into logical fractions, we can use our historic length system to provide denominations while teaching children our bass-ackwards measuring system!
Just imagine it, instead of paying two bits for your hair cut, you could use two barleycorns! Your postage stamp would cost you an inch, that dollar menu item costs a palm (and that’s with tax included!). A cubit would get you a CD at wall mart, with obvious discounts for a 9-inch nails album. You could give one fathom gift certificates, buy a hot tub off Craigslist for a chain and pay a mile for tuition.
People living hand to mouth on minimum wage would actually be making a palm and a foot an hour. Our budget deficit would be measured in leagues instead of the daunting trillion dollars we have. Not giving an inch in an argument costs 42 cents. Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes would become prohibitively expensive, as would certain purchasing a certain Jules Verne novel.
Currently, the GDP of the world could produce a sandwich 2,068,939,394 miles long, but I look forward to the day when we acquire enough wealth to measure our GDP in the parsec-longs. Just think of the wicked super bowl party you could throw with a sandwich measured in light-years.
