Paul Greenberg is writing a book about fish, but you could pay him not to. Noting that in the ’30s, President Roosevelt created a program to keep 6,000 writers working, he adds that the problem today is that too many people want to be writers. So he proposes a program modeled after agriculture subsidies, which would pay people not to write. Andy Borowitz, who he notes had already proposed this in a piece that he (well) wrote, says it would take $400,000 to keep him out of the game.

Of course, putting this kind of money on the table would require the strictest of oversight, and for this we could make use of a structure already in place — i.e., the long-suffering spouses and domestic partners of writers. Under the terms of the bailout, these emotional custodians would be transformed into fiscal custodians and would release funds only when a full cessation of writing activities occurred.

[Image tip: Ex-Boloukos]