Business is driven by cash flow and profit. How does a Zombie pay? People well above my pay grade have already figured that out. Once politicians realized that Zombies were the key to fixing the economy, the big brains got to work. WTF, yes Zombies are the key that got our economy back on track. I am no economic genius like the guys that figured this out, but I do have a pretty good general understanding. It went something like this:
Taxes: the problem the government has with taxing people is that they die and can no longer pay taxes. What if people could pay taxes forever or at least for a long time after they are dead? Yes, taxing the undead was one of the first ideas the politicians started to throw out. All the voters loved the idea too, “no new taxes” turned into “no new taxes for the living.” They could tax the crap out of the Zombies without anyone complaining. More money for the government and it did not have to come out of the voter’s pockets. Everyone was happy, that had a choice in the matter.
Social Security: Zombies did not get SS checks because they were dead, but they were still paying into the system. It was the perfect addition needed to keep the pyramid scheme of social security going. Instead of the current work force paying the retired work force’s checks, we also had the undead pitching in. AARP tried to start a protest, but nothing came of it. The head of AARP became a Zombie soon after and forgot all about the issue. The other board members thought it was an improvement over the living CEO and left him in charge. So the protest was soon forgotten about.
Pay check: How to you tax a creature that cannot fill out Tax forms, go to the bank, etc? Most of the economic functions could be taken care of in paperless ways, at the time, anyway. It was just a matter of putting it all together. Now that we had the motivation and could fix the economy, we did it. Direct Deposit was mandatory for Zombies. This was not the case at first and was pretty awesome to the small business owner that had Zombie labor. You cut them a check and they never even tried to cash it. Awesome! But they could not pay for anything either, bummer ;-(. With Direct Deposit the feds put in place automatic tax withdrawal at a fixed rate. Yes they finally had a flat tax! On the undead of course, because the living would never tolerate everyone paying a fair and equal share, not sure why. Sometimes the undead are a lot more logical than the living. They are at least a lot easier to figure out.
Paying bills: This one was awesome. I never heard so many religious and political leaders argue and then just stop. It was as if they all came to the same conclusion at the same time and could not figure out how to complain anymore. It started out simply enough. A smart ass comment by a talk show host on the issue. She said, “Why don’t you just tag them all like the vet does to my dogs?” Then the even more smart assed guest said, “Yeh, put the tag under the skin on the back of their right hand, left if they have chewed off the right.” The next day it was in the news and all the technical people saying how easy it would be and all the credit card companies and banks talking about linking the IDs up to smart chips and making secure personal transactions and dual factor authentication and a bunch of really cool sounding security stuff.
There was a big uproar over the tagging system by the GOP and the religious groups, blaming the Democrats of bringing on the end of days. They were saying that the tags were related to REV13:18 and the mark of the beast. The Kabbalistic Jews believed the number 666 was the mark of the creation and perfection of the world and didn’t have a problem with it. The undead walking the earth kind of fit. After a while the other religions started saying it was appropriate to put the mark of the beast on the undead. That made the GOP support it. Now the Democrats had no choice but to disagree with the GOP but it had been too long and they ended up keeping their mouth shut. This might have been the first time that everyone seemed to agree on something in Washington, DC. It was really weird.
We were one of the first places to accept the new tagging system. I thought it was going to be a pain, but it was pretty easy. When the Zombie would come in they would pass through an RFID reader. They didn’t even know or have to stop. They just followed the smell of wonderfully prepared pig-human meat. “Juicy and falling off the bone”, that is the name of our main dish. Every time they were fed we slapped our tag on their back. It would fall off after a day or so, but it only needed to stick until they left. We entered their tag information and the meal into our computer, and then when they left, we scanned their RFID tag again along with our tag and the computer automatically submitted an invoice to their bank. All the information we needed on them was in their tag. To be safe we included a date/time stamped picture of them entering and leaving the restaurant along with the invoice, so the bank would not question the charge. Apparently there are some pretty nasty people trying to bill Zombies for services that are not being provided. I can’t imagine people scamming the undead, but there sure are some horrible people running around these days.
