I was walking along Southbanks today, and I came to a bit where the floor was laid out like astro-turf, rather than pavement. I turned to my friend and said, "this is awesome - why can't all pavements be replaced with astro-turf?" - he replied with "well, it would be tough to get gum out of it". The conversation progressed:

"Why can't we ban gum then?"

"Because then there would be a black market of people selling gum"

"Couldn't we employ people to specifically track and arrest these gum-selling people?"

"You'd probably need a lot of them"

"THAT'S IT! Lots of people. LOTS of employment! Not to mention the money we'd make through fines etc.! Not to mention, we'd have astro-turf lined pavements all over the country"

Well? Could something as simple as banning chewing gum help solve the economic crisis?

Basics of economics:

Economies are a form of an ecosystem, where elements in the economy must provide inputs into the system the system wants, and take outputs other parts of the system want.  The value of the inputs and outputs must line up.  One can implement government programs that address issues in the system, and increase value by fixing economic environment.  Unless this is done, nothing happens.

Question: What exactly does enforcing a ban on gum do for the economy that would fix anything?

You could also ask why the government doesn't just dig a giant hole and keep filling it with money:

i thought i fixed the economy by leagalising and taxing recreational drugs,won't be long now we have to pay for the increasing OAP's somehow

It would take money from gum-eaters, and give it to the government in the form of fines

To fix the economy I propose a ban on currency and capitalism. They are to be substituted by a government where decisions are based in social momentum acquired through neural interfaces and a complex system of multi-dynamic values for a wide range of commodities protected by quantum encryption instead of physical or digital money. How about that?

People would then switch to mints and other forms of things that are like gum, but wouldn't be technically seen as illegal, so they would be left alone.  This has happened with electric cigarettes.  They don't get taxed, and act as cigarettes.  They also engineered them to be less harmful to health.

Well, that solves my original problem of removing pavement waste, since you can't spit mints onto the ground. Sounds like a win to me (except I guess that takes out any benefit it may have to the economy, but still)

Would this technology be developed in Galt's Gulch, which is powered by a perpetual motion machine?

As for a ban on currency and capitalism, do you have an answer for managing the delay in the exchange in goods and services, and also ways to address issues with common areas being overrun by bad behavior?  You also don't have a mechanism for giving people an idea on what to produce.

the real answer is that without gum a lot of people would go back to smoking, and astro-turf is much more susceptible to cigarette burns than pavement. You see,  we have experts for a reason

We need to move into some sort of post-money epoch. The absurdity of currency is revealed by the advocacy for the Gold Standard, given that gold's value is purely arbitrary.