She was speaking, of course, about the so-called stimulus checks. The way she said it, it sounded like George Bush was Dad holding out some cash with the moral authority to advise you how it might and might not be spent. With fingers that don't actually let go of the money until the advice has been offered and he decides it's more or less been received.
My response was to ask why I would take financial advice from an obvious moron with the moral fiber of a playground heroin pusher. This pretty much ended the discussion, as the other party to this conversation apparently wouldn't vote to send Bush and his ilk (which would include, by the way, Al Gore and John Kerry, as well as the three 'frontrunners' we're supposedly choosing among as next Alpha Criminal) to a gulag.
Anyway, the whole stimulus check thing is such transparent bullshit. I guess, if you think George Bush is a father figure in all this, I'm pretty typical of a son who knows when someone's trying to buy him off, and on the cheap at that.
The IRS even sent me a piece of propaganda about how to calculate the great windfall that is coming my way. I didn't understand it, honestly, even after I read it a couple times to make sure I didn't have to send something in to get whatever they're going to 'give' me.
When the check comes, I'll know what I get, and I promise you this: it will be less than what I pad in federal income taxes last year.
Federal income taxes are maybe the only thing I resent more than child support payments. Not, mind you, that I wouldn't support my children, I just resent sending a check to the state to send to my ex to do what I'd rather do directly. Still, at least when my ex buys something like a prescription refill or a new coat for one of my daughters, I at least can see where that money does someone any good at all. My federal income taxes? They benefit only the social engineers among our nation's political criminals.
There has never been a brick laid or a kidnapper arrested with income tax revenues. The federal government spends money without regard to it's revenue base, so all the income tax is, really, is the the percentage of the GDP that is stolen from about a third of the population, and I'm in that third. Which pisses me off.
And the aforementioned fuckheads know they can count on the two thirds who either pay nothing in taxes or who actually get more in tax credits than they pay in withholdings, to support this despicable system in perpetuity.
But back to stimulating our supposedly ailing economy. First off, the economy is not really sick.
People make mistakes. And money is often the marker used to keep track of these errors. Like when banks loan money willy-nilly because the bundled mortgages (backed by distressed properties occupied by deadbeats) are worth a greasy buck here and there. Or people who can't keep their lights on two months straight who commit to a 30 year obligation on a home they can't afford.
See also yours truly, who keeps a house he can't really afford because, well, I have to live somewhere. And my daughters each have a room here and think of it as home at Dad's house. I'm not in default or anything, but if I'd been out of work more than six weeks when I got canned a little over a year ago, and if I didn't have some very helpful family, I'd have been in foreclosure mere months after a refi.
Which is to say I'm not that different from the next door neighbor and the family three doors down who's houses are presently owned by the bank. I had better timing, better luck, but that's about it.
So this money, maybe $900 for me, is supposed to rescue the whole economy from maybe a million people upside down in $200,000 homes? I doubt it. The last time they tried this, my 401k went down about 40% in six months. And being that I'm an indexer, that's a pretty good indicator that the checks didn't help.
So what would help? How about the other $3,000?
If you really wanted to stimulate our way out of a recession (and this would probably only delay the inevitable, since mistakes were made and need correcting), just announce amnesty for the tax year. If you owed, you don't. What you paid in withholdings is refunded 100%.
If you just didn't collect any income taxes in 2007, the federal budget (which ought to be cut dramatically but that's a different discussion) doesn't have to change, but there'd be something close to a trillion dollars of stimulation put into the economy.
It'd work so well, in fact, the government might be tempted to extend the amnesty year after year. Hmmmmm....
But, being the government is always 'government, ' they'd probably find a way to jack that up, too.
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