Monday, February 11, 2008

Stimulus Update

I heard on the news this morning that the URGENT ECONOMICS STIMULUS CHECKS will be arriving in.... August. They even speculated that the money is likely to be spent "quickly" because people will be doing their back-to-school-shopping around that time.

This is nothing - absolutely nothing - more than the government giving away money to placate an unhappy electorate a few short months before a national election. Think about it - at that point, the checks will be 6 months removed from the current conditions, but only 3 months removed from the election.

Aren't you glad that the $160ish billion in pure deficit spending is going to such a worthy cause? Every person in the country - regardless of political affiliation, as this was a bipartisan fleecing - should be outraged by this.

To put that $160 billion into perspective, consider: The additional debt for that $160 billion will cost the country roughly $7.3 million in additional interest each year until essentially the end of time. What could the country do with $7.3 million annually over the lifetime of that debt? It may be a grain of sand in a sea of budgets, but it's a grain of sand matched by another gran from the non-boondogle deficit the budget already had, another grain from postponing the AMT adjustment, another grain (or twenty) from the war in Iraq, another grain from...

$7.3 million is enough that my annual salary is dwarfed by the $0.3 at the end ($300,000).

2 comments:

Steve and Katrina said...

I am just hoping it gets here in time for me to use it towards a down payment. I totally agree though, this is the problem with politicians. Who thinks it will really stimulate the economy? I guess if every American spent it on goods that were made by other Americans and so on and so on it made have an impact.

A sad part is, how many Americans who are in debt and should use the money to pay down their debt will actually use it to buy something they don't need? They will see it as free money, go out and buy that new TV (it will be just in time for College Football season) when they could pay down a car, home, credit card, etc..

Ken, Alicia, Abby, and Ethan Lund said...

I wonder how many people have spent their rebate checks already, by charging up what they anticipate their rebate amount to be?

We saw first-hand over the weekend why America is in a credit crises; when we applied for an auto loan, the bank prequalified us for an amount not much less than my annual salary.