Yep, my government just sent me a "Thank you for participating in the year 2008" gift. $600 of "hard-earned" money, only it wasn’t really hard-earned since I didn’t have to do any work for it.
There has been quite a flurry of commentary around this governmental move, ranging from "this is just what the economy needs" to "this is the most asinine thing I have ever heard of". Some financial advisers suggest that people put the money in savings and others say that would defeat the whole purpose of the government’s move. What do you think about it?
As for me, I don’t worry too much about the global economic implications, I just agree with a good friend of mine who said, "it’s better than [them] not giving me money."
While I agree it is always nice to get money, the reality is that it was all my money until the goverment mandated that I give them some. Sometime later they mandated that I get some back. I am sure at some point in the future, it will be mandated that I must give them more of my money to make up for all of my money that they gave back….not sure it is all worth the trouble.
Following on from Mark’s comment: how much money did it cost the government to collect all the extra money in the first place? Certainly the costs to distribute the ‘stimulus payment’ would have been considerable as well.
And who came up with the term ‘stimulus payment’? It sounds like some euphemism that johns use when speaking to prostitutes about the cost of their services.
Thanks for the comments Liam and Mark. I do appreciate the wisdom of the cost and hassle analysis; in the grand scheme, this stimulus payment probably makes no sense. But, given that the government will take my money anyway and will probably spend it on other silly initiatives, if not on this one, I guess I’m still happy that one of their silly decisions was to give some money back to me, at least for a little while.
I completely agree about the name.
I did my part and bought a bunch of new clothes with that check, so the economy isn’t suffering because of me. I’m just saying.
To let you know, I have been notified (here in the UK) by the US government that I should have been economically stimulated by 05 September. I am not sure if the cheque has arrived yet (at my US address), but already I feel the excitement of anticipation. Is that the sort of stimulus that the US government was after?
@ Liam
Congratulations. I am not sure the goal was to spread the love far and wide across the globe, but for you, I’m glad! I hope you are as dutiful as Meg was in injecting the cash immediately back into the economy.
By the way, I just wanted to let the world know that I made good use of my stimulus payment. I am helping to fight the credit crunch by depositing the money in the bank. With luck, my little deposit might just give Wall Street enough of a boost to hold on until Congress passes the $700 billion bail out.