The stimulus checks are arriving just in time to pay for gas that has gone up over 50 cents a gallon since the bill giving the money away was passed.
Since this stimulus is a one-time deal, I'm reminded of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." (Actually, if you teach him to fish, you end up with a bunch of guys out in the Gulf Stream drinking beer, but that's another story.) This won't do anything for the economy other than create a one-time blip, and chances are most of the people will use it to pay down their credit cards, which means that the money will go right back where it came from: the banks that are shoring up the massive debt of the government. All they're doing is tossing people a fish when what they should be doing is fixing the system so that a teacher making $45,000 doesn't pay more in taxes per dollar earned than Bill Gates.
It also strikes me as ironic that the Republicans, who always criticize the Democrats for throwing money at a problem, are the ones who came up with this scheme to hand out "free money" to everyone. Do I suspect that there's some political motivation behind this blatant attempt to cover up their complete clusterfucking of the economy for the last seven years? Why no, not at all. Oh, look at the kitty!
(Cross-posted.)
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