The Unstimulated

Everybody get ready, we're all about to be economically stimulated!

The Dems and Reps finally agreed on an economic stimulus package. Barring a Bush signing statement that says something like, "Thanks loads; I'll give all the money out to my rich friends," this means most of us will get lump sums of money to stimulate the economy.

Being poor, I was interested, I would even say stimulated, by this news. I wanted to know what the actual law said so I could see if I was going to get some, and how much. This meant going to the federal government website and guessing the magic combination that would unlock the bill's text. I won't bother you with the details of that quest, it's enough to say, "many Bothans died to bring us this information." What I learned after reading the text of the law (HR 1540.ENR) plus supporting law (the Social Security Act, and relevant IRS code) is that if the chicken's innards fall eastward when the moon is high in the west, then I will in fact get a check for $300 by the end of the bureaucratic summer. This is because when I put my income sources together my total income exceeds the lower cutoff of $3000.

Oh, I might have to file an income tax form this year (I don't, usually, because I don't ever come close to owing taxes) but that's OK, because I never owe taxes, because I'm too poor.

But then I thought, "Whoa, what if I was so poor that my income for all of 2007 was less than $3000?" In that case Congress has seen to it that I wouldn't get a dime. It's times like this I wish Congress got a signing statement of its own. They could use it to tell us What They Were Thinking. Since there is no such thing, it falls to me to tell you What They Might Have Been Thinking, if they indeed were. Several possibilities occur.

1. If we're going to stimulate the economy, we need to give money to people who know how to spend it. Would someone who makes less than $3000 a year know how to spend money? Obviously not! Not enough experience!

2. Triage. There's no point in trying to stimulate a sector of the economy that's going to die no matter what we're willing to do to revive it.

3. They'd only spend the money on food and rent. No money would go to the major corporations that have done massive out-sourcing. When we talk about "the American economy," what else did you think we meant? Did you think we meant Willamette Valley cranberry farmers? Get real.

4. You stimulate the economy you have, not the economy you wish you had.

5. You know what happens when a poor person wins $30,000,000 in the lottery? How they end up as poor as ever within a year, and worse off than ever, because they're all Jerry Springer fodder? It would be like that if we gave them $300. Only 1/100,000ths as much.

6. This is a great land of opportunity, so if anybody is that poor they must be lazy. They're SO lazy that if we give them $300 they won't get off their butts to spend it, and it won't stimulate any economy.

7. This is a great land of opportunity, so if anybody is that poor they must be criminally stupid. They're SO stupid that if we gave them checks for $300 they would eat them, and that wouldn't stimulate the economy.

8. Less for the poor means more for the rest of us, and our children. (The law provides $300 for every child of middle class parents.)

9. Poor people don't vote for any of the politicians who passed this law, because you don't vote for the people who regularly rape you.

10. We have to save some money out to pay the high cost of killing people in other countries.