Say Anything Blog

There was a time in this country, I like to think, when having the government send people checks as a way to “stimulate” the economy would have been laughed out of the halls of Congress as a transparent and superficial attempt at vote-buying.  Today, unfortunately, it passes muster (among the political/media class) as sound economic policy.

More than 50 million retirees can expect to receive $250 payments from the government in the next few weeks as their share of the economic stimulus package enacted in February.

Economists say the payments will be a timely boost just as the recession is showing signs of easing a little.

The payments are part of the $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts enacted in February to help boost the economy.

Now all these people will get the checks in the mail that nice Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats sent them.  If it weren’t for them, those nasty Republicans would have just kept the money for themselves!

That’s the narrative liberals want to play out here, no doubt, though in public they’ll say they’re just wanting to help these people.  As if a one-time $250 check was much of a “stimulus” or a help at all.

Really, though, the whole idea that these checks sent out to people can be “stimulus” at all is just laughable.  If this money were coming from some external source of funds that might be true, but the reality is that this money is first being taken out of our economy before it is redistributed back into our economy.  And along the way the government takes another hefty chunk out of the economy to pay for administering it all.

So yeah.  These people are no doubt going to spend this couple of hundred bucks they’re getting.  And those transactions will be economic activity.  But it will be less economic activity then would have happened if the government had just left the money in the economy in the first place.

Meaning this is a net drag on our economic growth in general.

But it sure is nice to get other people’s money in the mail, isn’t it?  Except that’s not entirely accurate.  This isn’t just “other people’s money.”  This is our great-grandchildren’s money.  Our government has already spent all the money from the next couple of generations.