Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

ok, now I feel like a complete tard... I look in my bank account everyday to see if the government dropped some amount of money in there. Stupid falling into the American Way trap! grrr

(off to Layer One, see you there if you go!)

[moleprince]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

I keep checking, too. No love so far, alas!

[theprez98]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

The IRS has a clarification message up on their website. Even if you did direct deposit:

If filing or preparation fees were deducted from your 2007 refund or if you obtained a refund anticipation loan or other bank product related to your regular tax refund, you will receive a check instead of a direct deposit.

In other words, if you used Turbo Tax (or some other online option) and did direct deposit, you won't get your rebate by direct deposit if you paid for Turbo Tax out of your refund. So, instead of getting your refund last week, you get it...next month. That sucks!

[Sereyna]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Wow, I'm really glad now that I went ahead and paid for my filing by credit card. Not that my stimulus check stimulated anything other than paying off said credit card and picking up a DVDR drive...

[velderia]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this "stimulus package" thing is not going to have any impact on the economy. Maybe pay for a few things, and that's about it.

[theprez98]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this "stimulus package" thing is not going to have any impact on the economy. Maybe pay for a few things, and that's about it.

Without getting too political: "paying for a few things" is consumption, or spending in the economy. So to say it won't have any impact seems a little bit naive. Whether or not that impact is meaningful enough to do any good is another question altogether.

[astcell]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Defcon admission should be $600 this year. Good use for the check.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Defcon admission should be $600 this year. Good use for the check.

But only when people choose to buy their badges in advance, through your paypal system?

Ah-hah! So *that* is how you are going to get access to more money from the IRS. I'm on to you mister, and I want a cut or else I'm telling! Oh yeah, I'll stimulate the, um, economy, yeah, with my cut.

[0x58]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Public forums are not the place to discuss evil plans. I want in on this plan, or I am reporting you both!

[Thorn]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Public forums are not the place to discuss evil plans. I want in on this plan, or I am reporting you both!

Right you are. Evil plans should be discussed on the private, "Evil Plans/World Domination Forum."

[AcidicA]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Technically Does it stimulate the economy if its all a loan from another country we have to pay back? Doesn't that just increase national debt making our economy worse?

[theprez98]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Technically Does it stimulate the economy if its all a loan from another country we have to pay back? Doesn't that just increase national debt making our economy worse?

How exactly is it a "loan from another country"? Who is the other country?

That being said, loans are well-known methods of stimulating the economy, even at the expense of increasing debt. On a very large scale, the Marshall Plan is a good example (admitting that not all of the loans were repaid) as the U.S. almost singlehandedly rebuilt European economies in just a few years.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Consider that a country's economy is like 3 old-fashioned steam engines. One for Government, one for Businesses, one for Citizens. Each can run so long as they have fuel and maintenance. If an engine becomes too hot, it can "burn out" and fail, which can be a metaphor for cases when an economy is based on a market of "the next fool" such as those where people continue to "invest" in things that are over-valued. Market correction can be the failure of one of these engines. Consider the crash that is associated with the begin of the Great Depression (US) as an example. When such engine failures occur, it can be difficult for engines to repair themselves. In such a case as The Great Depression, two of the engines were seriously damaged (Business and Consumer/Citizens) while the government's engine was seriously harmed as a result of fewer profits; fewer profits mean smaller income, and taxing a percent of "profit" when there are almost no profits, means very little money coming to the government through taxation.

When consumers have little/no money, businesses can't sell what they produce. Without a product or service to sell, a business must cut cost. Businesses cut costs based on profitability. Workers that are not producing product because they are not being bought are given pink slips. Greater unemployment further decreases consumer's ability to buy goods and services. Being widespread enough, this further damages engines.

With 2 engines "broken" and one engine nearly failed, it can take a long time to recover. Businesses are unwilling to borrow money to expand and provide more goods and service while there aren't enough consumers willing and able to buy their products, so their engine remains stuck. Consumers are unable (or unwilling) to buy anything, except 3 basic needs, if they are able, because many are out of work and/or not confident about their present employment, and so their engine remains stuck. A kind of pseudo-paradox now exist. The consumer and business engines can't "jump start" each other.

The government engine can borrow resources (from 3 peer engines in other countries) to try to jump-start the consumer's and business' engines. If sufficient resources can be provided in an intelligent way, so as to repair the engine, and get it started, then both the businesses and consumers can begin to feed each other. However, if an insufficient "jump-start" is provided, or the engine is not intelligently repaired, then the engine may sputter, run a few cycles, and fail again. It is also possible that resource applied are not enough to even get the engine to move any cycle or fractional cycle. Once both Consumer and Business engines are working again, the government engine can see profits and collect tax-money again to get itself running. If some of these collected taxes are used to pay off the borrowed resources, then a country can find its way out of national debt. If not, then there is risk of a kind of national, "indentured servitude," or revolution (civil war), or invasion.

Using the above, there are at least 2 significant places where people have disagreement:
1) How much stimulation is needed to jump-start the engine(s)?
2) What is the most intelligent fix for the engine(s)? (Where should resources be applied for the greatest benefit?)

#1 can be estimated with history, but only be determined by looking back at the results of any stimulation event.

There are 4 camps that logically exist to claim answer for #2:
* Push encouragement to the supply-side -- businesses; give them incentives to start producing and hiring people. (Lower taxes, loans, "Projects" like interstate highways, dams, bridges -- but they have to be "large enough", or a swarm of tiny projects wide-spread at "enough" locations across a nation, etc. Perhaps change supply of money and alter inflation, reserve rate requirements for banks, discount rate between banks, etc.)
* Push encouragement to the consumer-side -- consumers; give citizens resources. (Subsidies, hand-outs, rebates, Lower Taxes, etc. Perhaps change supply of money and alter inflation, etc)
* Push encouragement to both groups and split allocations between the two (not necessarily, equally.)
* Do nothing.

People will argue about #1, but we won't know if enough has been done until after we look at the results in the future. (Consider the Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy, and the computer designed to find the answer to, "Life the Universe and Everything." This allowed the two competing groups to argue for a long time about the answer even though their opinions had no impact on the actual results or outcome.)

The answer to #2 is really a political discussion. There are cases in history where we see one of the above worked well, and other cases where the same choice doesn't work as well as predicted -- if at all.

I've tried to keep this post free of politics, and limit it to "dry" facts from history. I've tried to not show favor to any one solution, or favor any answer. Please be careful when discussing #1 and #2 above, as they can be political topics if you are not careful.

Thanks! :-)

(Obviously, I've mixed Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and "government" together in this simple model; these can be even more political than #1 and #2, so they were bypassed on purpose.)

[Thorn]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

Consider that a country's economy is like 3 old-fashioned steam engines. One for Government, one for Businesses, one for Citizens.

<snipped for brevity.>

That's the Keynesian economic model, and it's hardly the only one that exists. There are economists (and others) who believe that it is deeply flawed, and that the government shouldn't have anything to do with market forces, because all in the long run , all a government does is muck up a given economy. There is a lot of facts that bear out those opposing viewpoints. (All said with dry facts while dancing around politics per se. )

[TheCotMan]

Re: Anyone got their goofy economic stimulus money yet?

That's the Keynesian economic model, and it's hardly the only one that exists. There are economists (and others) who believe that it is deeply flawed, and that the government shouldn't have anything to do with market forces, because all in the long run , all a government does is muck up a given economy. There is a lot of facts that bear out those opposing viewpoints. (All said with dry facts while dancing around politics per se. )

Are you a supply-sider? Trickle-Down Economics? Voodoo Economics? (Jokes: no answer needed) ]:>

Of course there are other models, with more complicated systems. Additionally, some might argue that World War II is what "really" got the US out of The Great Depression, but would that still be "Government" acting to stimulate businesses and consumers? (No need to answer that, as it is rhetorical.) I accept there are many models for an economy, but endeavor to provide a sample model for an economy that might provide a reason for the "economic stimulus" or "rebate" check being sent out to some tax payers. The Keynesian model is one of the easier models to understand which illustrates a possible motivation for the stimulus package.

One point found in my previous post is to illustrate that we don't really know if it will have the desired effect, and won't have much of a clue until several months after the checks are handed out. To make matters worse, since there are many, many factors at work in the US economy, we can't really be sure that the rebate check helped the economy at all. The best to happen is if people provide correlation of events, and economic spikes and change between the rebate checks and the economy, but correlation is not causation.

[joke]Right now, I want to claim to be responsible for all improvements in the economy, and blame all the rest of you for places it will fail. It seems only fair. After all, I am pushing out more bits, and typing more words, so I *must* be helping to circulate more bits through the economy. 2 bits is a US quarter, and the above is 8-bit ASCII, so 8 bits per character, that is $1 per character. Look at all that money I'm pushing through the economy! Do your duty! Post more on the forums! [/joke]:>