Katerina asked yesterday how people were going to spend their “stimulus” checks. Good question. No doubt many people will feel – with varying levels of subconsciousness – some obligation to spend the money, as if doing otherwise (say, by saving or paying down debt) is somehow unpatriotic. But as Jordan Ballor has recently written, this is really the wrong way to think about the issue (Warning: Ballor is a Calvinist and the article about to be quoted was written for the Acton Institute; not for the faint of heart):
In early February President Bush signed into law a $150 billion dollar package of tax rebates touted as a “stimulus” for the flagging national economy. The purpose of the plan, which President Bush has called “a booster shot for our economy,” is to quickly inject some money into the economy and spur consumer spending.
The eighteenth-century theologian and pastor John Wesley once preached that we should “earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.” Productivity, frugality, and generosity are the core moral virtues that have animated prosperous and free economies in the West for centuries. But now the federal government seemingly wants to add a fourth and conflicting principle to these traditional values: “Spend all you can.”
[I]t’s unclear what effect the stimulus package will have on the economy in the short term. The $150 billion level is the minimum that many economists thought would be necessary for a rebate action to have any discernible effect on an economy as huge as America’s $13 trillion annual GDP.
Other experts question whether such a move will be too little or too late to have the desired economic effect. We might also question the wisdom of such a package in the face of record budgetary deficits in federal spending, and indeed whether the average taxpayer should be taking economic advice from a government that has a debt level quickly approaching $10 trillion.
The important thing for taxpayers and families to consider in their decisions about spending this money is not what the government tells us to do with it. Instead, we should think about what makes the best sense for our particular situation.
This money is, after all, the taxpayers’ own in the first place. In sending back tax “rebates,” the government is not giving cash away but simply returning to taxpaying citizens what is and should be our own money. When the rebate checks hit your bank account, the government ceases to have any claim as to how to spend those funds.
And rightly so. Taxpayers should use this rebate money as they see fit, since they are the ones most familiar with their own situations and their own needs. Consider giving part of the money to charity or saving, paying off debt or investing. And if it makes sense for you and your situation, you should feel free to buy that hi-def TV if you so desire.
But you certainly should not feel obligated to do so as if mere consumption is a civic responsibility.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In