I am anxiously awaiting my check from Uncle Sam so that I can sign it and send it back to him, thus reducing my taxes for next April 15th.
My economy doesn’t need stimulating. I already go through money like a paper shredder. There is an endless line of payees waiting for me to fork over some dough as soon as I can earn it.
Why is the govenment passing out checks? This is just a big, big version of “walking around money,” where a candidate’s henchmen would go around buying votes at election time.
Is this supposed to help the economy? It reminds me of two images:
(1) One is that of a storekeeper who goes out on the sidewalk and passes out money in hopes that some of the recipients will go into his store and spend it there, thus helping his business.
(2) The other is of a man who dips water out of the deep end of a swimming pool and pours it into the shallow end, and then wonders why the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.
In other words, it’s our money already. The gummint doesn’t have any money to pass out. Either they take it from us first, or they borrow it and give it to us and we have to pay them back later in taxes.
(Edited on May 11th to add: I see that Walter Williams made nearly the same observations in a recent article. Apparently he and I heard the “swimming pool” image from the same source.)