{"id":396,"date":"2008-02-13T22:26:26","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T04:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davintosh.com\/2008\/02\/13\/stimulating-economics\/"},"modified":"2008-02-13T22:26:26","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T04:26:26","slug":"stimulating-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/2008\/02\/13\/stimulating-economics\/politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Stimulating Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sounds like the election year economic stimulus package has been passed &amp; signed by the President, so the checks are forthcoming. Yes, I&#8217;m eligible to receive the prescribed &#8220;rebate&#8221;, even though I don&#8217;t think I need it and even though the total may even exceed what I paid in federal taxes last year. <\/p>\n<p>Reports suggest that the economy is headed for a slowdown &mdash; some say a recession &mdash; and the stimulus package is intended to be an infusion of cash that will head it off. I&#8217;m not sure how serious the slowdown is because around here, things are pretty decent. Unemployment is down, building permits are up, etc&#8230; Don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;d call it a boom, but people don&#8217;t seem to be hurting.<\/p>\n<p>What I wonder is this; if the stimulus package wasn&#8217;t approved and the recession didn&#8217;t materialize, would anybody connect the two? You&#8217;ve got to know that after the rebates hit the streets, if the recession doesn&#8217;t happen, everybody in Washington will be like, &#8220;Good thing we did that; imagine how bad the economy would be if we hadn&#8217;t.&#8221; Come to think of it, they&#8217;ll probably say something like that even if there is a recession; &#8220;Good thing we did that; imagine how much worse it would be if we hadn&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All the stimulus package amounts to is a dose of income redistribution. The people in the higher tax brackets don&#8217;t get the rebates; some would say that a rebate of this size wouldn&#8217;t make a difference to people who make a lot of money. But if the intent is to get people to go out and spend to give the economy a boost, wouldn&#8217;t giving cash to more people &mdash; including those who are already spending disposable income &mdash; help even more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sounds like the election year economic stimulus package has been passed &amp; signed by the President, so the checks are forthcoming. Yes, I&#8217;m eligible to receive the prescribed &#8220;rebate&#8221;, even though I don&#8217;t think I need it and even though the total may even exceed what I paid in federal taxes last year. Reports suggest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}