Well ladies and gentlemen, I know all five of you furiously wrote your senators in a desperate attempt to stop them from making yet another ridiculous mistake; it looks like it was all for nought. The bill is going through, the Economic Stimulus Package has rocketed out of the senate and into the monkey cage that contains President Bush.
Many of you are probably salivating over the coming money (which looks to be about 600 dollars for individuals and a thousand or so for couples, with an additional 300 per dependant child (and probably college student)). With this inevitable flood of cash I will offer helpful suggestions that will allow you to spend your money in a way that will actually help you and your neighbors out of poverty.
Here is a quick guide to what you can do to turn a bad idea into a slightly okay idea:
1. Donate that money to charity. (ha ha ha ha, I know I know. I like to start out with a joke sometimes).
2. Spend the money on local businesses; spend it on businesses owned and operated by people within your state, your county, your city, and especially your neighborhood. Most chinese food places count, as do ethnic grocers. Also look to farmer’s markets, local art stores (like ours you stingy bastards), and IGA’s for your foodly needs.
3. Spend the money, when there isn’t a locally owned one in reach or in the market you are wanting to participate in (if a local shop doesn’t sell sprockets or something), in stores and on products made in unionized businesses. You can usually find some good directories online on which businesses are closed shop or union friendly (I know Schnucks, the grocery chain, is union).
4. Do not spend your money in stores owned by gigantic corporations that do nothing but rape and pillage, Wal-Mart especially. (Also, Today is Valentine’s day, so if I hear of any of you buying Hallmark I swear to god I will hunt you down and stuff a giant chocolate kiss into a hole of a much smaller size, I don’t care which one, I just want it to be unpleasant for you.)
5. Purchase green items such as energy efficient light-bulbs, the things will save you alot of money in the future. Added insulation will keep your home warmer in the winter and save on your heating bills and planting trees around your house will shade it in the summer, keeping it cooler and decreasing your air conditioning bill.
I hope this has been an informative and helpful guide as you all decide ways to frivilously blow your money away in a hurricane of levee busting consumerism.
My next post will be a follow-up on the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. stay tuned for more vintage Angelo-ranting (I swear it’ll be more interesting than this one, I am just in a very bad mood today).
I’m curious as to how you feel about putting the money away. I know that’s the opposite of what the government wants me to do, but I really need some rainy day money saved up, so an extra $600 in my savings account would be a big help.
Stupid government, trying to tell me what to do with my monies that they give me…
Sorry about how long this response took, I didn’t expect anyone to actually comment on my bloggins.
Anyways, yes you should be saving your money. People are in way too much debt nowadays. The only problem you’ll have with saving your money rather than spending it is the probability that its rate of interest will not be greater than inflation.
Let me put it this way: If you put ten dollars in the bank, only ten dollars, in 1970 at 3% interest that money would be worth about -38 dollars in 2007. If you put into the bank 600 dollars in 2000, by 2007 it would be worth about 480 dollars without interest, with 3% interest you’d have been just above inflation and your money would be worth 604 dollars.
If you get no interest on your money then you are basically stowing it away to be eroded by inflation. That’s why alot of people invest their money in gold, silver, and other precious metals (directly, throug jewelers, or buying stocks and bonds). Especially during a period where U.S. currency is getting worse and worse it may not be the best solution to save your money.
I know this isn’t a difficult thing to hear, but it is also important not to save too much. Jobs are created by demand, the more people buying more things will create demand for more jobs. That’s the math the government is operating on.
Unfortunately, though, the U.S. economy is not being advanced by Americans spending their money, it’s growing due to people spending money that does not really exist. Spending on credit, taking out loans, that’s all money that doesn’t exist in economic terms. Now, this doesn’t cause too many problems except for the fact that jobs are created based on this magical money. When an economy contracts, when people end up spending well beyond their means (as they are now) all of those jobs are going to be put on the chopping block.
Remember, someone has to pay the tab for all of this spending we’ve been doing, at some point in time it’s going to be called in. In the coming years, maybe even decades, America is going to have to go through a belt-tightening process, less so if we manage to redistribute some of that horde of wealth stowed away by the rich.
The only entity you want to be in debt is the government, not the American people. But even that you don’t want in too much debt (as it is approaching now).
Sorry if that is a rather long-winded answer to your simple question, can’t help it.
Oh, here is the website I used to come up with those calculations. I am not so good at math so you might wanna check for yourself: http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/
Hey, there’s no way to have a simple answer to an economic question, in my opinion.
I’m trying to save up for a house, and buying houses does seem to help people get out of debt. Of course, I do just want to take advantage of folks who are desperate to get rid of property they can no longer afford, but it’s still better than them having to foreclose, right? At any rate, the amount the govt plans to give me will only be a drop in the bucket, so I wouldn’t be able to buy anything for quite a while anyways.
In the meantime, I’m doing my best to buy from independent things when I do spend, and I’m looking forward to all the independent grocers here in the summer and in Portland, since that’s the only thing I spend on.
By the by, isn’t printing money to help the economy something they did in pre-Nazi Germany? Didn’t it fail miserably? Didn’t money wind up being worth less than firewood, resulting in people burning money to stay warm? I might have the wrong country, but for the sake of effect, let’s just say it was pre-Nazi Germany.