What Will You Do With Your Slice Of The Election Year Confetti Bomb?

The Bushistas think we'll forget stolen elections, costitution shredding, heinous war crimes and the fact the dollar will be worth something like a peso later this year by printing more dollars and handing us a few hundred of them. I'm even wondering if this shamefully stupid contrivance will end up being another "advanced refund check" as they gamed it in 2001. As a matter of fact, one poll shows that 58% will use it to pay off debt, 25% will save it and 17% will spend it. Big shot in the economy's arm there. Me? Bills. Yawn. Dave Lindorff tells us how stupid the whole thing is.

A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess

"I don't know about you, but my wife and I spend basically every penny we earn each year, in order to make ends meet. Now some of that is for stuff like mortgage payments, tuition payments, etc., but I'd guess that, counting oil and energy bills, probably half our income goes to buy things that are imported, and that's probably roughly true for most American families. After all, almost nothing is actually made in the US anymore, and we even buy a lot of raw materials-iron, oil, etc.-from overseas. So if for sake of argument and easy math, we're making $100,000, that's $50,000 being spent on imported stuff. Now here's where things get a little speculative. But suppose that having the government add another $145 billion in red ink to the federal budget leads to an extra 3 percent decline in the value of the dollar against foreign currencies-a not unreasonable scenario. Why, that would mean that the $50,000 I spend on foreign goods in a year would cost me an extra $1500-just about the same amount as that $1600 Bush is proposing to lay on me.
Butthat weakened dollar will continue into next year and beyond, while the $1600 rebate is a one-time thing.
So what do we get out of this rebate thing?
Worse than nothing."