This past Thursday Congress approved a $168 billion dollar stimulus package as outlined by New York Times writer David M. Herszenhorn.
“The plan will provide tax rebates of up to $600 for individuals and up to $1,200 for couples filing jointly, with an additional payment for families of $300 a child, and a minimum payment of $300 for individuals who pay less than that in income taxes.
Payments will be reduced for individuals with adjusted gross incomes above $75,000 and couples with incomes above $150,000, with the wealthiest taxpayers receiving nothing. The Treasury Department said checks would be distributed beginning in early May, after the crush of the tax filing season.
The rebates and the business incentives, including a doubling to $250,000 from $125,000 in the amount of expenses businesses can immediately write off, are intended to jolt the slowing economy with new spending. “
On Meet the Press today Rev. Jesse Jackson told Tim Russert that his recommendation for jump starting our economy would be to follow FDR and create jobs by investing in our aging infrastructure such as bridges that are falling down. He added that sending taxpayers the above referenced money would be used to purchase goods made in China which would result in that rebate check ending up in China rather than going into our local economy.
Personal note. While I agree that there is a need to address our aging infrastructure for which money should have been set aside for deferred maintenance, we no longer have major rolling mills in this country. The days of Carnegie and U.S. Steel are found in history books. Many years ago my son in law worked in the construction of the San Jose, CA Convention Center. Believe it or not, the major steel structure for that project was shipped to CA by barge from South Korea. My point being that too many of our manufacturing jobs have been outsourced and sadly will not be returning.
While Jesse Jackson’s guess is as good as anyone else’s the imported goods still arrive at our docks, are unloaded, placed on trucks, sent to warehouses and distributed to local stores which hire workers to put the merchandise on the empty shelves. Therefore, many rebate recipients will take advantage of the lower cost goods creating a positive outcome. Every one of the people involved in the chain as described above eat, fill-up at gas stations, and eventually pay taxes. Just some rambling thoughts on this Sunday afternoon.
Juice drinkers.
What plans do you have for your rebate?
You mean there are readers of this blog with incomes low enough to receive a rebate? The reality is this is just another means tested government give away. The economy is already receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of federal stimulus money via defense spending, earmarks, and other deficit spending techniques. This latest effort is but a drop in the bucket designed to curry the favor of voters (or at least avoid their wrath) in the midst of election season.
Let us count the ways….Home Depot, Office Depot, Staples,
Ace Hardware, Costco, Target and
two of our biggest credit card
totals. If we have anything left
over….we will shoot a few shows
and change society forever! Other
than that….not much!
Email response:
Hi Larry
Nice to hear that our congress finally heard the call of the senior people in our country spurred by AARP lobbying. I can’t feel any sympathy for the richer people in our country who have made money on the outsourcing of our jobs to the cheap world labor. Now my senior family are going to spend our pittance on paying for our higher gasoline, utilities and living expenses that have risen dramatically in the last few years. Let see now, $100 bucks for a Costco gasoline card, $100 toward our monthly gas bill and finally $100 bucks toward our electric bill. Whoops I’m broke again. Well out comes my credit card or get another bit of money from my home equity loan. Another muse; When George W and our government finish the North American Highway thru Texas and on thru to Canada by 2010 what ports are all the shipments from China going to go thru. Well by golly China is now building entry ports in the south of Mexico that are going to use Mexican trucks to haul these shipments thru the North American Highway into the USA and on to Canada. The goods will be accepted into the USA as NAFTA goods and no tariffs or very little will be charged and no American people will be used for any part of these shipments other than the Wal-Mart’s, Targets, Coscos, and so on and so on. In addition the Chinese auto company Chery is building an auto plant in Mexico right now to manufacture a cheap auto to sell into the USA and it will only have a 2 1/2 % tariff to enter the good old USA while our autos are charged a tariff in China of 25%. Additionally China subsidizes most of their export products whereas our good old government does very little subsidizing to promote keeping the jobs in our country. Where did I get this information? From one of the very few people attempting to inform the American people —- Lou Dobbs of CNN. The information about the North American Highway is from the book by Jerome R. Corsi “The Late Great USA– The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada”. All orchestrated by George W. thru The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America back in 2005. Check it out on Google. Every government department is involved in completing this grand proposal and our Congress is not doing anything about stopping it or will have any say in its enactment because it is not privy to anything proposed. It is all being negotiated under the radar screen. None of the presidential candidates have said anything about it nor have they been asked. Our ‘drive by media’ is saying nothing about it. George W. in Quebec city last summer was asked about Lou Dobb’s warnings about the SPP and its affect on the USA’s economy and further loss of jobs in the USA and his comment was that some media critics do not know what they are talking about. Why is our Congress not even trying to do anything about knowing what the executive branch and government departments are doing? Our Congress just last fall halted the DOT from funding anymore Mexican trucks from entering our country greater than the 25 mile limit but the DOT are allowing more Mexican trucking companies to go anywhere they want in our country and to actually transship cargo between American cities! Our government departments are out of control.
Thank you Larry for bringing up the subjects that need to be brought up for people to participate in the discussion that just maybe will allow full vetting of issues that deeply affect our economy and other important issues such as immigration, the effects of illegal immigration on our standard of living and so many others that our government is not telling us about.
I for one would be interested in hearing other opinions about this under the radar scheme by our government to make the USA another market like the ECM thru the SPP. How many people are aware of this major blunder that the white house is trying to pull off. How many people know about the North American Highway now being built?
Email response:
Will we receive a rebate if we are retired? Will it be taxable income? Is Jesses Jackson a Republican? I heard last week when the rebates were announced that Huckabee asked the question “who will benefit, the US or China, since we buy all of our goods from China.” I am of the opinion that our economy will eventually fall in a pit somewhere since we are reducing our manufacturing so that large industrialists can make more money by going to foreign countries to manufacture goods. Will Mexico put up a fence to keep us from illegally crossing the border so that we can get a bad job there?
Have a nice day and we’ll see you Sunday.
Since my wife was “downsized” out of the sub-prime world and has been unable to find work since. We will be paying bills with it.
All her experience in the last 24 years has been in the sub-prime market and no one, not anybody will even give her a chance, much less an interview. No matter she had $1 million in signature authorization, or that she worked 10-14 hours a day and Saturdays too, for a company that actually had ethics, or that she was one of those gatekeepers, who actually got bad loan officers, brokers and appraisers, investigated for loan fraud. She still got tagged as some sort of contagious disease carrying worker.
BTW the last real full time employer was actually making money when their “evil” parent company was shut down last August and decided to close down their smaller well run, ethical, spin off. Not that I think for a heartbeat, that all the loans, anybody wrote, were legitimate, but they actually had a company policy of “does it make sense for the customer” both economically and morally and they tried diligently to make that happen.
Go figure, do the right thing and you still get screwed in the end!
Anon 6:14 p.m.
Can’t argue with you on the rebates to individual taxpayers. It is a drop in the bucket “give-away.” The inclusion of aide to businesses may have some merit.
Anon 8:19 p.m.
Jesse Jackson is no Republican.
As to “outsourcing.” This is an old cost saving activity.U.S. firms were partnering with manufacturers in Mexico long before low cost Chinese manufacturing entered the picture.
In 1964 foreign and U.S.companies were permitted to set up and own “Maquiladora” manufacturing plants in Mexico where we shipped equipment and materials to save on lower cost labor. Finished or semi finished goods were then sent back to the states. Some of our U.S. factories competitors were doing this 40 years ago. It is important to point out that this predates the NAFTA agreement.
Ironically with China and other far east regional labor sectors undercutting the labor costs of Mexico, many Maquiladora’s have been hurt by that competition.
Larry:
I am send my rebate check to Hillary. “Keep her in the race—so we can win it.!!”
Johnny M
Arizona
I’ll be using my rebate for my June estimated taxes…LOL.
Im buying some domesticly grown marijuana, to keep the money in the U.S.(plus, Santa Ana shut down all the dispensiaries!)
Good morning Carl.
Sorry to learn that your wife has joined the ranks of the downsized in America.
My prayer for you is that potential employers do not “blackwall” her for working in this segment of the financial world where some of the greedy officers have abused the system leading to the example you have described above.
FYI
A retired person asked if they will be receiving one of these stimulus checks. The answer is that anyone on Social Security is included in the program. Larry G