Stimulate this, America!

All reports indicate that every American will soon be receiving a check from the Federal government for almost $600 ($1200 for families). For the low-low price of just $150 Billion (with a 'B') dollars, this "tax rebate" is supposed to help stimulate our economy, avert a recession, and make the world a better place.

How can we achieve such wonders?

It seems like the main idea behind this "stimulus" is that by injecting $150 Billion (that's with a 'B') into the wallets of regular Americans, everybody will treat themselves to a little something extra during this post new-years malaise: "Buy a new Television!", "an iPod!" or "Take a vacation!", screams conventional wisdom.

Unfortunately, today's collective financial wisdom is off it's collective financial rocker. Why? Because this $150 Billion dollars of supposed stimulus is not really our money to spend. It's borrowed money, from people we'll have to pay it back to someday.

Let's put this into personal terms. Joe is a regular worker, but he's having a hard time making a go of things. He's behind on his bills, and every six months his boss tells him that his salary is getting reduced, by about a percent or two. Joe complains to his boss that he's having trouble making ends meet, so the boss simply says, "Hey Joe, let me lend you $1200 so you can get by....but don't actually pay your bills with it. Instead, buy a new flat-screen tv because, hey, you're worth it".

Hopefully Joe would respond to his boss by telling him he's off his rocker -- "boss-man, you're crazy if you think that's good advice!"

I say that if anyone wants to stimulate the economy, they should be advocating that we (the United States) do one of two things:

1.) Pay down the national debt;
or
2.) Invest our borrowed money (a.k.a. stimulus) so that we can at least hope to stimulate something real -- business growth, other investment, or at the very least a small return on our money that could be used towards #1.

The truth is, we as individual citizens probably won't be able to stop this reckless stimulus. Worse, we can't exactly give it back to the treasury and mark "national debt" in the memo line of our check. The government doesn't allow us to designate where our tax payments go. So, the only responsible thing that we, as Citizens, can do, is the following:

a.) Vote-out any non-thinking politician that isn't advocating for the United State to to pay-down our the national debt;
b.) Vote-out any non-thinking politician that isn't actually trying to do something to get the United State to to pay-down our the national debt;
c.) Do the only responsible thing that we as individuals can with this money: Invest it.

That's why I'm not going to spend my stimulus money this year on an extra trip or a new Television or an iPhone. Instead, I'm going to allocate our $1200 between stocks, bonds, and CD's. Washington Mutual has a nice 5% return on its current CD offerings, the stock market is down badly with plenty of great buys, and the government is falling all over itself to pillage the American taxpayer's earnings by spending it on interest. It's not ideal, but why not have some of that interest flow back to an American taxpayer for a change?

Key Points:

1. Pay down the national debt.
2. Vote only for politicians that will commit to this, and do something about it!!
   
3. Invest your Stimulus money instead of spending it.
4. Pay down the national debt.

What say you, McCain? Obama? Clinton? Romney? Huckabee?

David Fuelling is a regular-joe citizen advocating for the rights of future citizens whose money we're collectively borrowing (stealing?) without their consent in order to finance our current standard of living.