Spend, save, or give away tax cut money?
Because I am a minister the government considers me self employed or in seminary speak, “I work for God.” All the talk about tax cuts, stimulating the economy, and my upcoming International Affairs Seminar trip with Oklahoma youth has me thinking about the economy, our budget, the house we have rented because we could not sell it, and the ethics of the governments budget. Every time I think about it and listen to smart (and not so smart, but paid like they are) talk about it I just cannot shake the image of Lords and serfs. Maybe the image that best fits America is that of “sharecropper” or maybe 20th century coal miners. Human Resources departments treat people like resources rather than employees with a stake in the company’s future. Pardon the rant. So, into this mix comes this article in the Christian Science Monitor.
Spend, Save, or Give Away Tax Cut Money?
by Roberton Williams | The Christian Science Monitor | Feb. 10, 2011major goal of last December’s Tax Relief Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (aka extending the Bush-era tax cuts) was to boost the economy by avoiding scheduled tax increases and, at the same time, adopting a few new tax cuts. Both steps, supporters claimed, would put more money in people’s pockets and boost the still-weak economy. Temporarily extending the Bush-era and 2009 tax cuts and patching the alternative minimum taxstaved off the tax hikes. The one-year cut in the FICA payroll taxes that finance Social Security will add about $110 billion to paychecks this year, disregarding the offsetting loss of roughly $60 billion from the expiration of the Making Work Pay credit (MWP). Give people more money and they’ll spend it, thus stimulating the economy, or so the theory goes.
The question is: What will we actually do with this windfall?