My reading of the law that is to give $1,200 to every individual under certain conditions isn't free money.

It's an advance on next years taxes. In other words, you'll pay it back next year.

I'd appreciate it if someone that is glib in reading laws passed by congress would check it out.

The section in question starts on page 140.

https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hr748/BILLS-116hr748eas.pdf

It's not an advance on next year's taxes.
It's literally free money.
Nobody will have to pay it back.
Your future tax refund won't be reduced.
Your future tax bill won't be increased.

Anybody who speculat4es that you'll have to later pay it back is . . . just simply . . . wrong.

I guess I read this completely opposite from you.

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—In the case of an eligible indi-
8 vidual, there shall be allowed as a credit against the tax
9 imposed by subtitle A for the first taxable year beginning
10 in 2020 an amount equal to the sum of—


I hope you are right, but if I'm right then there are going to be many upset people next April.

"A tax credit" means that you don't have to pay taxes on it. If the check is for $1,200 and next year you get a credit for $1,200, that means it is tax-free.

I worry that this is "helicopter money" designed to stimulate an economy that is in the beginning of a depression. I worry that it will lead to price inflation and with the unemployment rate going up it will likely be stagflation.

I hope I'm wrong. I really do.

It's time to pray dude!

As I was reading this thread, Google Assistant started a new song and I forgot what I was going to say and decided with go with a new thought regarding what I want:

https://youtu.be/t1TcDHrkQYg

All i know is that money could really help me out right now. Fell a little behind on my auto-loan unfortunately.

I negotiated a pretty good deal on my auto loan. Saving around 1800 total by the time I pay it off. I get 2 months of no payment then I only pay half for the 6 months after that. No extension of the loan or repayment of missed funds. Woohoo, Gawd bless America, my home sweet home!

Since the government is not technically revenue generators, the 2 trillion dollar stimulus has to be collected from some place? In other words, maybe we don't get our refunds reduced in 2021, but we eventually will pay back the stimulus by means of other reach-around-tax-grab-ass.

To my recollection we did not have to declare as income the checks we got during the economic crisis after 2008. Why would this be any different?

That is not what i am saying Kentish. The government is not in the business of making money, only collecting it from the working. Which means if you add it up, we pay the bill. The money isn't shat out by a duck that farts 100's. The money has to come from somewhere? Where does the government get their money? Not from lemonade stands across the nation, they tax us when we work. So, in the end, unless you never work another day further, you are paying it back.

That's not entirely correct. Since the government refuses to raise taxes towards the level of its expenditures--to the contrary, it keeps cutting taxes without reining in spending--it has to borrow money. That debt doesn't get paid off, so it is transferred to future taxpayers.

Our children and/or grandchildren will be the ones to foot the bill.

Lot's Wife, again, you just proved my point, it is not free money. They don't have a magical duck that shit's $100's. Someone pays the bill, like I said, unless you don't live long enough to deal with the issue, then you don't pay it down. However, as long as you work and pay taxes, you are paying some part of the debt down from some time it was created in the past or present.

At the end of the day, the government Fed, State, County etc... it don't matter, they do not generate revenue like the private sector. They tax folks for it. In other words, they take our past money to pay for their present and future spending. Get it?

Oh, I get your main point. I just disagree with your secondary one.

More particularly, your statements that "we pay the bill" and "in the end, unless you never work another day further, you are paying it back" are incorrect. What the last two generations of Americans have learned is that if you borrow to finance your consumption, you don't have to "pay it back."

If people had to pay for what they receive, the national debt and social security and medicare liabilities would be tiny. But modern Americans on the right and the left are far too irresponsible for that. We come up with all sorts of justifications for why it is ethical to impoverish our progeny.

Well, i see that point clearly Lot’s Wife. Looking at the 2 trillion stimulus plus the one back in 2009, we cant physically pay that debt in our lifetime, but there is a piper that has to be paid thru credit ratings, currency valuation, trade deficits, social programs, etc... Maybe in our lifetime we have paid a portion of the debts of our great grand fathers?

Not so much.

The national debt surged during WWII, as one would expect, but a combination of post-war economic growth and wise fiscal policy brought that down to responsible level by the 1970s. so by that point there was almost no inter-generational theft.

The deterioration started in about 1980, when unfunded spending took off. The situation improved a bit after the (modest) Bush and Clinton tax hikes, but then in about 2000 the debt exploded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:USDebt.png

I would add only that the terrible fiscal policy of the last few years would reveal an even worse picture than that graph shows.

Printing money is a way of taxing the rich. Anyone with money has it devalued. Do the rich understand they’re shooting themselves in the foot?

If this is just the beginning, only a centrally planned economy will fix the problem. Congratulations, you are now a socialist.

Printing money is not a way of taxing the rich. In the first place, there is no inflation in the system and none as far as the eye can see. When inflation is close to zero, the value of money is constant.

In the second, the rich have all sorts of ways of hedging their exposure. They have made out like bandits over the last 12 years, which would not be possible if printing money hurt them. It is the middle class, those with some assets but not enough to hire financial strategists and tax attorneys, who will see the value of their savings diminish in that distant era in which inflation and interest rates normalize.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2020 12:28AM by Lot's Wife.

All I know is that I'm not getting a check.

Since it is free money, why limit payments? I say give everybody a million.

Or, just make everything free and then we wouldn't need money at all.

Don't pay rent, or loans, or utilities, or food, or whatever.

Pretty much where we're heading anyway.

BTW, here's a Stanford professor of medicine and economics, saying the economic shutdowns could cost millions of lives. Which is why he's trying to do serologic surveys to find the true mortality rate, which is likely much lower than we're told. In which case, we should ease the shutdown or at least let low risk or immune people work, and focus on high risk groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0

Don't spend it until you have it.

Since this current economic downturn is not the results of market-driven forces like most economic downturns, everything should spring right back to where it was before the pandemic if the social distancing doesn't go on for too long.

I have heard that the US is going to try to get China to pay some kind of repairations because they lied and consealed the epidemic until it became far more damaging to us than it needed to be. I don't know if we'll have any luck with that or not. At least we'll wake up and start planning ahead for potential epidemics going forward and will start producing anti-biotics and other critical medicines here in the US again going forward.

I paid $1.95/gallon to fill the tank at Costco the other day. Low fuel prices are a consolation.

Cartoonist/Hypnotist Scott Adams things the American people will stop buying so much from China because of this. If that happens, China might be more willing to make some kind of a deal with the US.

I hate pushing this topic, but on the noon news on Seattle TV channel 5, they had a news item on this.

The only thing that was clear to me is that the $1,200 is an advance on next years taxes.

If you were going to get a refund of $3,000, the refund would be reduced by the $1200, so instead of getting $3000, you'll get $1800.

But then if you owe taxes next year the water gets real muddy.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/stimulus-checks-social-security-tax-returns/281-e9d86afa-67b6-472e-bf2f-b598e7fcc0d3

Like some one said, don't spend it until you get it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2020 05:09PM by tumwater.

Is it tithing free?

EXON46 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is it tithing free?


Oh, heavens NO!

TSSC will make out like a bandit on this one...

"Something which can't go on forever,...won't."

For the foreseeable future, because the dollar is the world's reserve currency, we an continue borrowing...for a while... because so many public and private parties hold US Treasuries. But our debt to GDP is getting awfully topheavy.

And it's not just the Federal debt! It's state and municipal debt, underfunded and un-funded pension obligations, credit card debt, and now student debt. Look at some of the subcategories on this National Debt Clock:

https://www.usdebtclock(dot)org/

Too many cans have been kicked down the road, by both left and right feet, if you get my point.

Interest rates indicate the balance of supply and demand for capital looking forward several years. Their depressed level shows that there is little pressure on governments, and electorates, to behave more responsibly.

Pity, that. It means that when inflation returns and interest rates rise, the people who are then taxpayers will be brutalized.

"A trillion here, a trillion there, before you know it, you're talking worthless money."


[Dirkson was Senate minority leader 1959-1969, a bye-gone era when--believe it or not!--an Illinois Republican could actually be elected to Congress. The actual quote was, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."]

Why are we assuming the Federal Reserve will exist in the future? This may be the beginning of the end of that whole mess. 2008 proved that Ponzi schemes can’t go on forever.

> Why are we assuming the Federal Reserve will exist
> in the future?

Because the 1930s weren't fun.


------------------
> This may be the beginning of the
> end of that whole mess. 2008 proved that Ponzi
> schemes can’t go on forever.

Actually, the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time started with the 2008 crisis.

The check is in the mail yet the bill won't come until after the check arrives.

Yep. And in the meantime a lot of the people who cashed the checks will have passed away.

Eat, drink, and be merry. . .

The trick is getting the check to them before the corona.

I don't expect to be getting any of the stimulus money and that is okay with me. I am still working, mostly from home and some at a mostly empty facility. Some people here think that the stimulus payments to help the poorest of Americans (the waitresses and hair stylists, etc..) is a bad idea because it puts future Americans in to further debt. So here is the question. Should the government just ignore those who need the help? If you can't pay your bills but can still eat or if you can not pay your bills and can not even eat, most of us would agree to helping those who need survival money, at least enough to put food on the table. What's wrong with that? It's not like everyone suddenly just got too lazy to work. Twelve hundred will be a raise for some and a loss for others. As a one-time payment, it's a pretty low amount. Businesses will only get loans that they will have to repay if they don't pass it along to their employees.

Most people will not "eat drink and be merry" when they're losing their way of life and are helpless to do anything to stop it from happening.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2020 10:04PM by azsteve.

I don't think it will be a one-time payment and it shouldn't be. That conclusion arises from both compassionate reasons and from economic ones: starving people are easy prey for disease and they spread it as well, moreover the economy will not recover until consumption strengthens.

Long-term problems must be dealt with over the longer term, but short-term ones need to be addressed immediately.

Mainly: people who are working for a living.

I say: boost unemployment checks by a certain percentage, say, 50%,* rather than mail checks to every Tom, Dick, and Sally. These amounts would also be proportionate to their earnings. A laid-off manager who earned $75,000/yr has greater costs of living than the burger flipper and her $23K.

And find a way to boost part-time workers who struggle on less than 40 hours of work a week, along with the self-employed. For the most part, people on fixed income (retirees, welfare, SSDI/SS/VA recipients will be getting their usual incomes anyway. It's the people who work (and produce) who are getting whacked--and the general economy with them.

Not a perfect solution, but there isn't one.

I'll be blunt: if I receive a check for $1,200, I'll take it, but as a retiree on fixed income my income is, well, fixed--as opposed to the electrician I hired today who's struggling on 1/2 his previous job load.

I understand where you are coming from caffiend but even those on fixed incomes/SS are paying a lot more for food and other necessities. The only market doing curbside here is the most expensive in town. Safeway is a lot cheaper but you can't even GET a delivery date.

I agree with the importance of means-testing the money. Both to help those who most need it and to stabilize and increase consumption, the stimulus program should be progressive.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2020 02:05AM by Lot's Wife.

I'm a huge fan of Bill Burr's plan of randomly sinking cruise ships and opening ship yards all over the world to build new ones...to be sunk, later.