Free Money

The best things in life, they tell us, are free. But you can keep them for the birds and bees. Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today. For the love of money, people will steal from their mother. For the love of money people will rob their own brother. Money makes the world go around. It makes the world go 'round.
And that is why your government is getting ready to part with a great big, steaming wad of it. Congress has just approved a "stimulus package" that should pump one hundred and fifty billion dollars (think nine zeroes) into our lagging economy. Tax rebates of six hundred to one thousand two hundred (think two zeroes) dollars will be winging their way beginning as early as May. Those with children will receive an additional three hundred dollars per child. Families who make at least three thousand dollars a year but don't pay taxes would get three hundred dollar rebates. Everybody wins!
Have you already started thinking about how you're going to spend your check? Maybe a big-screen TV for the bathroom, or perhaps one of those new-fangled dog polishers? How about trapeze lessons for the whole family? If we want to save our economy, we've got to get out there and spend, spend, spend!
Or not. Instead, we could endorse our checks back over to the architects of this plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican leader John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. We might include a nice note asking them to put it back into paying off our monstrous deficit, which at last peek was sitting somewhere around nine trillion (twelve zeroes) dollars. Each citizen's share of that debt is now about thirty thousand (four zeroes) dollars, or approximately one hundred times more than the amount of the rebate for each child.
Gee, on second thought, maybe we should all invest in the stock market.