Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Summer Vacation


Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to the summer with many school children soon leaving the confines of a school building for the baseball diamond, which will culminate in many zany adventures leading to a major motion picture called The Sandlot. Others will take luxurious vacations to places with beaches and and blue skies. And yet others will keep the local pharmacy open.

But alas, after beginning my trek toward an MBA last summer, I have been kept busy fending off stupid opinions and poor proofreading. Vacations and time off have been rare and when present have always had that "you should be doing school work" guilty feeling ruining what fun may have been had. For the next six weeks, though, things are going to change.

Having just completed my seventh of ten classes toward the degree, I have taken a class period off. Instead of spending the next six weeks mastering some business topic, I will instead merely commute to Walgreens daily. Odd that while still working full time it'll feel like such a break.

Before I left the comfy confines of the University of Phoenix learning forum, I had one last spirited debate that went right up until the end of the class. You'd think that in a class full of emerging business leaders some good ideas might exist on how to solve the economic funk that this country finds itself in. I present to you a new poster, never before featured on Wolfden V. I'll call her Pocahontas.

I do not think that the stimulus payments are an answer to the economic problems facing our country.

Ok, I can start with Pocahontas' premise. The stimulus payments are a hot topic, especially with many checks just now finding their way into tax payers' accounts. So far so good.

Giving the average working american just between $300 - $1,200 extra dollars in a one-time sum just isn't the answer.

I'm normally a stickler for basic writing skills such as capitalization but given the informal message board post, I'll give "american" a pass, even though this was written on Memorial Day.

I am sure the original tax returns received by the majority of tax payers was more than the stimulus payments.

Citing such key data and reports such as "I am sure" the basis for this statement is shady at best. A better start might have been "my skewed, biased, unresearched opinion suggests..." We don't know this statement to be true at all and is quickly soaring to become the basis for a wild argument.

If the government truly wanted to help out the economy & taxpayers why not give taxpayers an additional payment that is equal to their 2007 tax return.

And here it is. The answer to all of the United States' financial woes! Because Pocahontas received a tax refund exceeding her rebate check, the government should employ this solution to save the world. Never mind that this solution is absolutely asinine.

A tax refund is repaying your own money that you over estimated over the course of a year. It is not free money. The government is giving you back what is yours that you shouldn't have paid in the first place. Pocahontas also is failing to take into consideration all of those who have to pay taxes on April 15th and not receive a refund. I'm sure that her plan would involve them paying back into the government twice over, which as economists all know is a brilliant solution to increasing discretionary spending.

Mercifully, it's vacation time.

Photo from Vadeck.com

1 comment:

Edwin said...

I would think that someone named Pocahontas would try to be more familiar with the concept of "government giving back what it shouldn't have taken in the first place."