Faux Real

While Alan Greenspan splits hairs to explain why the U.S. is not technically in a recession, Congress reached a tentative deal on a tax subsidy for taxpayers of a certain income level to receive between $300 and $1200 to help revive the slumping economy.

Barbara Ehrenreich smartly dubs this “Clitorial Economics“:

With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you’d think that the economy is a giant clitoris. Ben Bernanke may not employ this imagery, but the immediate challenge–and the issue bound to replace Iraq and immigration in the presidential race–is how best to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.

Now I certainly won’t be turning away an extra check from the government, living paycheck to paycheck as we do. But I look at our living expenses, my college loan debt, and minor things that could be done to fix up some of our home and personal jankiness, knowing full well that what I’ll end up doing is pay off a little here and there and squirrel the rest away just to be safe, not dumping it back into $300 of WalMart purchases to boost the economy.

I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but how exactly does the government expect to cover this huge subsidy what with the growing national debt and a fucking war overseas? And since we’re being negative: Since you have to have earned $3000 last year to qualify, the unemployed are excluded from receiving the money. And despite the hard fact that food costs are rising, the Democrats were unable to secure a temporary increase for food stamps. What would really relieve the consumer, according to the consumer, are gas and food cost subsidies. Nevertheless, Barbara Ehrenreich explains,

The economic rationale for more a progressive stimulus package, which we hear now several times a day, is that the poor and the freshly unemployed will spend whatever money they get. Give them more money in the form of food stamps or unemployment benefits and they’ll drop more at the mall. Money, it has been observed, sticks to the rich but just slides off the poor, which makes them the lynchpin of stimulus. After decades of hearing the poor stereotyped as lazy, stupid, addicted, and crime-prone, they have been discovered to have this singular virtue: They are veritable spending machines.

But hey, if they come up with a cash-in-hand short-term fix, at least Congress can say they did something to revive the economy.

Meanwhile, John Aravosis is crying over his exemption from the tax stimulus — Zuzu justly mocks him for it because John’s beef is that coastal elites are at a disadvantage to receive these subsidies because they’re broke thanks to hipster urban living expenses. Fuck, man. The $75,000 annual cut-off for individuals — and couples with annual incomes of over $150,000 — is a pipe dream for most Americans.