I haven’t been able to figure out whether my wife and I qualify for one of the economic stimulus checks coming from the federal government next month, but if we do get one in the mail, I’m going to be quite cross. It’s not that I don’t like getting checks in the mail, but I’d infinitely prefer that the government use the money to protect natural resources or pay for increased Medicare benefits rather than sending us something we don’t really need.
At Feministe, there’s a good thread about where those of us fortunate enough not to need this ridiculous-hand-out-to-the-already-lightly-taxed ought to donate the largesse. Excellent suggestions to be found. If we get the check, 100% of whatever we receive will go to charity.
My concerns tend to revolve around animal rights issues, environmental preservation, and women’s rights. Three charities to consider in each category:
Animals:
Farm Sanctuary
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Matilde’s Mission — now supporting chinchilla rescue abroad!
Environment:
Nature Conservancy
Sierra Club
Big Sur Land Trust
Gender Justice:
EMERJ
Global Fund for Women
Women’s Sports Foundation
And your local food bank would probably really appreciate the giving, too.
Check out the Feministe thread for more. And for Pete’s sake, tax me more, not less.
Agreed. And I’d suggest adding Kiva.org to your list, too!
Ha! charlotte beat me to it. Kiva.org is a microloan site where you can loan your money to people in the developing world who are starting businesses.
I hear the Heifer Project is good as well. And there’s always Medecines Sont Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
I’ll be donating mine to the “poor working class college student” fund. I’ll help one low-income independent student cover the cost of her move to a new state for graduate school without having to max out a credit card.
This is what I call found money. It goes straight into the sock until I really need it.
“this ridiculous-hand-out-to-the-already-lightly-taxed ought to donate the largesse.”
Hugo - does that phrase apply only to your grouping of “those of us fortunate enough not to need”? Many low-income Americans, who pay little or no federal income tax, will get (some rebate) too. (WSJ, 13 Feb). Zero is about as lightly taxed as it gets, but somehow I don’t think those folks will view a rebate check as a “ridiculous handout.” Fortunate, like historical events, is often sui generis.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find certain irony in your comment about the government sending you “something you don’t need.” You can now resource in a direct and greater manner something that you think actually needs resourcing when the federal government, the entity you’d rather keep the money, is not (or under) resourcing that need.
Really, would you rather at this point give your marginal dollar to the Federal government or to the Sierra Club if you believe our natural resources are underprotected?
Also, if you believe you are undertaxed, set your withholding rate to Single 0 and consistently check off “apply my refund to next year’s taxes.” File in the least tax efficient manner. Take the standard deduction even if you can reduce your tax liability by itemizing. There’s no reason to wait for “someone” to raise your taxes when you can do it all by yourself if paying more taxes is your desire.
The government does accept private donations, Hugo.
It’s one of the most inefficient uses of your money imaginable but hey, if you genuninely feel you’re undertaxed, knock yourself out. Turn around and write them a check right back.
If you really want to pay more tax, there is nothing to stop you now. Just send it in (or don’t cash your refund or stimulus check). They will be more than glad to spend your hard earned money to buy a few more guns to send over to Iraq. Social services are pretty low on the list of government priorities these days. Being taxed more will not change that.
At least when my money is in my pocket, I have a choice where to send it and I know it will be put to a good use when I do. ( Our local food bank, Star of Hope Mission, Harris County Child Advocates, Area Women’s Shelters, etc ).
It’s not that I don’t like getting checks in the mail, but I’d infinitely prefer that the government use the money to protect natural resources or pay for increased Medicare benefits rather than sending us something we don’t really need.
The government doesn’t think YOU need it, the government thinks the economy needs it. It’s called a “stimulus” check because you’re supposed to spend it on American products and stimulate the economy (whether the recipients will actually do such a thing is another story).
And it’s not a handout; if I understand the plan correctly, this is just coming out of your refund for next year. The government just wants you to spend it now instead of a year from now.
I strongly suspect that this post’s tones of “Woe is me, I have too much money” is going to disturb a lot of your readers.
I don’t think I have “too much money”. I think I am taxed too lightly, and others in my income bracket as well.
Of course, I can direct the stimulus check however I please. But private charity is not a substitute for the great and good things that only government can do. Private charity cannot build roads, protect vast swaths of the environment, keep NASA going and growing, provide low-cost student loans, re-vamp (please, God) the air traffic control system. Some things are best done by the collective action of the entire people expressed through government. If I get a rebate check, the best thing for me to do with it is donate it. But the better thing would be for the government to keep the money and use it for the common good.
You can send the money back to the government, per your above comment. Here is the information you need.
http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
Please let us know if you actually do give the money back to fund collective action. I would love to have an actual anecdotal example of someone doing this!
Here’s a bit of an anecdote for you, Jessica…
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/tax_me_more_fund_raises_little.php
A little over $10,000 in about six years. So yeah, a few people will willingly give up more of their own money to the tax man (as opposed to the legions who will happily give up somebody else’s). I hear they found a coelocanth in the ocean sometime back too….
It’s one of the most inefficient uses of your money
You know, I gotta agree with the Chief on this one. My dad has worked for the government for over 30 years. I grew up hearing him complain about how most government workers couldn’t give two shits to making the world a better place with our tax dollars. They don’t know how to spend money wisely, and they don’t care. Cut spending; don’t increase taxes. I still favor limited government in most cases, which is why I don’t think I can label myself a liberal.
Mermade, who will build the freeways? Who will fight the wars? Who will develop the space program?
And you gotta love corporate efficiency. Enron, Bear Stearns, Chrysler… running to the government to bail them out from their own stupidity. One of the enduring myths of the right is that the private sector knows what it is doing much better than the government does. And the whole accounting scandal of a few years back made a lie of the hoary old notion that “there’s stricter accountability in the private sector” than in the public.
I understand, but tell that to the guy who “runs” Medi-Cal. My uncle knows him personally, and all he does is sit on his ass and plays solitaire most of the day. I am cynical because the government doesn’t really care about our well-being. I am fine with the goverment building the freeways and improving public education, but I am skeptic of welfare programs as well as Medi-Cal because they are not run very well. Our money could go to better causes.
Sarah, what do you propose to do with the poor who can’t afford health care? Blue Cross of California isn’t run well (trust me on this), and they’re private. Anecdotes about lazy individuals abound everywhere (they’re legendary in the Army, and no one outside of the Amish suggests disbanding the military because of work-shirkers in the ranks).
Remember I’m a government employee. Would a private institution offer you classes at $20 a unit? And yes, we do get federal as well as state money…
I worked for one of the better-run parts of the federal government and I have to say, it made me more of a small-government person. There are very few incentives to perform, very few accountability-checks. The people who work in government are often people who couldn’t get jobs in the higher-paying private sector, and the consequent problems with productivity are easy to see.
Sure, there are things only the government can do. And we need some taxes so that government can do those things. But there are so many areas where government simply gums up the works.
And you didn’t tell us whether you’ll be giving your stimulus check back, Hugo! Are you going to put your money where your mouth is?
Jessica, IF I get a stimulus check (as I said, we probably won’t qualify), I expect we will give 100% to 501(c)3 charities. Because whatever the amount is, the real good of higher taxes is contingent on everyone’s participation — my $600, by itself, means more to a charity than it does to a government. The extra $600 of 50 million Americans, on the other hand, would best be spent by the federal government. It’s an economy of scale.
Wait, you’re telling me you’d rather choose how to spend your money than have the government choose for you? Odd. I don’t quite buy that your “measly” $600 doesn’t matter — wont’ that $600 go towards all of the good things you enumerated above? Sure it’s not as much as you’d like to be taken out of people’s wallets, but it’s something! Maybe you could start a movement to have everyone who believes in the benficence of government give their check back …. then you could start hitting the numbers you think would matter. People who think their money could be better used at their own direction (cretans) could keep it.
I think it’s important to point out that corruption and inefficiency are not necessary qualities of government bureaucracies. Roosevelt’s New Deal bureaucracies were intensely scrutinised by laissez-faire opponents, and almost no cases of corruption and inefficiency (of the DMV kind) were found. This was largely thanks to a culture of service and pride in one’s career as a public servant that, for reasons I won’t speculate on, seems to have mostly vanished from today’s civil service.
Jessica, I will vote for candidates who are most likely to propose progressive taxation. I will give money to candidates most likely to do so. And I will give to charity.
Hey, I tithe on the gross. I think my money-giving cred is pretty strong.
Hey Chief!
Thanks for the link. One of the ideas they talked about seemed pretty good to me, and a win for all. Treasury Bonds. Give Uncle Sam a low interest loan.
Actually, I’ll probably end up giving most of my check (like I do most every month) to the fine folks at Exxon and Shell. Some of it will go to more hard working executives at my Electric Utility. Some will go to the fine folks at State Farm. The list goes on..
When we first heard that these stimulus checks were coming out, my husband suggested sending it back. I thought it was a ridiculous idea-what good would that do?! He then began to explain to me that the money would be borrowed from China-money we as a country could ill afford to borrow as we are already in deficit. Money that would have to be paid back-not by us, but by our children and grandchildren. We would in effect be raiding their piggy banks. Then I began to see the quahdary with accepting it-add to that the fact that the gov’t was touting this as an economic stimulus plan-and was encouraging everyone to not pay down their debts or use it for necessity but to go out and spend it on more stuff we don’t need-this money took on a sinister light. How irresponsible can people be? When you owe money you do not borrow more until it is paid down. You do not go buying unneccessary items when things get tight. You do not steal money from your children to go blow it frivilously. It is poor stewardship and our gov’t is encouraging it. We made up our minds not to accept the money. One month ago we signed papers on a very modestly priced house. We were making good money for us(a smidge over $20,000 a year) and our five boys were in sore need of more room than what our current 2-3 bdrm home afforded. Upon arriving home that day we learned there had been an unexpected layoff and we no longer had a future income. The stimulus check tempted us to disregard our convictions-but the only thing that had changed was our finances-not the facts of the matter. Upon learning that we had recieved our check May 9, we wrote out a $2100 check to the gov’t and put it in the mail to Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News with a letter stating our reasons for returning it and requesting that he send it along to our broken gov’t for us-we want to send a message-we are poor-not homeless or starving poor but we can’t afford to shop at malls or buy new cars or buy name brand products-but I am not sure we would if we could-we have no credit cards what-so-ever-NONE. Checkbook and debit card. The only thing we owe on is less than $20,000 on two homes with 5-10 year notes thru our local bank. We own 3 vehicles and 9 lots free and clear.We spend smartly and make our dollar stretch. We do not get foodstamps or welfare checks-and we do not feel right about accepting money from the gov’t when they are at such odds with our morals and convictions. We can’t afford to be as irresponsible as our gov’t is and would like for us to be. Even though we could surely use it now-to get us thru this rough spot we’re in-we have faith that we can make it thru without compromising our convictions. We are tightening the belt and our country would do well to follow suit.