Spend, save, or give away tax cut money?

Because I am a minister the government considers me self employed or in seminary speak, “I work for God.”  All the talk about tax cuts, stimulating the economy, and my upcoming International Affairs Seminar trip with Oklahoma youth has me thinking about the economy, our budget, the house we have rented because we could not sell it, and the ethics of the governments budget.  Every time I think about it and listen to smart (and not so smart, but paid like they are) talk about it I just cannot shake the image of Lords and serfs.  Maybe the image that best fits America is that of “sharecropper” or maybe 20th century coal miners.  Human Resources departments treat people like resources rather than employees with a stake in the company’s future.  Pardon the rant.  So, into this mix comes this article in the Christian Science Monitor.

Spend, Save, or Give Away Tax Cut Money?
by Roberton Williams | The Christian Science Monitor | Feb. 10, 2011

major goal of last December’s Tax Relief Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 (aka extending the Bush-era tax cuts) was to boost the economy by avoiding scheduled tax increases and, at the same time, adopting a few new tax cuts. Both steps, supporters claimed, would put more money in people’s pockets and boost the still-weak economy. Temporarily extending the Bush-era and 2009 tax cuts and patching the alternative minimum taxstaved off the tax hikes. The one-year cut in the FICA payroll taxes that finance Social Security will add about $110 billion to paychecks this year, disregarding the offsetting loss of roughly $60 billion from the expiration of the Making Work Pay credit (MWP). Give people more money and they’ll spend it, thus stimulating the economy, or so the theory goes.

The question is: What will we actually do with this windfall?

, 02/10/2011. Category: Culture.

SOTU: a Late Review

Although many found the State of the Union address by our President uplifting and timely, I was less impressed with the content of the speech.  I heard one talking head on MSNBC note that the President eloquently said nothing of substance.  So, unimpressed with content I’ve not blogged about the SOTU.  I do want to encourage the Congress to always sit in ‘mixed’ company as it helped the rest of us get through the speech with fewer standing ovations that make these things go on forever.  I don’t think that was a show of unity or civility.  It was a stunt that provided a good impact, but they are back to their usual selves: power over problem solving.  I digress.

Snow days here in northeast Oklahoma have given me time to catch up on my RSS news feed and reading.  I saw this from Religion Dispatches this morning while reviewing what I’ve missed these past two weeks.  It is an interesting review of the SOTU.

State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism
The State of the Union is (Not) Sinful
by Ira Chernus | Religion Dispatches | January 26 2011

As commentators quickly dubbed the president’s optimistic, future-oriented SOTU rhetoric “Reaganesque,” I thought of Gary Wills’ clever term for The Gipper’s version of American exceptionalism: “original sinlessness.” Obama seemed to be offering his own version: Other nations are racked by inescapable conflict, trapped in the endless echoes of age-old struggles; we are blessed by a unique ability—indeed destiny—to be free of conflict, to be free of the past, to “believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible.”

Anything? Really? You can almost hear the pantheon of European Christian theologians groaning from their graves in disbelief.

, 02/05/2011. Category: Culture, Theological Rant.
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