Reply #30: People who get a tax refund aren't managing their finances as well as they could [View All]

[slackmaster]

I shoot for writing small checks to the IRS and to my state every April 15. I see the present tax structure (tax cuts if you prefer) as $200 per month to spend or invest that I wouldn't otherwise have any control over. I feed that money into numerous local businesses, and that activity helps keep people who are employed to stay that way.

Tax cuts don't create jobs, in fact they are the least effective form of economic stimulus out there, bar none. Oh boy, you get a few hundred back at the end of the year, what are most people going to do with it? Pay off debt, put it in savings, invest it, this has been shown time and time again. The stimulus value of a tax cut is almost nil.

The problem with that view, politically, is that people have grown accustomed to the present tax rates. They don't view them as the result of temporary cuts, which in fact they are; people would view a return to the previous rates as an increase, and you know that's how the Republicans would spin it if we let it happen - "Democrats allowed one of the largest tax increases blah blah blah..."

Cut my take-home by $200 per month, and that of other consumers like me, and we'll all be force to tighten our belts and spend less. Consumer spending drives much of the economy.

I quit a job in June 2009 because they declined to give me a pay increase for three consecutive years. I found a job that's closer to home, more interesting, and pays a lot better. At the moment I'm able to spend and invest at a much higher rate than I was two years ago, but if my take-home pay gets cut I will immediately start spending a lot less.

We would be far better off taking that trillion that Obama just pissed away and starting a true, WPA style jobs creation program with it.

I'd rather see it spent that way than on big corporate bailouts or even on unemployment benefits. At least the public gets some tangible results from WPA type work; some of our finest pieces of public infrastructure like Hoover Dam came out of that kind of government intervention.

There's some overlap in our views. Thank you for making an effort to keep the conversation polite and respectful.