Bush's rhetoric in last night's debate about his vaunted tax cuts inspired me to post my own personal anecdote here. Be warned that it's kind of long. If you don't have the attention span for all of it, the short version is that I don't like Bush.

I remember the end of the Clinton administration. There was surprise, almost disbelief, but nevertheless an affirmation that we had a surplus. This was immediately followed by debate over what to do with it. For the last few months of Clinton's second term, "Holy crap, there's this big pile of money! What should we do with it?" was one of the leading topics.

Enter George W. Bush. W had a very Republican idea for the money: Tax cuts! Better yet, tax refunds! We have extra money, right? Let's give it all back! Meanwhile, most Democrats wanted to put it toward worthwhile programs, but didn't seem to be able to reach a clear agreement whether they wanted it for Medicare, Social Security, or to pay down the alarmingly high national debt.

Bush got elected President, and signed his tax break into law. Now, people listening to his rhetoric on last night's debate, pay attention. Bush claimed that the economy was already sucking, and that he signed his tax relief idea to try and stimulate it, because more money in your pocket induces consuming, etc. etc. etc. But if you're sharp enough to remember this, Bush had the idea of giving all this money away first. With the surplus gone, he (according to Kerry) abolished Pay as you Go and started charging every program he could set his eyes on, which of course led to his rather impressively turning the largest projected surplus ever into the largest projected defecit ever in a matter of months.

Now here's where it gets personal. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that Bush actually wasn't lying and talking out of his tail when he said the tax cut was to stimulate the economy, rather than to ruin it. He went on about how tax cuts mean more money in your pocket, and with more money you can consume more, which keeps the economy moving. We've all heard the rhetoric and possibly taken an Economics class. We know how that works on paper.

Now, how did it work in practice? I remember the day my family got our tax relief check. Now, we were smart enough to know that it wasn't an actual refund, it was a refund in advance on upcoming taxes, so we knew better than to blow it thinking there were no strings attached. I feel sorry for the people who didn't. But here's the great part: I live in a family of four. Mother and father, older brother (that's me) and younger sister. My father is a systems administrator and my mother is a receptionist. I don't know their exact income figures but I would probably put them in the middle of middle class. This check, for all four of us, mind you, was for $200.

Two hundred dollars.

If we had split it four ways and bought crap with it (instead of letting my father keep it all and put it toward utility and credit card bills,) I would have had a grand total of $50. Fifty! I could..what..buy a Nintendo 64 game with that (that was the hot system of the time, kiddies.) Remember that Bush claims that his tax cut was to stimulate the economy by encouraging consumption. This is what ires me. What was I supposed to do, exactly? Oh, I know! I could take that Nintendo 64 game, draw an American flag over the picture of Mario's head with a sharpie, and scratch out the title and write "Kjorteo Saves the Economy: The Nintendo 64 Game."

I'm fortunate enough to be a work-at-home production weaver. I have a weaving loom in my living room, I make throws on it, and give them to my boss. In reality, I basically work for her, but for technicalities and tax purposes I'm a self-employed freelance weaver who sells my work to her. Also, I get paid by the piece, so my hourly salary basically depends on how fast I go. Therefore, I personally am not affected by outsourcing and the minimum wage. That being said, however, I know that tons of people are on minimum wage, and the minimum wage is crap right now. Meanwhile, those who have high white-collar positions are seeing an epidemic proportion of outsourcing. Bush didn't even answer the question on the minimum wage, and his answer to outsourcing was insulting: "What do I say to someone who lost his job? I say here's an education." Bullshit. People are losing their jobs overseas because labor is cheaper and there's a tax incentive. No one gives a damn how many letters come after your name if they can get the job done for a fifth the price elsewhere. Maybe if you have a doctorate in something and you're lucky, you can become a specialist, but a B.S. in anything is just that in today's world.

Let's ignore the problem of outsourcing for a second and pretend I actually worked at a dead-end minimum wage job. My main point, though I keep straying, is actually about Bush's tax system, so I'll shift back to this hypothetical role so I can talk about that some more. Kerry proposed a minimum wage increase to $7.00 over a few years. If my salary went from $5.15 to $7, that would mean the world to me. I'd have a much easier time paying bills, and maybe I could buy things sometimes, too!

Oh, wait, did I mention buying things? Yes, I did! Let's go back to...the economy. Bush gave my entire family $200. I didn't see any of that because I was just the older child and the grown-ups had bills to pay. Had it been split, I would have had $50 from our most generous President. Now, while "Kjorteo Saves the Economy: The Nintendo 64 Game" is actually a lot of fun (I have 62 stars already, which of course represent investors, and if I can get all the red coins in this level then I can slow the job loss rate) I think I could buy more stuff with a higher minimum wage than I could with that one-shot refund. If the key to economy is to encourage consumption, and the key to consumption is to give people enough money to actually buy crap every now and then, I would come to the conclusion that John Kerry has a far better plan to get that rolling.


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