If you live in the United States and made a certain amount of money (or paid a certain amount of taxes, or something like that), you’ll be getting a tax refund soon. While I never turn down free money, I have two issues with this new economy boosting idea.

1. $42 million to send a letter!?!?!

Did you know that it cost our government $42 million to send the NOTIFICATION that you were getting money. This doesn’t factor the cost of actually mailing your check, this is just to let you know that you’ll be getting money. I would rather have them save the $42 million and let it be a surprise for those 8 people that didn’t know the money was coming.  Since this has been all over the Fresno news and in the Fresno Bee, just about every person has heard.

2. This won’t help the economy, at least not in California.

If you don’t know, the state of California is in a HUGE budget crunch with just about every public and state agency (schools, cities, parks, transportation, etc) is losing money that was already promised to them. This means that these agencies are forced by lack of funds to fire people, cut budgets and cancel scheduled repairs and construction projects.

So now just about every single person that works for the state or a city, or a school in Fresno and every other county is worried about losing their jobs. Does that make you want to go out and SPEND money? I don’t think so. Instead of spending my money, I’ll be sitting at home with this money in my SAVINGS account because who knows what will happen tomorrow with these huge budget cuts.

This impacts Fresno because just Fresno Unified School District has over 5,000 employees. I would guess that the total number of employees affected by this in Fresno alone is over 25,000. That’s 25,000 people that think they might not have a job in the next few months. Do you think they’ll be down at Best Buy picking up a new TV? I doubt it.

Since people won’t be spending any money, that will cause our state to spiral further out of financial control. No money being spent, no taxes being taken, no revenue for the state and local cities.

What do you think about getting your tax rebate?

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