No check for you

I didn’t get a check in the mail from the federal government this week and for that I am grateful for two reasons.

The first is that my wife and I make enough money that we didn’t qualify for help. I know people who are doing well financially must wave their fist at the TV set sometimes and say, “Where’s my free money?” but reality says if you’re taking home more than the average Joe, you should shut up and be thankful.

The second reason I was happy not to get a $1,400 check was because since the pandemic started more than a year ago, I haven’t missed a single day of employment. Notice, I didn’t say “work” because I did miss a week of work last March when my retina detached and I had to have emergency surgery. Let me tell you, that was just a day at the amusement park.

I do not recommend it. But, getting back to the stimulus checks, I, nor my wife, thank God, lost our jobs. We both got up these past twelve months and went off to rewarding, and I’d like to think, important jobs. Since we were working, we didn’t need the money to put oil in the furnace or food on the table.

The one thing that bothered me about the way our leaders ran the stimulus program is they treated it with such a shotgun approach. By that I mean, they just picked an arbitrary income level and said, “Everyone below this threshold gets the money.” It sounds fair, but is it?

Let’s take three examples and you tell me if I’m nuts?

Couple number one consists of a nurse and fire fighter. Together they pull in, with overtime, about $180,000 a year. Even though they were required to work during a very dangerous pandemic and put their lives on the line, they got no help or reward from Uncle Sam. The attitude was, you two make lots of dough so please go sit down.

If anyone deserved a little boost financially, shouldn’t it have been a nurse risking her life to save others?

Example two, a different couple makes $140,000 per year combined but both spent the last year working remotely. They never missed a single paycheck, maybe they even picked up a little overtime, and neither one ever placed themselves in harm’s way. Despite their comfy existence, they did get multiple checks from the government. Why?

The pandemic and lockdowns never hurt them financially. If anything, they saved a fortune on gas and lunches by not commuting to work because they were in their sweatpants on a computer at home. Does that make sense?

Hold up for my third example, lest you think I’m a cheapskate. Couple number three makes a combined salary of $80,000 and both lost their jobs. Unemployment helped but they slipped further and further into debt because their bills far outpaced their income for the past year. I’m happy to report they did get the stimulus checks but here is my question.

Why are they getting the same amount of stimulus money as the couple making $140K who was never on unemployment?

What bothered me was this throwing money at people based on some invisible income line, without really examining their need. I think it would have been much fairer for the people who were devastated financially to get the lion’s share of the dough. Wouldn’t that make more sense?

Shouldn’t the factory worker who normally makes $70K and is on unemployment, get two or three times as much as a state worker who never missed a check and never had to sit in line at a food bank?

Of the trillions of dollars our government spent, I’m happy that some of it made it directly into the pockets of the people, instead of politicians. But the way they did it wasn’t really smart or equitable. Forget people like me, we’re fine, I’m talking about the truly needy who were treated the same as those who never suffered financially.

I had CNBC on, and they were joking about how some people were so well off already, they used their stimulus checks to buy stocks and have fun, as if they were at the casino.

I know nobody in Washington cares what I think but I thought someone should say it. Some people came out ahead in this horrible thing because they were given money they didn’t earn or need. I suspect we are about to see the same nonsense happen with some towns who are doing fine financially yet they are in line for a multi-million-dollar stimulus windfall from the last big bill.

I wouldn’t care, except for the fact that the money is not free and eventually we’ll all have to pay for it. Remember this moment a few years from now when you look at your paystub and think, “Gosh, they really are taking a bite out of my check every week.”

I learned a long time ago growing up in South Troy, very little in life is free. The butcher bill always comes due, and the feds don’t take IOU’s.