It’s past embarrassing. It ain’t fair.
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Old greyheads like me and the missus get a senior discount while the young father gets no discount at all. And he’s trying to ignore the four little wigglies his wife works to corral into the booth next to our café table. That’s six mouths for that young father to feed while we greyheads get the discount.
Been there, done that. But it just ain’t fair.
There’s a $1,400 stimulus check that Biden wants to send out to every household regardless of COVID’s specific grip. That includes $1,400 to couples who file jointly for up to $150,000 a year, whether they need it or not. I’m already taking a Social Security check and feel kinda guilty about taking another $1,400 when there are so many with needs so much more than I have. It just doesn’t seem fair.
Numbers are confusing. Trickle-down economics is usually discussed with tax cuts. Tax cuts during times when so much of our country’s infrastructure is in shambles. Tax cuts when our national debt spirals. Tax cuts as the gap between rich and poor widens. Go figure.
Nowadays, some balk on $15 an hour minimum wages for the common man — and, yes, I know what that means for small business owners (because I-R-one). But doesn’t it make sense for honest work for a day’s wages to total significantly higher than a welfare check?
Numbers confuse me. Between discounts and product rebates, COVID stimulus, taxes, and welfare checks (including Social Security), I can’t understand what’s going on. Being the richest country in the world takes a lot of money, and a trillion just doesn’t go as far as it used to – especially when the government just churns out more and more paper money. What is a trillion, anyways?
Numbers confuse me; things don’t make sense. I guess that makes me eligible to run for the legislature.
Remember the good ol’ days when all you heard from the Republicans was about a tax cut? When that notion flies again, the solution is simple: let the Democrats choose to not have their taxes cut and the Republicans go ahead and take their share.”
Likewise, Democrats are all about spending our way back to prosperity. Fair enough. So, let’s just divvy up the national debt so that only Democrats pay the bill … uh, and that’d be AFTER we change the law so that there’s no longer any “Too Big To Fail” giveaways. But I digress.
How you gonna spend your $1,400?
My good neighbor says $1,400 doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I understand this is merely a figure of speech … unless you take it literally. With $1,400, how many days can you buy a can of beans if you buy one can a day?
Pondering that makes a guy wonder what’s for supper. When I ask, she casts that blank look which usually means she ain’t cookin’ and there’s no leftovers in the fridge. Her frown that follows means, “Why do you always think with your stomach?” But she politely says, “Let’s keep politics off the menu.” After years of experience, I translate this to mean “Continue the conversation and you’ll be eating a frozen pizza by yourself tonight.” And she means it.
But I like living on the edge. So, still thinkin’ about that hill of beans, I venture a suggestion about supper: “Ham and beans?”
She mutters something about no frozen pizza left in the freezer. Worse, my suggestion about supper only refocuses her attention on the promise of our $1,400 stimulus check.
“If it’s American to spend $1,400 before it gets here,” she says, “then don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.” The smile which accompanies this declaration says she’s not sweatin’ the details. She knows numbers confuse me.
Ignorance is bliss. Practicing marriage these past 46 years, I’ve learned it’s better to end our conversations with her smile rather than with a mutter (I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, ya know). But I just couldn’t leave well enough alone and, as if I were accusing her of being a Democrat, I blurted out: “You’ve already got it spent?”
She paused. Then, as if offering some dramatic compromise, she said: “I’m as red-blooded an American as the next woman … we’ll figure out what happened to the $1,400 we’ve yet to receive later.”
And, truth be told, I felt relieved. Before I could say anything more, she handed me a nice, new cloth face mask and the car keys and said, “Let’s go get something to eat.”
Full Disclosure: Each week Liz gets the first preview to my ramblings, and she recommends I admit to having a very vivid imagination about conversations that really occur only in my head. And thinkin’ ahead to another supper tonight, I say: “Yes ‘m.”