Did you get your stimulus check yet?

Neither has Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.

But seriously, here is how it works for the poorer rest of us (with the realization that some are much, much poorer than we are, and that IS an honest concern).

This example is a fun poser that has been around for a long time as you can tell by the way it is written. There is, however, a hiccup in 'the way it works' for us which I will explain.

A tourist drives into a town, stops at a motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he/she wants to inspect the rooms upstairs before picking one for the night.

As soon as the tourist walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the $100 and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 bill and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes that same $100 and heads off the pay his bill to the feed supplier at the co-op.

The feed supplier takes the $100 and runs to pay what he owes to the local hooker, who is dealing with the same economy as every one else and has been offering her services on credit.

The hooker rushes to the motel and pays off her $100 room bill.

The motel owner then places the $100 bill back on the counter and waits for the tourist to come bak from checking out the rooms.

Just then the tourist comes down the stairs, says the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up his $100 bill and leaves.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything.

 However, the whole town is now out of debt and can look to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, my friends, is how a stimulus package works. 

Sounds strangely right, doesn't it? 

Actually, it is right as shown. Since each owed the other the same amount, those debts are paid off by reason that all are cancelled in a tacit mutual action. 

Well, we are not in that same economy (i.e. a perfect world) because we have a very large and rapidly growing national debt. We are aggressively spending more than we take in and every dollar has an actual price-tag to it. 

Our national debt was zero in 1935. Our last balanced budget was under Bill Clinton in 1998. The national debt was $5.5 trillion then. Our current national debt has grown since then to $24 trillion today, or $74,000 per person.

And, according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office, that debt is increasing by about $1 trillion per year, mostly thanks to Trump's tax cut which was supposed to pay for itself but isn't. The national debt is expected to exceed $31 trillion by 2030. That is about 98 percent of the forecast size of the economy at that time.

 Side note: most of us in the middle received a very modest tax cut or increase--my taxes increased--while the very wealthy did just fine, thank you... like in "How do you like my new yacht?" Really!

And don't say "It's just a trillion dollars." It would take you 70 million hours, 24/7... or 291,666,666,666.67 days with no sleeping or eating breaks, to count out those dollars. IT'S A TRILLION DOLLARS... and it is our and our children's debt that actually does cost us interest every second of every day. 

And all this is before the $3 to $4 trillion in stimulus dollars we are spending now on this pandemic. 

Want to see something that will make your head spin?  Here is our national debt clock which is filled with second by second updates of all this vital data. It is fascinating with so much information. Check it out.

See? I told you so.

The moral of this story? As a country, we are Number 1 in many areas... not all of them good. But first, let's get back on our feet and go forward smartly. We ABSOLUTELY have to have a leader to take us there. Are you ready? Be sure to vote in November. It will be the most important election in our time.