Are there any sweeter words in the English language than "The election is over?" Starting tomorrow, I can turn my attention to things like budget deficits, and stimulus packages.
About which, I'm already confused. Everyone, except me, seems to think that a massive stimulus package will improve things. But as I learned it, the theory behind stimulus is that it expands aggregate demand by tapping into excess savings at home. Instead of fruitlessly chasing too few investment opportunities, savings is helpfully channeled into consumption, smoothing the business cycle. Else it expands aggregate demand by bringing in foreign savings that are not needed elsewhere.
But for the first time in, well, ever, we're flirting with an actual decline in global production; we will not be beseiged with flush foreigners looking to park all those nuisance profits. And I don't think anyone believes that America has a problem with excess savings. Given that, a stimulus package seems more likely to move money around into slightly different kinds of consumption than to actually expand aggregate demand. One economist friend suggests that it might increase velocity--but that seems a rather slender thread upon which to hang one's hopes for economic stimulus. How large is the problem of money accumulating under metaphorical mattresses?
But clearly, I must be missing something, because almost all the smart economists disagree with me.
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Are there any sweeter words in the English language than "The election is over?"
And? Whomd'ya end up voting for?
She didn't - if you read carefully, her voter registration efforts were a bit disorganized.
Still, I'd put her in the Obama corner - the half-hearted approval of a prominent blogger MUST be worth more than one mere vote.
Sadly, that means no freebies at Babeland (Instapundit had an item on that one).
Voting is for losers who don't have their own blogs.
Washington is infested with morons that think going deeper into debt is the solution for having run up too much debt, and bad debt at that.
I pray that the coming recession doesn't turn out to be as deep as even the one in the early 90s, but if it is, the response is going to be massive stimulus to the point that the government is going to have problems finding takers for its bonds, bills, and notes. This is the last of the great bubbles, and I fully expect it to burst at some point.
Just play around with the velocity of money equation and see what you come up with...
When ANY economist can come up with a model that can predict the future with any accuracy I might tend to pay attention to them. Until that time comes I'll just go along with what my local witch doctor says---they're just as accurate and far less full of themselves than the idiots who call themselves economists.
Now it is time for the "spreading" to begin. I have advised my two 'Genius" kids in college who cast their lot with the messiah that when they are going to need money for tuition,spring break,thanksgiving break etc, they can call the messiah and he will send them a check for the taxes they never paid. And to thank their brilliant left wing professors on the way out when they do not receive the check.
Since you are too young to remember Jimmy Carter, let me review what is about to happen. The war will be very inconvenient to pay for. We will have a hyper inflation with interest rates of 18%. We will have ideologues in executive branch positions who will nearly destroy our energy sector. Our military will be gutted. Oh, I wouldn't make any plans if you're living in any of our embassies especially in the middle east, you might be tied up for a while.
Now is the time to agree on what a successful presidency would look like. Not from a political standpoint, or even from the standpoint of policy. No, I'm talking simply about the metrics that we should use to judge Obama.
My proposals:
Unemployment rate
Budget surplus (deficit)
Public debt
Any to add to these? How do folks think Obama will do on these? I think the first 4 years of the Bush administration are a natural baseline.
Megan - you supported Obama. Whatever you may intend to write about, you'll be spending the next four years apologizing.
Megan's buyer's remorse begins in 5...4...3...
Fuck Obama. He will never be my president. Goddamnd the pigs who elected him. My first act will be to layoff employees. Fuck that bastard. he can take care of them
No, Tormorrow is the first day of the 2012 campaign. Who do you think the Republican Nominee will be? Who will be head of party?
On the bright side, we are done with elections. We will never have to through this again.
And this is why McArdle is a smarter economist than all those "smart economists". Well said. Best econ blog award, coming up.
Rob, she has no reason to apologize. I for one have long been curious what a second Carter presidency would have looked like, and now I finally get to live through it!
Megan - you supported Obama. Whatever you may intend to write about, you'll be spending the next four years apologizing.
It's not like Megan apologized for supporting George Bush, Jr.
Congrats to Obama, Megan, and the Dems.
I'll be canceling my subscription to this lousy leftist rag, primarily because of that slime-ball Sullivan, within a week. And I'll never visit this site again because of that very jackass.
But for the moment, I congratulate everyone on electing a new President. May he prove his skeptics -- including me -- wrong.
Sayonara!
Are there any sweeter words in the English language than "The election is over?"
The election is over. Time for the purge. I suggest keeping a list of all the things BHO does and never let any public figure - including major bloggers - forget it. And, that includes both those who supported him (McArdle) and those who did little or nothing (Instapundit). Every time they state an opinion and there's an opening, let anyone know what they played a part in.
Well, it's interesting to see the shallowness of the patriotism of some of the commenters here. You're so filled with hatred that you can't pause for five minutes to wish the new president and our country well. Instead you immediately begin fantasizing about the disasters you pray are about to befall the nation. Nice.
In my view, what you're missing (and maybe you've addressed this in another post) is that the standard policy response to an economic slowdown, lower interest rates, has a big chance of not working this time around, because banks are hoarding cash and tightening lending standards *whatever* happens. Interest rates are going down anyway, of course, given how the money supply is contracting now (oh, how I long for the days when I was bashing "helicopter Bernanke" and worrying about U.S. inflation...), but the impact on the "real economy" (someone please ban that expression) won't be felt for a while.
So with a big "ROAD OUT AHEAD" sign on that road, the only other big policy response left is a stimulus package. And it seems like a good option to me (even though I disagreed with the last one), because the costs of not trying it are higher than the costs of trying it. What's the downside of a stimulus package, even if it doesn't work? Higher deficits, but deficits are going up anyway. But the upside is that it might (and I agree with you, it's no foregone conclusion by any means) stimulate demand and get the ball rolling again.
So -- low potential downside, high potential upside. Sounds like a wise investment to me.
In other words, the reason why the case for a stimulus package is so widely approved is not so much because so many people think it's going to work, but because even those who don't think it's not going to work think it's worth a shot. And I agree.
I'd love to hear your response to this line of argument.
To be fair, I was fantasizing (and not in a good way)about the disasters that would befall our nation long before The One was elected. I see nothing unpatriotic about not wanting to see America turned into a copy of the European swamp.
Westchester, the president-elect tried to lose a war so he could win the election. My god, what sort of calamities could his opponents wish for?
Megan,
I'd like to know what your thoughts are on the obvious physical constraints of growing economies that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, top-soil degradation, nitrogen-intensive feritlized, increasingly exposed to coastal vulnerability to storm surges, via wetlands destruction, etc.
I've heard from some friends that many mainstream economists have some sort of laughable ideas about limitless growth and separating economy from its necessary consequences in the real world, which seem frankly like a left-wing caricature of a much-abused field.
Surely mainstream economists aren't so myopic. It's confusing for me to see someone like Stephen Moore guesting on various as a respectable economist. What gives?
@Westchester: Eight years of "not my president" - constant ridicule and hatred vented at George Bush by the mass media and other movement leftists - have left me feeling some bitterness that I intend to cling to for a bit. President Zero will get no honeymoon from me.
Well, now we know we have another 4 years of congress running the whitehouse... oh wait, we knew that months ago.
I'm glad to note that you don't go by "Jane Galt" anymore as you sided with the Looters and not the Strikers. As for me, I plan "to John Galt" for the next 4 years.
I too am skeptical of a stimulus package and for the very same reasons that Megan has pinpointed.
However - the idea to spend during bad times is an old and good one. As Megan has pointed out - it is tough to do so unless one saves when life is rosy or unless one has some rich friends abroad.
Seems pretty hope-less to me...
Then again - a guy named Osama has bombed NY. We declared war and killed a guy named Hussein as a consequence. Then we elected a black-muslim from Kenya for president called... Obama Hussein. If this is possible - then we can somehow turn natural laws around and dream up the reserves needed to decrease taxes while increasing spending - as we should during hard times...?
On a shorter term basis I would not underestimate the Obama honeymoon. While it is true that reality is a bitch I think we may get a short term reprieve from the obvious contractions in the world economy. It's not a stretch to think that what little savings remain might find their way into spending as the world celebrates Obama's victory. And celebrate they will.
If I'm right Xmas shopping trends should start picking up right away. History proves that consumers live in alternative universes. You know the bumper sticker--How can I be out of money when I have checks left!
Of some interest now is the previously rhetorical question--what will Israel do between now and January 20th? Do they believe the info about Iran that we have been seeing these last few years? Publicly at least they do not view Obama as a supporter.
Starting tomorrow, I can turn my attention to things like budget deficits, and stimulus packages.
No, no, Comrade. Remember this dictate from Ms. Obama?:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.
Welcome to the perpetual campaign.
"Game over, man!"--the ghost of Thomas Jefferson, as played by Bill Paxton.
(The sound in the background is John Locke and Thomas Paine spinning in their graves.)
About which, I'm already confused. Everyone, except me, seems to think that a massive stimulus package will improve things. But as I learned it, …, savings is helpfully channeled into consumption, smoothing the business cycle. Else it expands aggregate demand by bringing in foreign savings that are not needed elsewhere.
So what do you think will work? Doing nothing and letting the "market" sort things out? Or do you welcome a prolonged recession? I certainly don’t. If I loose my job, I’m screwed. I am the only working member of my small family. We live modestly but my wife’s tuition bills are significant (we are trying to get her through school without incurring significant debt). The economy is not some abstract concept. It is composed of living/breathing people.
There a demand problem today with consumers cutting back. Almost everyone is hurting. Monetary policy has been rendered largely ineffectual due to frozen capital markets (we are perhaps already in a liquidity trap). IMHO a combination of tax cuts for the middle class combined with increased (targeted) public spending might be the only way to get the economy growing again. Regrettably most of this will be financed with foreign savings - where else will the Chinese/Japanese go? Hopefully once the economy starts growing and creating jobs again, President Obama will have the courage to make those hard decisions necessary to remedy our macroeconomic imbalances.
Does the theory require that there be excess savings to be spent? Deficit spending is just a straightforward reduction in savings (even perhaps making savings more negative), spending future dollars today. Is there something I'm not getting that requires a special kind of savings be spent?
Some people here are drinking or going a little crazy.
Democrats controlled the House for decades until HillaryCare.
People voted out of fear and hope this election.
Obama is the first Democrat elected with a majority since Carter. How did that turn out?
The press loved candidate Obama. They slapped Palin around while ignoring Obama's plan or record. I wonder if they will be as blind and mute with President Obama.
President elect Obama's speech last night was typical. You hear an uplifting speech about change and hope. But what he is going to do, beyond some notion that he will help main street? You walk away saying "That sounded nice, what do we do now?"
Is he now afraid of his past left wing ideas, or did he just want to make a historic speech that hit on a few nice themes but lacked in real substance.
The best way to improve the economy would be a simplification of the tax system without raising rates. A review of regulatory structure to find cost effective ways to meet goals. Restraint on the growth of government. I am more of an isolationist, with less interest in humanitarian wars.
Forget that happening
The 08 deficit was around $450b, a record. This years so far, 36 days the deficit is $428b. Get your mind around that, if you can. Talk about stimulus or fiscal policy this or interest rate policy that is seriously old school. It's a whole new world.
People firmly standing their ground as the ground moves beneath them.
Megan -
I think any "stimulus" that consists of another round of mailing checks to the American people will be put into "savings" -- or, rather, will by and large be used to pay down consumer debt. I don't see any meaningful increase in consumption (or even velocity, beyond a short burst) coming from anything like that.
A neo-WPA (or neo-Eisenhower highway program, if you prefer) seems like it might work out a little better as an engine starter. I'd like to hear your take on that.
IMHO a combination of tax cuts for the middle class combined with increased (targeted) public spending might be the only way to get the economy growing again.
The middle class tends to spend every penny of its tax cuts. The economy can only grow and generate profits for the government to tax and spend if people invest. Since I assume you also support tax hikes for "the rich", who tend to invest their tax cuts and who will now have less to invest and more incentive to shelter their income, where do you plan to get the investment for economic growth and where do you plan to get the tax revenue to spend? Keeping in mind that less investment resulting from tax hikes on the people who do the most investing will lead to a decline in GDP growth. Increased spending coupled with decreased production will only lead to inflation.
And this is leaving aside the obvious moral question of why you believe your spending and your life choices should be subsidized by others.
If I loose my job, I’m screwed.
The surest way to screw yourself is to support punitive taxation on the people who invest and create jobs. The first thing business owners do when profits drop is cut costs. Employees are a cost. There's no free lunch, Tootat. There's a cost to every one of Obama's proposed changes and guys like you will ultimately be the ones paying it.
You get the commenters you deserve. Great job!
Fiscal stimulus would do little to help the economy. For one, those spending bills just because lard laden political gifts to politically connected supporters. Second, the lag time to get the programs working means that the economy is usually recovering before the projects are started.
Dumping checks to the public is better for the economy then these fiscal plans.
However Obama owes a lot of debts to big city mayors and these mayors love to grant construction contracts, union jobs, and bond business to their supporters.
Precisely what mick said. I thought you right-wingers were supposed to be so proud to be Americans. Support your President, remember?
God the level of whining, self-hatred and anger in here is disgusting. Get over it!
Barack Obama is your president for at least the next 4 years. Enjoy it.
If there is no stimulus package,then aggregate demand will continue to fall in a death spiral,as consumers exhaust their spending capacity and their savings and there are no good reasons for businesses to invest capital in production capacity for domestic consumption. This then leads to more unemployment and the cycle begins again. One can argue that in this death spiral there is no halt until there is a substantial fall in American standards of living, to the point where American wages are low enough to compete with offshore low wage areas.
And the state of the world economy minimizes the likelihood that there will be export-focused investment and export-led growth in the near term.
So we need a stimulus,even one that helps to recycle offshore wealth created from American consumer payments. But the key is going to be whether the stimulus creates more recycling by stimulating imports or it creates long term benefit through careful investment.
One could suggest that the most interesting opportunities are in petroleum substitution investments in transportation and energy production. Capital investments in the United States in these areas, shifting the fuel choices for transportation and creating the infrastructure to support these fuel alternatives have the virtue of creating something that has long term value and employment here in the main. It also has the virtue of reducing a substantial outflow of funds.
There are two short term problems in the strategy. The first is that a lot of the technology and component production is offshore and at least initially there will be some continued recycling until domestic capital goods production can be ramped up. The second is that it will take some time to get the program in place. I would suggest that we consider a short term high-employment strategy of investing in local public works projects focused on vacant housing demolition ( particularly helpful in places like the Midwest and upstate New York), local parks creation and rehabilitation ( perhaps including the sites where housing has been demolished), and street resurfacing and sidewalk building.
There are two other problems with the strategy as well that will be of concern. The change in the outflow of funds will not happen without consequences. Hugo Chavez and the Presidents of Ecuador,Russia and Iran will all be destabilized by something that substantially affects their cash flows and our vulnerabilities. Our virtues will not be without cost.
The other is that it has the potential of reshaping our future and we will have to think about that. We have lived for five decades with the thought that the Middle East is important to us. What happens when it is not important to us and just very important to the Asian nations and the EU?
Well, Kat thanks for the advice. Like to clear a couple of things though:
The economy can only grow and generate profits for the government to tax and spend if people invest
I don't know what you mean when you say the economy grows when people invest. People do not invest; people consume and save. Entrepreneurs, firms and businesses invest savings to create jobs and income. If demand keeps falling firm/companies have no incentive to invest; they cut back production and jobs, which creates a vicious circle of falling employment and incomes. That is the very definition of a recession. And we are in one. The question is how long we want to be there.
Since I assume you also support tax hikes for "the rich"
I generally do not support tax hikes ... for anyone including "the rich". But if the government needs to raise resources to reduce its deficit, and seeks to do it by increasing the top marginal rate for "the rich" by 3%, then I really don't give a shit. I should mention that according to me, US corporate tax rates are way too high. I would support a significant decrease in corporate income tax rates combined with shutting down all tax shelters and tax loopholes for large corporations.
And this is leaving aside the obvious moral question of why you believe your spending and your life choices should be subsidized by others
What? What the hell does that even mean? I work hard and I pay my bills and taxes. Maybe you know better but to my knowledge no one is subsidizing my lifestyle. Maybe I wasn't clear but I am not demanding welfare.
The surest way to screw yourself is to support punitive taxation on the people who invest and create jobs.
I don't support "punitive" taxation and I do not understand how you deduced I did. Maybe you have enough income/savings (or "investments" as you like to call it) to get by through a prolonged recession. But I certainly don't. So please spare me the sermons. As a rational individual, I tend to put the concerns of my family first.
There's no free lunch, Tootat
Tell me about it. Better still teach that to the brain trust of the Republican Party.
You are all a bunch of greedy short-term idiots. (And I am an investor, of the angel sort, I create jobs.)
Had Carter won a second term, instead of the actor who introduced double- we might have a thriving green economy, and we'd likely have solid polar ice caps. But you forgot that good investments and good economics depends on trustworthiness and honesty.
Instead, we've got oversized pick-up trucks to show how masculine you greedy idiots are, oversized heels so how how hot your bobble-headed wives are, oversized national debt to show how empty your your policies are. We got lies, spies, and Palinized.
Idiots.
Had Carter won a second term, instead of the actor who introduced double- we might have a thriving green economy, and we'd likely have solid polar ice caps.
Wow, Ive heard people argue counterfactuals before, but that one...whoa. Were you actually around during the Carter administration?
Stimulus package:
The drastic tightening of household credit creates a severe micro-economic liquidity crisis. The financial stimulus of $700+ billion was maybe (maybe maybe) effective in the macro-economic cycle, but did nothing for households except erode their confidence. A large $1000/taxpayer stimulus *in time for the holidays,* plus extended unemployment benefits, could kick start consumption.
$100 billion of the money could be taken from the Wall St rescue package, where it will not be missed.
We're now undergoing a necessary deleveraging. We borrowed too much and have to pay some of it back, and stop borrowing more.
The rationale behind a stimulus must be that the deleveraging is happening too quickly, so having the government borrow money from overseas (in $ thankfully, so we can inflate it away later) will have the effect of slowing down that process.
Megan's point is that the traditional reason for stimulus is to compensate for excess savings, which can't be right except in the sense that having too little debt is the same thing. Can anybody say we have too little debt/too much savings?
If you want to stimulate our economy, I'd suggest inviting Europeans and Chinese here for good long vacations and second home purchases.
They've got savings.
God the level of whining, self-hatred and anger in here is disgusting. Get over it!
I know, right? Quit following our example over the last 8 years and do as we say, not as we do. When will Republicans ever learn?
Seems to me that it matters very much how the stimulus money is spent. Cash rebates to individual taxpayers? Major uses would likely be pay down debt or buy consumer durables. Given that increasing portion of the latter are imported (i.e., US has high marginal propensity to import wrt increased income), I don't see how that has a beneficial stimulus effect in the US. Infrastructure makes more sense: direc temployment, and our bridges and roads need repair even if you don't favor super trains or high density urban transport systems.
Even better, maybe we could direct our stimulus spending to rebuilding the many disgracefully awful schools in our inner cities.
Well liberals are consistent. Schools are a problem - throw more money at them. BTW The Obama/Ayers attempt to improve inner city schools was a complete expensive flop.
And of course we have the other liberal mantra - don't let people keep their money, they only do stupid things with it.
Perhaps if we provide enough liquidity to allow the economy time to reassign resources into productive pursuits (less money to hedge fund managers more money to real production) we will come out of a recession rather quickly.
However, if we let the government soak up resources and invest them in politically popular but economically silly projects, or worse yet to keep dying industries going, we will be in for years of slow or no growth.
Zic
buying a bus pass is hardly being an angel investor in green technologies, even if you think the entire bus system is actually working just for you.
The stimulus-is-good believers need to read a little Jean-Baptiste Say.
The country has been consuming internal capital under near continuous monetary stimulation for over 25 years. Every time the necessary correction of this imbalance begins, we start with stimulus anew, thus making each future crisis larger and more threatening (the imbalances build up unless they are allowed to be cleared by market forces- just see the total debts). All of this works only to the extent that foreign producers are happy to let Americans consume ever greater proportions of their surplusses. This will end at some point, and I think it is increasingly clear that this end point is now not that far off. Borrowing more money to induce consumption will only exacerbate the illness. Someone above wrote above asking if the solution is a fall in the standard of living of Americans. The answer is yes- we have borrowed too much from foreigners, saved too little for ourselves, and the debts must be serviced in some fashion- either our standard of living falls as our creditors consume more of our surplus, or we default in fact or through inflation- whatever paths is chosen means a lower standard of living for someone.
whatever paths is chosen means a lower standard of living for someone.
Considering that 90% or so of our consumption is worthless crap anyway, a lower standard of living might not actually require much sacrifice.
I was here for the Carter years, after the Nixon & Ford regimes unravelled Johnson's Great Society and their budget profligacy put us in the ditch.
It always cracks me up to hear Repugniscum pukes whine about Jimmy Carter, "tax and spend" Dems, Big Government and "de-incentives for the investment class" when history clearly shows that the economy does far better under Democratic rule and that Big Government and budget deficits balloon under Repugniscum regimes. Privatization is an elitist scam to allow private snouts in the public trough. It's the Repugniscum pukes and their "Free Market" deregulation mania that caused the current economic disaster to start with. They've been pretty much in charge for the past 40 years and they've truly screwed the pooch. They put the hapless do-nothing Alan Greenspan and his flawed ideological vision in charge. Get real.
It was the Carter and Volker's austerity measures that allowed for the economic gains of the so-called Reagan Revolution. Reaganites squashed Carter's chance at re-election with their secret deal with the Ayatollah Khomeni & his Iranian Revolutionary Guard to hold the embassy hostages until after the election, leading directly to the Iran-Contra affair.
Toorat,
I don't know what you mean when you say the economy grows when people invest.
We can only consume what we produce. We can increase the GDP (which is how we measure economic growth) by increasing consumption without increasing investment - as you suggest. However, when we do that we are simply changing the timing of our consumption because we are borrowing against future production. This borrowing must be repaid by taxing future production but that tax itself acts as disincentive to produce. We can borrow ourselves into bankruptcy and inflate our way into poverty in the pursuit of keeping demand artificially high to avoid recession. That's what we did in the early 2000's. Didn't work out so well.
People do not invest; people consume and save.
savings and investment are the same thing because you don't keep your savings under the mattress. You put it in the bank (which then lends it out and pays you interest), or lend it to a company by buying a bond or buy equity shares in companies by buying stocks. Your savings are put to work to increase production and that increase in production increases the demand for labour.
I work hard and I pay my bills and taxes. Maybe you know better but to my knowledge no one is subsidizing my lifestyle...But if the government needs to raise resources to reduce its deficit, and seeks to do it by increasing the top marginal rate for "the rich" by 3%, then I really don't give a shit.
I never accused you of not paying your taxes or not working hard. However, those who earn more than you also work hard and may very well have had to pay for more school, training or taken more risks than you did and already pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes. You support raising taxes on them to subsidize a tax cut for you. How is this not a subsidy?
If I were you, I'd give a shit. Many people in that group are not employees but entrepreneurs and they will seek to make up for the the additional expense of of the tax hike by cutting employee benefits, hours or jobs altogether. Taxes are an expense and you are an expense. Since they don't have the power not to pay taxes, they will fire you.
I don't support "punitive" taxation and I do not understand how you deduced I did.
What else do you call a highly progressive tax system? If the response to more productivity is ever increasing taxation, then you have a tax system that penalizes success. How is that not punitive? This isn't a sermon. It's a practical question. I completely understand your desire to keep your job through a recession (I've been there - lost 5 jobs in 4 months in one recession). My point is that raising taxes on your employer will probably have the opposite effect.
There's no free lunch, Tootat
Tell me about it. Better still teach that to the brain trust of the Republican Party.
Touche!!
"Are there any sweeter words in the English language than "The election is over?" "
Yes, "Obama is the Winner".
Sweet.
I'm an "entrepreneur" who employs 5 people.
I know a good thing when I see it and the Obama Presidency is going to be a good thing.
As far as taxes go, America was doing pretty darn well in the 50's, when the top tax rate was 90%. Low tax rates do not equal a strong economy. If you go by history, the opposite may be true.
@Pope Ratzo - If you believe that the government is better at deciding how to invest money than individuals, then yes, a high tax rate on the wealthy makes sense. Unfortunately you'd have to be mentally retarded to believe that.
Rope,
You mean in the 50's when we were rebuilding from the most devastating war in the history of mankind? Are you familiar with the phrase "pent-up demand"? It was all good until supply finally caught up to demand, that's when we got the 70's. But if you really believe that government is better at spending and investing your money than you are, there's a line on the 1040 that allows you to make a contribution to the government. How often do you do that? Thought so.