Stimulus or Chump Change?

Once, when I loaned a friend $500, he said he would repay me $10 a week from his pay check. I thought about it and then replied that I would rather he paid me the $500 in full in a year than get $10 a week that I would fritter away, or worse, hardly notice as part of my own weekly income.

President Obama's stimulus plan includes a $400 tax rebate for single, and $800 for married, that will not come in one check but will come as an average of $13 fewer dollars per week of federal withholding tax deductions. I might have taken the $400 and bought a Blu-ray disk player, or more cat treats, or gotten my car detailed a few times, thus adding to the needed consumer spending. I am afraid that now I will not only barely see a difference in my paychecks that I direct deposit, I may never really notice that I have a little more pocket money.

I understand the reasoning and I might enjoy the extra money, but a lump sum would have been more helpful. It was not quite enough to invest but was enough to buy a simple pleasure that would have had to wait otherwise.

I am about to be blasphemous, but I would rather not even get the $400. There is strength in numbers and with the multiplier effect, all of these paltry rebates aggregate into a lot of money to really make a difference in schools, health care, research and so on. Taken as a whole, the proposed rebate money could have made a big difference instead of little or no difference to each of us taxpayers. The rebate does only go to those who actually pay taxes, doesn't it?