We have to understand that the government has no money. The three ways they come about funds are to 1) forcibly confiscate it from our paychecks, 2) invent it into existence 3) or borrow it from other countries. They aren’t like your rich uncle who managed a company and actually generated economic value.

#1, As far as taxation, this is not what taxes are for. If we want to do good things for people, we voluntarily give to them. Sending money to Washington is like a black hole. When the government dumps money onto poor people and countries around the world, hardly anything good ever comes from it. When conscientious organizations give hands-on help in the name of Christ, it’s infinitely better. When it comes to charity, bypassing the congress-middle-man, would achieve a greater return.

#2, When these “do-gooder” stimulus packages and bailouts take place, the government types a number into a computer and out comes a fabricated check. This dumps billions in counterfeit dollars into the economy which makes the dollars that everyone has in their pockets become less valuable. Imagine the impact of someone being able to print a million Babe Ruth rookie year cards, what would happen to the value of the cards people already had? This type of thing hurts the poor every day as prices continually rise. It’s called inflation and it’s not a force of nature, it’s a man-made consequence of printing currency that has no actual value (like it used to be when it represented a precious metal). Giving dollars that don’t exist to people who don’t have dollars inevitably makes dollars worth less so they can’t buy anything with them anyway! When poor people get to the point where they can put money in the bank, they can barely get a rate of return that can beat inflation! That’s simply to maintain the value of their earnings!

#3, Borrowing has clearly gotten out of control and countries are starting to not lend to us because they’re becoming doubtful that we will be able to pay them back. How Biblical is that?

So no, no, no, this $700billion in monopoly dollars should not be spent on anything. They don’t have that money to spend. Remember they’re $10trillion in the hole already!!!!!! This cannot go on any longer.

Please make sure you let your representatives know that this type of action is NOT the solution. Letting the market deal with it while learning to live within our budget is the solution. This event needs to trigger a rational approach to our use of money.

As many of you know, I work with the poor in West Virginia and oversee ministry in other parts of the US and the world. The more I think about this, the more I can understand how the US government can make this bailout happen as fast as it did. Instead they should be doing more for the common family that is struggling.

If Congress and the President have not gotten the memo, foreclosures are epidemic… foreign oil has us over a barrel… US oil companies are making record profits… these type of things need to be bailed out also. The poor and working poor families are affected by this more than some rich, fat company exec that has yet to take a pay cut to save his own company from going under.

I say that we declare our support for a bailout package for American families… and the poor of this country that cannot make their house payments because of growing food costs, gasoline costs to get to work and the across the board ripple effect that oil companies are causing because of their record profits. We need a bailout package to help get living costs lowered. This is the kind of bailout, economic stimulus packages that we need.

It is time for the church to stand for justice for the American family… it is time for our congress men & women to stand for what is right… help those that need it the most… not some rich company exec to keep his high paying job.

One option would be to divide bail out money among all U.S. citizens, but I think you’re right that it won’t solve our crisis, just delay it until we put ourselves back into the same situation.

It seems as though this country has created a socialistic cycle to it that will now change the nature of our government and life here as we know it. Another difficulty with giving all the money away to any other country or cause is that the money is being allocated by the government rather than by the heart or will of the people. In other words, it would be the government STEALING our money and giving it to others, creating the world’s largest Robin Hood, though I’m not so sure our representatives have as good of intentions ;-)

I have a really hard time as a tax payer with the concept of paying for the bad debt of a McMansion that shouldn’t have been built in the first place. But giving a twenty-something a chance to get a true fresh start is somethign I can swallow.