Column:

Uncle Sam to middle class: please take my money

By Charles Austin

Published March 4, 2008

As a kid, I always hoped a truly selfless rich person would come along and just hand out money to everyone. I always wondered what was stopping Bill Gates from handing out $20 bills to everyone in the country. As it turns out, the answer is self-interest, and I suspect that in his twilight years, Bill Gates will dedicate a library to himself following in the footsteps of such great egomaniacal, library-donating barons as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and “Ellis,” whoever the hell that is.

I gave up on my dream years ago, when I realized that would-be humanitarians such as M.C. Hammer would rather squander their fortunes on parachute pants than us poor people making less than seven figures.

But years after I’d given up hope, it seems that my dreams are finally coming to fruition, thanks to the richest person of all: the government. Yes, this year senile ol’ Uncle Sam is giving us average taxpaying Joes free money. You heard right, folks: free money.

For many college students, this will manifest itself as a check for 300 clams, signed and sent by Uncle Sam himself (Fun Fact: Before he was an uncle, Sam served two terms as President, immediately preceding Millard Fillmore as our nation’s commander in chief).

Think this plan sounds good? Wait! It gets better. No one making over $75,000 sees a single dime of all this free scratch, thus marking the first time in the history of the world that the government is sticking it to all those fat cat executives and oil company bigwigs.

Or so it seems.

Upon inspection of former President “Uncle” Sam’s stimulus plan, his cunning becomes all too apparent.

The reason rich people don’t see any of this precious, precious free money is that the government assumes they would just save it. Old Uncle Sam knows that us nonwealthy (and thus, we can conclude, unintelligent) slobs will go out and immediately spend all our money on “Norbit” DVDs and Nintendo Wiis.

Do I have to spell it out any clearer? Uncle Sam is taking advantage of us by trying to rob us of our hard-earned government handouts! But this summer when the rebates begin to arrive, we’ll teach Uncle Sam a thing or two about underestimating hard-working Americans.

When you get your tax rebate later this year, don’t spend it. In fact, don’t spend any money at all ever. It’s time we working class slobs take a page out of rich people’s books and save everything rather than going out and lining the pockets of those wealthy crumb bums by shopping at the many fine retail outlets they control with an iron fist.

My logic is as follows: the government is giving us free money because we aren’t spending enough. They expect us to waste this money immediately to boost “the man”’s economy, but nay — we will save all of it. This will prompt Uncle Sam to continue sending more and more free money to us, to try to coax us into wasting it. But we will stand strong, and before too long we will all be millionaires ourselves, our fortunes made entirely off government handouts. By then the rich people’s bank accounts will have been bled dry without those commercial profits coming in, and the whole class system will be turned on its head. Once this glorious dream has been realized, freedom will ring throughout a nation of newly made millionaires, and there will be peace and prosperity for eternity.