GenePool Humor

I received the letter informing me of my awesome responsibility two weeks ago. It was from the IRS. Apparently, I was going to receive a check for six hundred dollars!

The news sent a ripple of excitement through my entire family, but I was skeptical. Surely, as this money comes from the government, there must be some strings attached. And there are. I did a little research and discovered that it is my duty to take the six hundred dollars and stimulate the U.S. economy. Yes! The whole economy!

This is a frightening task. For one thing, I don't even know where the economy is located. Does the government keep it in a vault somewhere? Furthermore, exactly how does one stimulate it, and is there lubricant involved? What if the economy doesn't particularly care for me, I wondered. Could be I'm just not its type.

So I set out to find the economy. Initially, I had a hard time. I typed "where is the economy" into a few search engines, but I got back was market survey results with pretty graphs. Then I discovered there are people whose sole job is to watch the economy to see how it's feeling. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, if these people know where the economy is and how it's feeling, why don't they just stimulate it themselves? After all, they must be very well-versed in what gets it excited. Unfortunately, none of them seem to agree about how the economy is feeling. Some say it's depressed, while others think it looks very healthy. And none of them really seem to know what stimulates it. It makes you wonder how good they can really be at their jobs.

I did speak with a few economists, though. I found out that, much like God, the economy is everywhere. That being the case, I wondered whether we are dealing with a vengeful Old Testament economy, or a forgiving New Testament economy. Furthermore, if the economy is everywhere, and I choose to stroke one part of it, how do I know I'm stimulating a good part, and not, say, its elbow? This sent the economists into quite an argument, with sides drawn between Old Testament proponents and New Testament champions, and one fellow who felt the Bhagavad Gita was a better basis for comparison, and so I never got a decent answer.

Eventually, I decided maybe I should just spend the six hundred dollars somewhere and hope the economy likes it. But where? This is a tremendously difficult decision. After all, six hundred dollars is a great deal of money. Why, with that amount, I could take my family out to dinner seven or eight times! I asked my wife what she thought we should do with it, and she suggested we put it into bills. This seemed like a good idea. We owe a lot of credit cards a lot of money, and six hundred dollars would eliminate at least one or two entire monthly payments. It would also reduce the amount of interest we owe, and this got me thinking again. Aren't the credit card companies part of the economy too? These companies thrive on interest earned, after all, and it would simply be irresponsible of me to reduce their profits in such a haphazard fashion. Why, this could actually hurt the economy, and perhaps even anger it. I don't want to anger the economy, especially if it's the Old Testament economy.

I could take the six hundred and go out and spend it. This was probably what the government had in mind when it decided to give me the money, after all. But what would happen then? Say I go out and purchase something with my six hundred dollars, like, I don't know, a bike. I go to the bike store, plop down my money, and ride off on my new bike thinking happy thoughts about a placated economy. Then the owner of the bike shop takes my money and uses it to pay bills, which he would do because he has not been given an official mandate to stimulate the economy like I have and is therefore less concerned about the financial status of his creditors. So by buying the bike I would indirectly anger the economy anyway. Worse, the bike shop owner might think he's got a good thing going, what with people coming in and buying six hundred dollar bikes and all, so he calls up the people who make the six hundred dollar bikes and orders a bunch more, and pretty soon he's standing at the front of his store with excess merchandise, waiting for the rush of people with an extra six hundred bucks to walk in, not knowing that this was a one-time thing. A month later he's out of business because he can't unload the six hundred dollar bikes anywhere, and the economy becomes profoundly depressed and possibly suicidal, while the economists disagree about the appropriate medicinal antidepressants to administer.

So I can't spend the six hundred dollars on either my own bills or on anything that will result in someone else spending it on bills. I thought about maybe putting it into a savings account, which would earn interest and also provide my bank with an opportunity to charge me a new set of fees. Certainly the fee income would get the economy a little excited. But I'm afraid to give too much money to my bank because every time I do they go out and buy another bank. This usually results in people losing their jobs, and we all know how pissed off the economy can get about that.

Then I thought, well, I could give it to a charity. This seemed like a really good idea, and I stuck with it for a while, because most charities like to spend their money on things like helping lower income people, and the more you help lower income people likelier it is they will eventually become first-rate consumers. Having more consumers might just bring the economy an orgasm. This is good.

I thought about this some more, and remembered that usually charities get money from the government themselves. If I gave them money, wouldn't the government then decide they no longer need to? Of course the government hates having excess funds sitting around. It would have to spend it somewhere. I examined the spending habits of the government and decided this might be a bad thing indeed, because it seems like whenever the government is faced with a surplus of some sort it goes out and spends like crazy, much like my family does when not charged with stimulating the economy. So in a way, my giving to a charity would result indirectly in the government keeping the money, and the next thing you know I'm reading about a new attack helicopter that comes with a refrigerator and a satellite TV so our boys overseas can still catch the superbowl while on bombing runs.

This was starting to get complicated. What I needed to find was a place to spend my money without putting it into the hands of a credit card company, a business, a bank, or the government. I briefly considered just storing it under my pillow for a year or two and maybe pulling it out later when the economy wasn't looking, but surely this would violate my sacred duty, possibly resulting in a bitchy economy, and nobody would like that.

Then I figured it out. I'm going to take my six hundred dollars and use it to stimulate internation business, for surely the economy is more pleasant when its neighboring economies are healthy. My six hundred dollars will also help out inner city finances, and in such a way that will actually encourage the government to spend more money in the inner city rather than take the surplus to install a jacuzzi in a nuclear submarine or something. Likewise, the money will not go to any banks, nor will it go to credit card companies. It's the perfect solution.

I'm going to spend it all on cocaine.

© 2001, Gene Doucette

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