$600 (make that $300) of Happiness: What They Didn't Tell You About that Rebate

Free money. What could be more exciting. It's like finding a twenty dollar bill in your pocket that you'd forgot about, only MUCH bigger. I was counting on 600 dollars (because that was all the talk) but apparently my bonus gift was only 300. Still, woo hoo! Free money, right?

The idea of free money makes people reckless, buy something crazy, something "not in the budget". Doesn't matter, because it's free money!

Well, I started thinking about this "free money". Where did it come from? Right now, as a country, we are in debt up to our eyeballs for this war in Iraq. War is expensive, and in the past, war was financed by increased taxes. Pay-as-you-go. To-war. And this system made everyone aware of just how much it cost to fight. But this war is different. We are paying for it with a credit card, one with an amazingly high limit, apparently. We owe foreign countries a lot of money, which means we are gonna have to do some major kissing up (and paying back) to keep our economy going once the bills come rolling in.

Once I saw an ad for assistance to people who'd gotten themselves into economic hot water by charging a whole bunch of stuff and racking up a huge debt. It starts with a guy bragging about his possessions and lifestyle, all the items that make up a suburban dream life. But there's something not right about his tone, and he reveals that he is in debt ”up to his eyeballs”. “Sombody help me.” he says, in the same superficially calm tone, barely masking the underlying desperation.

I pictured what comes next in the guy's life. Although the ad is for refinancing your home or borrowing against the equity, without huge changes this is only a temporary solution at best. He'll have to: Sell the house (if he can) before it is foreclosed upon. If possible, return any unused items for a refund. Learn to do without, without much more than he did without before getting himself into debt, because not only will he have to pay for the (previously inadequate) lifestyle, but for the debt and interest accumulated during his attempt to live beyond his means.

But I digress. What this is about is that "free money" most of us got. Where did it come from? Well, actually, it came from you! Or rather, it will. It is borrowed against next year's income tax refund, or so I hear. If this seems vaguely familiar, it should be... we got this same kind of deal a few years ago, leaving many people in dire straits when the refund they were expecting was non-existent, or worse, they owed money because the amount they got exceeded the amount they were supposed to get.

Since we, as a nation, have no money and are therefore forced to borrow money from other nations (not like a loan from a friend, mind you, but a loan with interest) then are we also borrowing the money to send out the "free money"? If so, who's paying the interest? Is it just going to this huge loan we are all going to have to pay? We have become the guy on the riding lawn mower, looking at all our stuff "See this imported stuff? See this war? See my huge military complex, my contractor buddies, my health care industry? Somebody help me, please?"

Some people, angered by the continued call for consumerism in the face of crises, have voiced the need for alternatives to this “keep shopping” solution, a protest of sorts against the short-sightedness of this kind of thinking. Everything from “using the money to pay of debt”, “put it into savings”, “help an underfunded, deserving charity”, or “send it back” has been proposed.