Use your stimulus check to do right, do good

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Jan. 12, 2021

 

Have you received your stimulus check? Have you spent it? Did you take the money and run, spending the U.S. Treasury funds on something too frivolous for hard-earned wages? Or did you carefully consider what to do with a largely unexpected windfall and choose something useful for you and the economy?

I admit that I was a little blasé about the checks from Uncle Sam. I wasn’t going to refuse it, but I was not especially eager to get it. The so-called stimulus check is not really a check for most of us. Those of us who paid taxes out of a checking account or who received a federal tax refund directly deposited in a bank account could simply wait to see the new money show up in our accounts. So it’s not a stimulus check; it’s more of an automated funds transfer.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman doesn’t like the “stimulus” moniker. The aim of this transfer of funds is not to stimulate the economy, he has written; its aim is to help the economy and many households recover from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This economic downturn is not a monetary problem like a housing crisis or a stock market collapse, Krugman says, it’s more like a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a hurricane that devastates an area where the disaster occurred. Just as the federal government provides relief after a hurricane, it should provide relief for economic disasters, too, to prevent worse consequences.

One reason for my lack of eagerness about that check was the uncertainty about the government money. Long after the problem was recognized and legislation was drafted to allocate the money, Congress and the White House could not agree on the size of the stimulus (or whatever) checks (or transfers). And then President Trump, who had not been an active participant in the negotiations over the relief package, demanded $2,000 per person checks, not the $600 checks Congress had written into the bill passed by the House and Senate. So I wasn’t really expecting money when I saw it — $600 each for my wife and me, who file our taxes jointly, in the bank account.

What should we do with it? A relative recounted boastfully over the summer that he had spent the first stimulus checks approved in March by stimulating the economy. He spent all his stimulus money, plus some more, hiring local firms to make long-postponed repairs to his house.

Our stimulus checks will also go into the local economy, the nonprofit economy. Having worked for two nonprofits, I know what a struggle it is to raise money for good causes. Nonprofits have been hit hard by the pandemic. Some reliable fundraisers could not be held because of pandemic restrictions. Donors who were out of work or who were tightening their household budgets gave less during the pandemic. United Way of Wilson County suffered a $500,000 decline in donations this year. The Salvation Army has closed its Wilson branch.

My wife and I recognize that these nonprofits and their clients are more in need than we are, we’ll give away our CARES Act windfall and provide a stimulus to local and regional nonprofit organization.

If, like us, you have “enough” to see you through, spend your stimulus checks in the nonprofit sector where it’s really needed. Join us.