On Tuesday, the California Franchise Tax Board pulled one of the best sleight-of-hand tricks I’ve seen in years. From now on, if the state has sent you an IOU for your tax refund, or your vendor services, you can send them back an IOU in payment for their IOU to you. Get it? No real money actually changes hands. It’s kind of like a board game where everyone keeps rolling the dice until they get to “Pass Go. Collect $25.6 Billion.”
Back in April I put up a satirical post, “Let’s Print Our Own Money,” about services being exchanged in other states through the use of locally printed “currency,” but this is different. This means we should all start walking around with little note pads upon which we can write “IOU $13.67 for lunch.” I can just see them taking that at Nate & Al’s.
I’m no Larry King regular at the deli to the stars in Beverly Hills, but I know my way around their pastrami sandwiches and they’ve known me for years. I can just see myself leaning over the cash register and asking the cashier for a paper napkin upon which I would write, “I.O.U. $13.67. ” She’d look up at me somewhat confused and ask, “What’s this?
“It’s my I.O.U. for lunch,” I’d respond. She’d look at me wryly and ask, “Who do you think you are, Arnold Schwarzenegger or one of those other fancy-shmancy politicians in Sacramento?”
I would reach over the counter and with a grand flourish sign the governor’s name across the bottom.
“What’s this?,” the cashier would ask. “That’s my guarantee that when the governor pays me back my tax refund in cash, I’ll pay you for lunch in cash,” I’d say.
“In that case,“ she’d shake her head and laugh, “there better be a big tip!”
This is, of course, a fictional story, but it’s pretty much how I and millions of other Californians feel at the moment.
This kind of budgeting policy ain’t no ham-on-rye, it’s strictly baloney.