Wednesday, January 23, 2008

'Twas the Night Before Tax Day... or is that Happy Helicopter Day?

by Tom Bozzo

A correspondent asks:
I'm searching for economic advice. If I were to create a national holiday meant to coincide with the stimulus package being planned in Washington, when would be a good time to have the holiday?
It's not so much an economic question, and I dunno. Perhaps, like "Love Day" from The Simpsons [*], it should fill in the gap between established spending opportunities. In one of many cases of life imitating The Simpsons, many of those gaps have been filled — as Easter, for one thing, is being marketed increasingly as Christmas II rather than Chocolate Bunny Time. Otherwise, I don't think windfall opportunities for the Mobility are consistently timed enough to locate the day that's the statistical middle of them.

Any thoughts?

(Cross-posted at Scatterplot)

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[*] Not to be confused with "Love Day" (2004) from Blue's Clues [**], though I've wondered whether that's a deliberate wink at parents trapped in front of the Tube with their toddlers.

[**] And I never thought I'd say it, but Dora the Explorer makes Blue's Clues look like Twin Peaks.

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Comments:
There's a pretty clear sequence: President's Day, [Easter], Memorial Day, Independence Day, [vacation period], Labor Day, Bad Football Day, and This-Is-Where-We-Make-Half-or-Income Month/ Baby-Jesus-Scam Day.

If I were targeting spending, Labor Day is increasingly weak, especially with Year-Round Schooling becoming more and more the rule. Mid-August to late September could use a boost.

You watch too much kids television. And Go, Diego, Go is a sizable improvement on Dora--more Spanish, less bad music.
 
There's always Alan Greenspan's 3/6 birthday.

We only brought the Dora DVD in the house because we needed to reinforce the distractions for conditions too cold to permit bundling the kids up and pushing them out the door.
 
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