Hardly stimulating

Forbes on how the Spendulous marginal phaseouts create disincentives to produce,

Take an example of a single mother with an adjusted gross income of $75,000. She claims the standard deduction and has one high schooler and two kids in college. Under the stimulus package, she'll have her 2009 federal income tax bill chopped to $1,465 from $7,865 thanks to two $2,500 college credits, a $400 worker's stimulus credit and a $1,000 child credit. But if she takes a second job to help pay college bills and her AGI rises to $90,000, she gets no college credits and only $100 of the worker's credit and $250 of the child credit, for a total tax bill of $11,265. That makes the tax rate on the $15,000 of extra earnings 65%--not counting the 7.65% employee share of Social Security and Medicare or any state and local income taxes.