It was my good fortune to receive a few Christmas gifts this, for which I am very grateful. But, being impossible to shop for (so I’m told), I wound up with a couple of gift cards. Which is fine, even though a lot of people think they make thoughtless gifts, and poor stores of value to boot.

It bothers me a little that retailers make so much money from gift cards that never get used, because it means that consumers are failing to acquire products that have already been purchased (in whole or in part) on their behalf. It’s just darn inefficient.

But that’s only if you think about it from the consumer’s perspective. I’m sure that the businesses that benefit from the gift card economy aren’t complaining a whole lot. After all, they get the money spent on gift cards whether or not the things get used.

On the other hand, what with the economy in such bad shape, leading to grave concern over a possible drop in retail spending maybe gift cards aren’t such a bad idea.

Consider these two notions: First, increased consumer spending is, apparently, an important method for stimulating the economy. Secondly, even wealthy consumers are cutting back, and that’s just making a bad situation worse.

So, basically, even the people with the greatest purchasing power are starting to spend less, which is a problem if they should be spending more, more than ever. Some are worried about maintaining their vast fortunes, while others feel bad for living it up when so many others aren’t.

There’s no doubt about it: we’ve got to get the rich folks spending again.

But we can’t go at it all willy-nilly. If left to themselves, they’d just wind up buying the kind of high-quality, imported stuff that we don’t make here in America. We’ve got to give them every opportunity to had their cash over to domestic targets.

That’s where the gift cards come in.

The plan is relatively simple; ordinary consumers are occasionally dunned for donations at pay-point ATM systems. (If you’ve ever seen something like, "Would you like to contribute $1 to pet-related charities?" come up on the screen while checking out at PetSmart, you know what I’m talking about.) Well, what if a system were set up where the personal shoppers of the rich were given a chance to contribute to a fund that purchased and distributed gift cards from low-end retailers.

That way, places like Wal*Mart, Burger King, and 7-11 would get the money, and no amount of theft or loss of the actual cards themselves would impede the charitable flow of cash from the concerned, high-end consumer, to the desperate American retail establishment. Better still, knowing that their purchases are not only helping the economy, but also directly benefiting the less fortunate, (one assumes that the resulting activated gift cards would find their way into the hands of the needy, somehow) the more fortunate would find shopping to be a less guilt-inducing enterprise.

See? It’s win-win!

Now we just have to see if GM and Chrysler sell gift cards….