I end up tweaking the state refund even more than the feds. Kansas taxes never line up with the feds ever! I get a fed refund about equal to my state bill almost every year. Weird.

You mention some good points about our current situation, but none of the offsets. For example, taxes – I used to be able to make a pretty good estimate of what my tax bill would be each year, and mid-year I would update it, and change my withholding if it looked like I would be coming up short. It has been years since I could do that. Congress is always mucking about with our tax rates – sometimes even backdating changes in January to the previous year (see Clinton’s first term, first year!). If I can’t figure it out, with an MBA in finance and working in the industry, I doubt that many small business owners can either. If they don’t know what the tax ramifications are of hiring someone might be, they will hold back. Short-term fixes, tax credits for one year, all of those impermanent changes to the tax code will never do as much as a sensible tax code that Congress just leaves alone for a few years!!

If I was taxed less (my money not confiscated at gunpoint to pay for those who don’t have money) I would then work harder, work longer, earn and spend more money, contributing more to the economy.
The only part of that statement that could be considered to definitely happen is that you would earn (bring home) more money.

1) The pace of deleveraging has rapidly slowed (US households BANKED a record 711 BILLION in the last 12 months…
2) Fed Senior officers report loosening credit
3) For the first time in 5 years economy is adding construction jobs
4) Housing starts may seem to have found a floor
5) Interest rates @ record lows
6) Companies sitting on record amounts of cash and PE ratios very low
7) Stock market is up 80% off its lows
8) Public sentiment is very low. The public INVARIABLY mistimes market sentiment. Put it this way, if you were to buy stocks when sentiment is high in the long haul you would get crushed. If you were to buy when sentiment is extremely high, you do pretty well. {Buy low, sell high).

Many many other pieces of data. It is easy to get scared, that is all the media shows. Again, plenty of problems, but the world will be going on.

Refinancing again will drop my monthly payments by ~$180, but will extend the loan 2.5 years (inflation would be on my side?). Interest savings will be a couple thousand more than closing costs so nothing compelling other than the drop (~20%) in monthly mortgage payments.

I’m torn between staying with my current loan, or refinancing and saving the difference. It would make being able to cover the mortgage with rental income easier if I needed to move and rent it out.

How is this good if you’re negative? As things decline, housing seems to suffer the most. I would put this under Postitive category. As the economy recovers, housing may lead the way as it fell the most.

I think this is true. Consumer sentiment is at historic lows, but consumer spending is actually up. Negativity seems to breed more negativity!