Pride. My girlfriend and I are "poor" with two kids and we qualify for every program under the sun. We aren't on any of them. It feels fantastic to say that everything we have, we've earned.
More wood for the fire. This lady is ridiculous. I honestly don't see the appeal... Palin Laughs As Opponent Is Called "Bitch," "Cancer," Mocked For Her Weight (AUDIO) Stupid Celebrities Gossip ยป Bristol Palin Likes To Party! (Photos) She's a damn religious freak with an irresponsible family.
I would say your situation is very different from mistawiskas, the fact that you are young and haven't been working half as long as mistawiskas puts you in that category where having pride is an option.
Aha aha aahahahahahahaha. Flat tax is fair? BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. There is no bigger fuck you to the lower class than an idea of a flat tax. Not to mention the fact that if you're in the <$100k income bracket and not a) living in an extremely high COL area or b) maintaining two households for some reason you're not allowed to bitch. I'm sorry, but if $400 more in taxes a year are going to break the bank you're living way outside your means. Don't even get me started on people making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Meh, if I lived in Alaska you bet your ass I'd be drinking every chance I got. Plus I'd imagine there isn't much going in the way of public transit and fuck walking home. Plus it's her spouse, not her. Her kid's pregnancy is a reflection on the effects of her beliefs when it comes to sex education so it's relevant. His DUI, not so much. Kudos? You preach about wanting all the money you can get now and nobody having savings yet won't take advantage of a program that will put more money in your pockets?
I'll tell you this: Those kind of beliefs are part of what got me where I'm at. I believed in fairness in business dealings, hard work getting you somewhere, honesty is the best policy, never bite the hand that feeds you, etc. etc. etc. I'm beginning to believe that all that philosophy was designed by the power hungry, greedy, to keep people like you and I hard working, shoulder to the grindstone, solely for the purpose of making said greedy people money off of my hard work. I've gone about my life as nobely as posible and found that it was the back stabbers, lyers, cheats and theives that got ahead in the world and obtained easier lives. Oh well, perhaps in the next dimmension it'll be different.
Now you guys are starting to understand the game So long as you don't come to rely on it and use it only as a cruch to get to the next level you will be ok.
Pride is good but you can't eat pride when you and your family are hungry. I see alot of people with pride who won't take a dime from the government but will be at the food pantry cause they don't have enough to keep food in the house. They will go to a place like Christian Community Action for help but noooooo not the government (some do of course but won't admit it) even though it's our hard earned money which is funding the government and it's programs. These programs are for temporary use until you can get on your feet. They are not to be abused which is a common problem. Many of these people are working and have more than one job. There's Pride and foolish Pride, know the difference. If you need help get it if not don't abuse what could help someone else. If our country is becoming a socialist government why are government services being privatized?
^^ Heavy-D nailed it on the head. I figured, just wanted to take advantage of your post to clarify my view on it.
Whoa Wiskas, let me say this: I'm not saying that people who are on programs are bad at all. People need help, and I have nothing but compassion for people like you who bust their ass, and have no problem giving all I can to help people like you. My problem is that the money never seems to go to people like you. Know what I'm saying? This. But even then there are people that have to rely on it. I don't know. It's not really easy to issue a blanket statement on it, I suppose. I just get angry when I see people getting paid off the books (a whole fucking lot of cash off the books) and getting free food from the gov't w/food stamps. Things like that.
The whole point of a flat tax is for simplicity, to avoid the loopholes and exceptions to the current set of tax codes. However, it's anything but fair as taking 20% of the lower group of earners is going to eat into their necessary revenue far more than those at the higher end of incomes. If you make 100,000+ a year, you should not be hurting for money. The two exceptions to this that I don't necessarily include in this are those that either live in a high cost of living metropolitan area like NYC, LA, or DC or those that maintain two households for business purposes. (Like my parents. Their house is out here in Colo but my dad has an apartment in LA because he's yet to find a job that pays close to what he's making out there here in Colo.) Yes, there are costs like healthcare, retirement and what not but by and large those in that set of incomes are not hurting for money. Hell, to pick on MSP a bit, remember the thread he posted about saving over $1000/month just by re-prioritizing his bills? To me and a lot of other Americans $1000/month is an insane amount to "lose track of". What I was trying to say is that if we need to raise taxes (which we do to cover the deficit created by W) or redistribute taxes among the differing income groups, then it makes the most sense to shift a larger tax burden to those who have the disposable income levels. My reference to the $250,000+ a year earners was especially to this point. If your income approaches the cost of a house, I've got no sympathy for your tax bill not decreasing by $7000 a year. We've had 20+ years of proof that the Reaganomics model of a trickle-down economy not working. It's time we shift the burden of supporting this country from the lower and middle classes to those who've consistently profited off their hard work and not given back.
True as anything said thus far! With trickle down, the rich have more opportunities to get richer and the "trickle" runs out about half way down.............of which, myself and 20 million other families are just bellow the "half way down" point. The place where you don't have enough income to make it (especially when the cost of living skyrockets as it has recently) and too much to recieve any sort of aid when problems come up. A flat tax has not been tried yet, The sliding scale has. If something isn't working, it's time to try something new. Problem is, the current systemis working for the rich and powerfull, so nothing changes if nothing changes. All the changes that have been touted, are only variations on a theme. And, the changes are limited to how well the power dawgs can maintain the profit margins.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - there are very few poor people here in the United States. And frankly anybody posting from a high speed internet connection (and not at the library) really can't contradict that. The "poor" people living here in the United States would be considered firmly in the middle to upper classes of most other places in the world. I just don't understand all the bitching about our quality of life. Take a look at a country like France who embraces your beloved socialism and see how the lower class there lives.
I am going to assume this is directed at me and so I'll respond. If you reread my post you'll notice that nowhere in the post did I refer to poor, note my use of the term "lower-income" to indicate that these were individuals, not unlike quite a few posters, here who work full time but don't have large amounts of disposable income. I absolutely agree that there aren't many poor people in the US we're a very prosperous country and those like yourself and I are very fortunate to have been born here and/or our parents to have moved here. No objections here. Again, we're all fortunate to be living here. I don't think myself or any other poster here was bitching about our quality of life. I, however, have been pointing out that our country needs a redistribution of the tax base. Members of lower earning families need to know that when their kid gets sick they'll be able to afford to take the time off to deal with the kid or if they get sick themselves that they can recuperate. You're in an ideal situation, MSP. You're either a salaried employee or you make enough hourly that taking a day off here and there isn't going to kill your bottom line that month. However, not everyone is that fortunate. Teachers are a cliche example but they're a great example for this. Most teachers make under $40,000 a year and likely will for quite a while. (Even with Biden's primary platform of raising teachers' incomes, I doubt we'll see a huge bump in salaries even if he takes office.) Should they have their disposable income limited because of the profession they chose? I am extremely biased being that I may be a 3rd generation teacher, but I'd like to think most would agree with me that they shouldn't be punished because they didn't choose a high income field. This would apply to a number of fields that aren't traditionally high income. Per socialism, I myself don't want a completely socialist state. I just think it's ridiculous that I can put a sticker on an envelope and it has no problem ending up across the country or across the world even, yet if I'm sick I need to worry about whether I've got insurance or have enough money to cover a visit. And France? France isn't even a real socialist state. If you want an example of tried and true socialist states try the Nordic states. I'm jealous of the fact that all of their higher education is paid, they get a student stipend while in school, and have universal healthcare but I'm not jealous of their 60% tax rate.
You're one of my favorite posters here, and one of the few that can actually argue without being a gigantic douche. I enjoy your posts. I can't say that I really disagree with anything you said there. I think I just get upset by the whole demonizing of the rich, like they're any different than the rest of us. Through my friend's father, he's the department head at a local hospital here and easily pulls down 400k+ (that's a conservative observation too), I've heard stories about the people he works with and the taxes they pay and the taxes they would have to pay under Obama. It doesn't seem fair to me. I think that if you're going to raise taxes on one part of the populace, you need to raise it for the others as well (if it's proportioned according to real income). I do agree that taxes need to be raised though. I don't understand the logic of "conservatives" spending out of the ass and then cutting taxes at the same time.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw. :heart: There we disagree as I've outlined in previous posts. Appeasing the lobbyists while preserving their voting base.
If anyone is under the illusion that there are no poor families and people in the USA, open the eyes and take a good look around. Sure the poor that are living on assistence and breeding more people to live on assistence aren't doing badly at all. there is a huge number of individuals that fall through the cracks, and there are a miriad of cracks to fall under. Some of these people even hold down jobs, others are disqualified because they tell the truth which lands them in hot water with the authorities that stamp the OKIEDOKE on the paper that permits living off the welfare system. You almost have to lie through your teeth to get assistence.....set up that way on purpose. The numbers are in the millions MSP. Not all people are at fault for where society and life has forced them. It is an easy thing to say: "they are where they are because they deserve it". That is just a dismissal of a fact of life discovered by dealings with Forrest Gump, namely: "shit happens".
I can agree with that - lots of people end up in the situation due to no fault of their own. In fact I fall into that category, I was born into a poor family and had to chop firewood to stay warm and grow my own food to eat. We shouldn't have been poor though, my parents were just idiots.
Ha ha, very funny. But seriously, how many people do you know that both hold down decent jobs for 20+ years, pay on a mortgage for 25+ years, and yet somehow end up broke and don't own their home? And without any tragedies, they pulled this off in the absence of any of the normal financial catastrophes. They just made really, really bad decisions with their finances. EDIT: Referring to my parents back in the 1980s.
But not everyone that conciders others, and refuses to fuck people over are idiots. Many people are poor and stay poor because of morals, then again soom are poor because they are addicted to one thing or another, or just plain lazy. the "just plain lazy" people are the ones who figure out how to play the system. Some people value the principals of honesty, integrity and kindness to a fault. Absolutely none of the polititians of this country fall into that category. Not everyone that is doing poorly are there by making bad choices. Some only make choices based on percieved facts as they understand them and some are made by trusting in factors based on outright lies presented to them as fact (case in point: Iraq). The other threads that contain disdain and condemnation of people doing poorly as being where they are by irresponsibility and stupidity doesn't even take into account, that subprime loans were presented as something other than what they actually were. In fact they were sold to people who wanted to buy a home and the only option sounded like a good thing as presented by loan officers that were no better than used car salesmen offing lemons to the public. I see the current political race as being the same form of lying and cheating to sell lemons. McC/VPILF, Obammy/Siden all are just used car salesmen selling junk by portraying that junk as a peach and lying, cheating and stealing to do it. Just sit back and watch the game, we all bought into the last line of bullshit 4 years ago, so that makes us all stupid idiots?
I was referring to my parents in that last post, it wasn't meant to apply to the current subprime mortgage debacle at all. My bad.
