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estesbob
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I vote we use CCM08s trust fund.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
They’ll run through that in about a month.
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aurora77
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I have a major problem with the idea that opportunity is something that is handed to us. If what you say is true, what about those people who manage to rise above bad situations and make a good life for themselves? People make choices in life, both good and bad, that’s just the way it goes. The gov’t can’t force someone to take advantage of an opportunity any more than the gov’t can take care of all of its citizens.
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estesbob
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Darn Ive always wanted to show compassion using other peoples money. Guess ill just have to join the Democrat Party intead
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vern_humphrey
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Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? A truly compassionate person doesn’t use his own money to help others, now does he?Darn Ive always wanted to show compassion using other peoples money. Guess ill just have to join the Democrat Party intead
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HumbleMom
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I was once a single mom who did not pursue child support. I worked in an emergency room at night so that I could be with my child during most of his waking hours. Almost every night in the emergency room, a horrible smell would waft through and linger in your clothes or your hair (the source of the smell changed from night to night and might be gangrene, a (formerly) blocked intestine, a homeless person found sleeping in a dumpster, etc) One busy night, I was collecting patient information and a young single mom, feeling imbarrassed about her insurance status, told me that she used to have a job at KFC, but she had to quit because the smell of the raw chicken made her feel sick. Therefore, she had no choice but to stay home and collect welfare.
I felt sorry for the girl because she was very young and had been raised in an entitlement society which taught her that she had a right to a job that did not involve any unpleasantness. Many also feel that they have a right to walk away from any unpleasantness in a marriage (like boredom, for example) and then they are upset when there is not enough money to live as well as they did prior to divorce. When society subsidizes poor choices, more people make bad choices.
I felt sorry for the girl because she was very young and had been raised in an entitlement society which taught her that she had a right to a job that did not involve any unpleasantness. Many also feel that they have a right to walk away from any unpleasantness in a marriage (like boredom, for example) and then they are upset when there is not enough money to live as well as they did prior to divorce. When society subsidizes poor choices, more people make bad choices.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
Years ago, PBS did a series on “Ethics in America.” They assembled panels, and put various ethical situations to them. On one show, they had a woman on welfare address the panel. She was railing at them, “I’m on welfare because I choose to be a full time mother!”
And none of the panelists had the moxie to ask, “How long do you plan to be a full time mother? And when your child is grown, and you have no skills and no work history, to you expect us to still support you?”
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Sheeniac
Guest
That’s so untrue. Read Millionaire Next Door for some interesting facts. We have a lot of fluidity in terms of wealth in this country, except for the extreme groups - perhaps the bottom and top 2%.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
If a child has a good education, that child can continue on. With the values of hard work, saving and investing, that child can become financially independent – any child.
But the sad fact is, we don’t give our children a good education, especially not the children of the poor. We don’t teach economics and investing in public schools.
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estesbob
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Only those who had wealth handed to them beleive that all the well off got so by haivng it given to them.
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vern_humphrey
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There’s an even larger group that believes all the well-off had it handed to them. That’s the group that didn’t save and invest, and who did things like get divorced, or fail to constantly upgrade their skills.
Many of these people are eaten uip with envy and have convinced themselves the well-to-do somehow “cheated” and are morally inferior to themselves.
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stinkcat_14
Guest
It’s funny, one time I was teaching a course at an Ivy league school and Ward Connerly (of anti-Affirmative Action fame) came to give a talk. He was talking about earning your position, etc. Anyway, some student stood up and said: “nobody earned anything, it was all stolen!” The rich as well as the poor can have some crazy ideas.
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vern_humphrey
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There is an old Chinese proverb, “Coolie to coolie, three generations.”
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estesbob
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No doubt I didnt phrase it very well.
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stinkcat_14
Guest
I have a co-worker who came from a very working class background, worked his way through getting a Ph.D, started a lucrative consulting business, and his kids are bleeding him dry. He sent two of his kids to near Ivy league quality private universities (the third is in college now), they graduated 4 years ago and neither one has a full time job. Of course, they have little incentive to find full time work if he will keep paying their rent.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
In one of the Jean Auel novels (Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, etc.) the clan finds a dead mammoth. So they pitch camp right there – and live on decaying mammoth meat for several months.
Hey, why go out and hunt when you got a deal like that?
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Sheeniac
Guest
CCMay -
If well-off people don’t want to hear that people have a personal responsibility to use their wealth to help others, don’t you think that would lead them to find something wrong with the idea of personal responsibility?
And that to hide that even from themselves, they would find something in the philosophy (not cult) that wouldn’t point back to them?
I don’t mean to point your fingers back to you, but it sure looks that way to me. There are beliefs that the rich help the rich, and the poor help the poor because that is what they both understand. (Props to Archbishop Sheen as the source.) The rich help out institutions of higher learning, and the poor share their food. The middle class - perhaps it depends on where they are on the SES scale.
If well-off people don’t want to hear that people have a personal responsibility to use their wealth to help others, don’t you think that would lead them to find something wrong with the idea of personal responsibility?
And that to hide that even from themselves, they would find something in the philosophy (not cult) that wouldn’t point back to them?
I don’t mean to point your fingers back to you, but it sure looks that way to me. There are beliefs that the rich help the rich, and the poor help the poor because that is what they both understand. (Props to Archbishop Sheen as the source.) The rich help out institutions of higher learning, and the poor share their food. The middle class - perhaps it depends on where they are on the SES scale.
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vern_humphrey
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Who says well-off people don’t have a responsibility to help others? Point the varmit out to me and I’ll get him by the gazoozelum!
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CCM08
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I have read it, and basically it’s ****. Promoting the idea that a “net worth” of a million dollars makes you rich is just really stupid. I don’t want to offend anyone, but you could have a couple investment properties mortgaged to the hilt living pay check to pay check with a technical networth of a milion dollars. There are a lot of these so called “millionaries” next door that are really living on the verge making minimum finance payments. The credit system is another matter, however.
I have never said there should be no work involved, of course there should. Nor, as so many have absurdly asserted, that everyone should be given everything from the government. This thread is bascially one long strawman as I tend to think few understood the actual point.
What I do find more interesting is the level to which everyone deludes themselves into beliving, “hey I can be rich to.” Social mobility exists, however it’s as often downward as it is upward. It’s also fairly rare for someone to move up the ladder a great deal.
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CCM08
Guest
Actually, most of my earnings come from working full and time and manging my investments. But again, despite the fact I “earned” those things all of it comes back to what was afforded me by accident of birth that wasn’t to others.
To play devil’s advocate, why should I give her anything? It’s not my kid and I have no relation to her. She’s not a member of my Church. The girl’s mother needs to take personal responiblity and pay the bill, even if it means not eating.
Again, strawman argument. Sure I could, and actually we did, give them the money. It takes care of the bill, but their economic situation is unchanged. The fact is we don’t live in a barbaric society, whether you’d like it or not, and when they reach the bottom we will end up paying for them. Private charity is great, but is often far too limited. It’s simply cheaper to keep them from reaching the bottom then it is to finance them once they get there.
The government has nothing to do with charity. It has to do with social interest. At any rate, I’ve often noticed those that spend the most time advocating private charity are the ones that never donate any money to it. SO instead of telling me what I should do why aren’t you out doing it?One of the problem I see government charity is that it often lacks true charity. People give because they are obliged to give by law. Tax laws could change and require you to pay $800 additional capital gains taxes on your trust fund, but instead lobbying for that and using the IRS as a middle man for charity, why don’t you make a donation to the family you see in need? If you* really* want to go through a middle man, you might be pay for the little girls care by making a donation of stock to the charitable organization where your wife volunteers, thus you’d get a tax deduction* and* a saving on capital gains taxes.Or you could forego any tax deductions and just give them the money directly.
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