So I’ve still got 14-1/2 years to master that? Phew.
Oh, if you asked about this earlier, I missed it - not allowed to respond to all posts you know… :rolleyes:
Anyway, back in the day one could buy a hamburger for about a quarter, and the fast food places would have all of their condiments out on a table. So we would go in there, each buy one hamburger and then make more “hamburgers” out of the napkins and the condiments. For 25 cents, you got a whole meal, as a cup of water was free. And, I am ashamed to admit, at times I didn’t even have the 25 cents, so I’d just have the napkin sandwich.
No, I am not the one that came up with this idea.
Well, since they are illegals, they cannot get disability whether they qualify or not…
But that aside, what does making $35,000 in 1990 have to do with whatever illegal housekeepers make now? What does the fact they are illegal have to do with anything? What does the mean family income in Orange County have to do with illegal housekeepers? Are you even aware that a very small percentage of people here have illegal housekeepers?
There are so many apples there to my one orange, I’m sure I missed many more.
So what if you had a blood vessel burst while you were in that restaurant? What if you got shot in a robbery? What if you had blood cancer? What if you had a heart attack? What if you began hemorrhaging from your vagina?
Would you be a lazy, stupid drain on society, for being broke? Would your family go bankrupt and become homeless because they couldn’t pay 100k in medical bills?
There are people as bad off as you were right now. They can’t afford insurance.
There are people better off than you were back then. They are being denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
There are people who better off than you were back then who actually have insurance, good insurance and will still go bankrupt or not get the care they need.
It’s amazing how utterly unexamined your life is.
(Missed this one too)
Yes, having a job and supporting yourself is nothing special and what people are supposed to do. I take it then you are not one of the people that thinks we should be giving those who do not support themselves free health insurance? Which was one of the points of my story about poverty level to decent money. Or did you not get that?
Jesus, are we going to go thru this again? Go read the thread.
I am sorry you are having trouble keeping track of the fruit. I thought people in California were very familiar with fruit. Perhaps nuts?
You somehow managed to claw your way up from whatever hole you began your life in and landed right in the median. Given that this is not such a great accomplishment, reasonable people might expect that you would show more empathy towards others of your humble stature. After all, it was surely a combination of luck along with prudence and skill that enabled you to win your race to the middle. I would at least expect you to remember the difficulties you endured and thus be more willing to extend a hand to others in need who did not benefit from your own good fortune.
But clearly that’s just me.
How much does your husband make?
He’s just saying that if you’re making roughly the same salary as an illegal housekeeper in your area, it’s nothing to brag about.
Personally I doubt I’ll ever make as much as $81k a year, but then I don’t measure success in quite that way. I understand what you mean by being proud of having made a comfortable living for yourself.
What I don’t understand is why this means everybody else should have it shitty too. You seem to have had all these difficult experiences and allowed it to make you bitter and angry and almost phobic about the idea of relying on anyone else. Whereas my experiences, which were also difficult, have only led me to want to make it easier for people in my shoes. I’m glad I came from the school of hard-knocks, but not so glad I’d wish it on other people.
That sums it up.
I don’t measure success in per annum, either. Hell, I am throwing away my successful private sector career to go back to school where, after a grueling five years, I will make perhaps half of the money I bring in now.
But when income is your yardstick and you score a 50%, well, to the rest of us it looks like you didn’t even pass the test you set for yourself.
In one of the earlier tear-stained versions of the curlcoat saga, she stated that her ignorance (about African Americans) was the fault of the shitty public schools she attended at first. Then her father began making more money & she went to a better school. (Guess they moved.) But she found the classes weird & she couldn’t be arsed to do the work. She graduated but her parents didn’t send her to college. Not that she seemed interested in educating herself. (In school or out.)
She didn’t “claw her way up” from anything. Her family’s fortunes improved. She got a job. She married. After some years, she quit her job…
It gets tougher. Long about 45, the shoelaces start to squirm in an uncooperative fashion.
Apparently, you are unable to keep track of the thread. Not surprising, since this is probably the number one reason why I keep having to repeat myself. Anyway, I tell that story only to show that it is entirely possible for a person born in poverty to work their way out of it with no help from the taxpayers. Nothing else. Because there is absolutely nothing special about me, if anything I am a little below average, I really cannot empathize with people who merely sit on their butts and complain that their lives should be better.
I extend a hand to all kinds of folks in need of a help up. I just have zero patience for those who expect and demand that I do so, while doing little or nothing to help themselves. For example, we had one of my husband’s co-workers living with us for free for a year after he lost access to his condo thru (almost) no fault of his own.
Before taxes, $110,500. After, just under $80,000.
That’s because long about 44 and 11 months, the eyesight starts going so you can’t tell the difference between a package saying “Shoelaces” and one saying “Live Bait.”
Even without your income, your household income before taxes is significantly above the average or the median. You shouldn’t be lecturing anyone about what poor or middle-class people ought to be able to do.
Except, if he has been paying attention at all, even to his own posts, he knows that is not what I am making. Or was, since I’m not working now. He also has no idea what an illegal housekeeper makes, he is just assuming based on census reports. I don’t know that anyone knows what they make since they are, you know, illegal?
Again - I have never said anything of the sort. Read what I actually post and not what others choose to interpret from them. Such as Bridget Burke’s wild tale above.
No, none of the above. What I am is comfortable with where we are, well prepared for the future and this because I learned young to take care of myself because no one else was going to. Now, the rules have changed and those of us who actually earned our way thru life are being expected to pay out even more to those who will not.
I don’t think anyone here is doing that.
Well, I do work for a living and gladly support America’s great unwashed. Your story also isn’t quite interesting enough for me to follow along with the close reading you clearly believe you deserve.
I doubt it. I suspect you keep repeating yourself because you belong to that common species of person who believes that repetition can transform something untrue into something true.
Think about it this way. There is only so much demand for the labor of an uneducated, somewhat below average person. If it were possible for everyone in your shoes to have overcome whatever obstacles you seemed to have overcome, you’d all need taxpayer help because your fungible labor would be worth less.
A year? Damn. Are you a doormat? Did this coworker shake up your sex life or something?
Pfft. A decent illegal nanny around here doesn’t get less than $900 per week, tax free. More if you have more kids.
So, your position is that every time someone demands more money from us, as if $30,000 a year in payroll taxes alone isn’t enough, we should just say “oh sure, and let us know when you need more”?
And I want you to note that $30,000 is almost as much as I was grossing when I quit work. When I was working, we did pay out more in payroll taxes than my whole gross salary. So, not only do handouts cause disincentives for poor people to work, so do the way the tax laws work do the same to the middle class.
No, and I believe I’ve already made myself clear on that point.
“Handouts,” as you like to call them, are not the disincentive. The disincentive is the fact that support typically ceases as soon as the recipient starts working, even if the person’s earnings and benefits are less than what they were receiving in public aid. Punishing people for moving from welfare to low-wage jobs -* that’s* a disincentive.
I wanna be just like **curlcoat **when I grow up. Where’s my six-figure-income husband and my “disability” so I can suck off the public teat while whining about how hard my life was?