OK, then, when you are next clueless about a post I’ll just ignore you. God forbid you actually, you know, read the posts in a thread before you pop off your ignorance.
Ah, a chance for me to do just that right away!
Think about it this way. Not all poor people are uneducated and below average. These days they also have far more available in the way of taxpayer funded help up than they did 35+ years ago. Explain why they are unable to get an education and a decent job.
:rolleyes:
First I’m evil because I don’t help people out, and now I’m a doormat or there must have been some ulterior motive.
And now we are talking illegal nannies. Did you make up that $900 as you seem to be making everything else about the illegals up?
Then why tell me I’m not allowed to say anything about what poor or middle-class people ought to be able to do. Particularly given that I haven’t lived at the middle-class level for all of my life, or even half.
Those handouts mean that they should not be moving into a low wage job, if they had used them to get an education. Even so, why is it “punishing” people to quit giving them a handout once they start making that amount or more on their own? (Remember, everyone here is trying to prove that welfare pays far less than a living wage) Do they have no pride and therefore have no problem taking other folks money without earning it?
Really? Was your family’s take home income higher or lower when you were working than it is with just your husband’s income?
I’ve never understood that argument. If I improve myself and make more money, even though I pay more in taxes, I still take home more money. Why do you think people will refuse more spendable money just because they will also pay more in taxes?
How, exactly, does someone use food aid, housing assistance, or medical care to fund an education? Further, having an education does not guarantee immediate access to a well-paying job.
You didn’t read, did you? Many forms of assistance are cut off as soon as the recipient is employed, even if it’s less than what they were receiving in aid.
It does. So do many, many low-wage jobs. The federal minimum wage is not a living wage.
You know, there’s a saying: “A man who refuses to lend a hand to someone in need is hard-hearted. A man in need who refuses that hand is an idiot.” If you are in need, and aid is available, you are a fool not to take it. Self-righteousness masqerading as pride won’t feed your kids.
I suppose what we’re really seeing here is two different approaches to the very notions of assistance and independence.
Some people, like curlcoat, really seem to think that they are diminished if they seek or accept help from others. These people claim that someone who accepts assistance has no “pride” in themselves, and they often cite their own “pride” to justify their refusal to take advantage of welfare, loans, and so forth.
Other people - myself included - have no problem utilizing all of the resources that are available to them. Perhaps these people are simply slackers and sponges, but in my experience, they understand that utilizing these resources in the short term can make them more independent in the long term. My parents paid the bulk of my undergraduate college expenses, and I went to grad school on a scholarship. I don’t believe that this makes me less virtuous than someone who didn’t have either of those. Instead, I am thankful to my parents and my school for their support, because I’m not so full of myself as to believe that I would have done just as well without it. Further, because I understand this, I give generously so that other people - who don’t have my parents - can have the same opportunities as I did.
You seem to have read all of the posts in the thread, yet that has not stopped you from running your ignorant mouth.
Global competition. 35 years ago, poor people in the US were competing for unskilled jobs against other poor people in the US. This is the same reason that the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor in the US alone has widened dramatically.
Face it, curlcoat. You were lucky to have clawed your way out of poverty 35 years ago when it was much easier. Now, you’d probably be on public assistance.
Nah, it’s how much my colleague pays his nanny.
I can take an estimate for an illegal maid, though. It costs me $100 or so to have my apartment cleaned. Two ladies teaming up could easily clean three apartments or more per day. Three apartments per day, seven days per week, nets $55k per year. At 80% utilization, that’s $44k per year for each cleaning lady. This is damn near the US median income, and approaches the median for my city if not my borough.
At some point, there is a line you cross over barely that puts you in a higher tax bracket, so you end up bringing home less than before you got the raise. Or, if there is a big difference between what you make and what your spouse makes, you may notice it then - that it is actually cheaper if the one making the less money doesn’t work.
Maybe it doesn’t happen to singles - we are married filing joint so that may make a difference.
I admit to being no tax expert, but if my understanding of the way tax brackets work is correct, it is literally impossible to add more money to your paycheck and to actually take home less money after tax. For this to happen, the tax on the extra income would have to be greater than 100 percent.
There are a lot of jobs between low paying and well paying. As for the education, K-12 is free, you get a couple of crappy jobs, room with a bunch of friends or live at home and then if you didn’t get a scholarship you get a college loan, or you pay to go to trade school.
In other words, you work your way up. You put off expensive things like cars, children, house buying until you are settled in a good job and have a cushion. Far too many people don’t seem to understand the idea of actually being prepared for life instead of just blithering into it.
“Many” forms of assistance are not all of them. Here in California, we pay for MediCal and DentiCal even if you are working, as well as whatever aid to dependent children is called these days. Food stamps are still issued if you are working as long as you are under the income level. You can be eligible for subsidized housing. Etc.
Apparently, it is since there are tons of folks living on welfare.
Yeah, it always comes back to the children doesn’t it? Does it occur to you if these folks hadn’t had those kids, they might not be in the hole that they are in?
And yet, you haven’t been able to prove anything I say as ignorant.
Uh huh. So, there are no jobs at McDonalds, no receptionists, no mail clerk jobs left in the US? All of these illegals that come across our border barely able to speak English are finding jobs - how is that working?
I could have easily have been on it back then. I chose not to.
Ah. So that is what all illegal nannies make then, eh?
You are having your apartment cleaned by illegals?
I am no tax expert either, but one thing that is different about what you say as opposed to my situation is it isn’t one paycheck that the IRS is considering, it is two. They aren’t looking at my income or his income, they are looking at the total income for the household.
And the reality is that we together paid out more in payroll taxes than I was earning, when I was working. And at this time, we are slightly more able to pay our bills than when I was working, even tho my “income” is far less.
1.) The longer a woman waits to have a child, the greater the risk of genetic defects, including serious problems like Down Syndrome. Waiting until you have a giant cushion to have a child can be seen as more irresponsible, not less.
2.) By your rules, only the upper-middle-class and higher should be allowed to reproduce. Maybe we should just sterilize the poor! That would help get rid of those confusing African-Americans, too–no more history for curlcoat to have to learn.
Is anyone else delighted that **curlcoat **continues to specifically bitch about **payroll **taxes? I.e., the taxes she paid that she thinks magically became the Social Security payments she continues to take advantage of even though her husband has a six-figure income?
Yeah. But you know, we don’t all have the benefit of your 20/20 hindsight - sometimes the bad stuff happens despite all the planning, after the kids are born. And what, exactly, do you think people with kids should do in that situation? Shoot them? Sell them at auction?
Nah, it’s a combination of a vague memory of pre-1986 tax laws and a misunderstanding of the way computerized withholding works.
Years ago, tax brackets were not based on marginal increments and it was possibler to get a raise that resulted in a tax hike that exceeded the raise. That has not been true in over 20 years.
What does happen is that for most income, (which tend to be based on salaries or wages from corporations, these days), taxes are withheld by the payroll department or ADP or some similar outfit where the calculations of payment and withholding are done by computer. For each paycheck, the tax is calculated based on a presumed annual income. If you get a raise part way throgh the year, the tax on the next paycheck is calculated as though you would have gotten that amount of money all year and the tax is correspondingly higher. This can make one’s take home pay drop if one does not adjust the amount deducted with a new W-4 to indicate that the raise is only good for part of the year, (which many people do not because it is a hassle and because, in fact, you are going to get the overpayments back when you file your annual taxes).
