I’d like to book the first week in September for my Hawaiin holiday,but if you can make it Tahiti I’d be eternally greatful.
I realise that I’m not an American citizen but I love the West Wing to death,obviously only when they’re being really right wing(I’m no commie and I’m certainly not ethnic or Gay, scum that they are).
Hope to hear from you soon,my loyalty is my honour.
P.S. dont you just HATE those poor people ?
I for one am eternally greatful that I chose the right parents.
Actually, it’s not that hard, if all he does is try to cheat the government out of their tax revenue all the time. The people he works for and works with probably don’t care that he has no interests other than inventing arguments on their behalf. I think they say, “Great, keep that little bastard working for me, it makes me richer and more insulated from that tedious business of searching the tax codes for minute advantages, and so I can enjoy my life while that pathetic wretch keeps slaving away, and posting on his silly messageboard to people who despise him. What a fucking life I have, and what a fucking life he has!”
More than ever, this thread reminds me to re-read Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, as brilliant a satire on wealth (esp.* inherited *wealth) as was ever penned. One of the points he made clear was as follows: up to a certain point, you own your money. Past that point, the money owns you.
The character of attorney Norman Mushari, with his damp brown eyes, leaps to mind.
I’m still baffled by the idea that someone whose job it is to try to prevent “society” from collecting “society’s” preferred amount of taxes could have a higher value to “society” than, say, gangrene.
It’s probably a poor reflection on my literacy, but I’ll always picture him as Bugs Bunny* robotically announcing “I am Elmer Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.”
*Elmer Fudd is a millionaire suffering the delusion that he’s a rabbit. Elmer bribes Bugs with carrots to take his place in the hospital, the new doctor doesn’t notice the switch, and hypnotizes Bugs into believing he is Elmer Fudd.
Ah, more proof that you are unable to understand what I post. What part of “I am ignoring most of your ranting because it is just the same old thing all over again and it’s boring.” translates into I have lost track of the conversation?
Oh, well, that won’t happen so you’ll have an extremely long wait.
It already has, as you have been incoherent many times, in many threads.
Do you think these two things are mutually exclusive? For example, not finishing high school - which is usually an irresponsible choice - tends to lead to low wages. See my post on how much high school dropouts are costing California alone.
I have already addressed this. 1 percent of the fed budget is still a hell of a lot of money.
Uh “frequent”? Interesting word. Anyway, I have never said that every person who gets some form of welfare stays on it for their whole lives, and I believe I have been very clear about not being able to find anything that states any stats on this. I see that your link has a little bit - I wish they had cited the source of the data they used, other than it came from Ways and Means.
I also note that you didn’t post this bit from that site - “A prevalent welfare myth is that women who received AFDC became permanently dependent on public assistance. Analyses indicate that 56 percent of AFDC support ended within 12 months, 70 percent within 24 months, and almost 85 percent within 4 years (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996).”
Meaning that we are paying to support 15 percent for at least 4 years, which is a heck of a lot of people for a heck of a long time.
"Unfortunately, return rates were also high, with 45 percent of ex-recipients returning to AFDC within 1 year. "
Perhaps this is what they meant by “frequent”, in that for almost half of these women, welfare is a revolving door. Perhaps each time they decide to have a child, they just sign up again?
“Persons who were likely to use AFDC longer than the average time had less than 12 years of education, no recent work experience, were never married, had a child below age 3 or had three or more children, were Latina or African American, and were under age 24 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These risk factors illustrate the importance of structural barriers, such as inadequate child care, racism, and lack of education.”
Less than a high school education, having child(ren) without getting married, having multiple children when one is already poor and doing this under age 24 are all irresponsible choices, IMNSHO. I love (not) how they conclude that racism and lack of child care are at fault… :rolleyes:
I have never mentioned anything about any of the race part because I don’t care what color they are. I do agree that most welfare recipients are children, because almost all programs are directly aimed at children. Which is why I feel that the current programs encourage poor women to have children.
Size of families has nothing to do with whether or not welfare encourages out of wedlock births. It also has nothing to do with whether a woman chooses to have a baby knowing she cannot afford to birth it and/or raise it.
They based this conclusion on the amount of money welfare families are getting from the government, not actually on what these folks may own and/or what money they may be getting from other sources. However, I don’t think that there are really that many welfare families that have significant outside income. It would be nice if the government could actually go check, but I realize there is no real way they can.
They were not linked, so I don’t know if any of it is online or not.
Actually, the bottom line here is that you have just accepted what someone else has concluded without doing any thinking of your own. And you have done it twice - first in believing what some folks here on this board have wildly misinterpreted about my opinions/beliefs, and second by swallowing whole the conclusions from that page without actually thinking about them. Even there at the end your conclusion is that women are on welfare because they get shit for wages, as if that cannot possibly be because of anything those women did. Yet your own cite shows that these women tend to not finish high school and have multiple children prior to age 24. How could they not end up with shit for wages - if they could even find a job with that sort of background?
Plus, when I was in school, I believe most respected libertarians preferred the works of Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) to Rand. I do know that we never came across her in college - not in philosophy, a history of political philosophy, economics, etc. When it was libertarianism and laissez faire capitalism, Smith was always the big one.
Of course, this is the guy who thinks tax lawyers are more vital to a working society than nurses, policemen, fire-men, truck drivers, etc.
(Just wait until someone breaks into that big, sprawling mansion of your’s, or an electrical fire breaks out. THEN come back and tell us who provides more of a service.)
The thing is, this doesn’t have to be such a heated debate once it’s acknowledged that while the free market is a perfectly acceptable vehicle for many goods and services, health care simply isn’t one of them. Not for ideological reasons, but for practical ones. Making sure that our human infrastructure is secure is a strategic necessity, and leaving it up to the free market is just devastatingly foolish.
Sweetheart, it may come as a surprise, but none of your posts, no matter how they are composed, could ever be mistaken for a reward. My dog leaves better rewards on the back lawn.
“Driving an SUV” must automatically mean “purchase price”? It doesn’t occur to you that driving an SUV is itself usually more expensive than driving a sedan? And that purchase price of an SUV (and I am quite sure I said “big” SUV, not one of those “crossover” things) at any age is generally going to be more than the purchase price of a nice Civic or whatever?
Ah, perhaps this is the problem. Do you think it is a common belief that parents should not prepare their children to succeed in life, both thru finances such as college funds, and teaching things like budgeting and delayed gratification? That even tho it was the parents’ choice to create this new human, they don’t have any responsibility to try to ensure said new human will not become a burden on society?
Which of course isn’t true, but you go ahead and believe whatever you want. Seems to be the way most people here like to live.
I’d like you to see if you can possibly provide a cite for any of that. Which you cannot do because it isn’t true, so I expect you’ll either ignore this or state you don’t feel like looking. FTR, my primary school education was in a very poor (money wise) school district and wasn’t very good, my junior high was OK and my high school was full of new age ideas and essentially useless. As for me not being bothered to complete school, I graduated with the rest of my class. “Somehow, my family declined to send my to college”??? They didn’t have the money to do so, and probably wouldn’t have spent it on a female anyway since to them all females must marry, pop out babies and live off their husbands for the rest of their lives. As for trying to continue my education, at what point did you think I should have done so? Between ages 18 and 25 when I was frequently working two jobs, or 25 to 35 when I was just starting to climb out of poverty, or after 35 when I no longer needed to? And where was the money to come from?
Yes, you should do this. Perhaps then you will not just automatically go with whatever the majority tells you is best.
That’s trashy behavior, be you white, black, green, or purple. I don’t consider the opinions of such people to be of any worth, whatsoever. Especially when they break out the PC crap like “Birth Professionals”, and go on about doulas and monitrices, for the love of God. By any chance, are you a grad student?
So, the only responsibility that you think parents have to ensure their children are not burdens on society is to cover them under their insurance until they are 18?
If you work at a well paying job for any decent length of time, you should be able to set aside money in savings and/or pay off student loans. Having the misfortune to be laid off not long after getting out of school is much different than working for years and then getting laid off.
Not yet.
You said -
“When I became seriously ill during my unemployment (nothing to do with my auto-immune disorder, nor my “lifestyle” or any “habits” save having a digestive system) and had to have emergency, lifesaving surgery?
When I incurred more than $60,000 total in medical debt due to hospitalizations after that surgery, because of complications?”
Did you incurr that $60,000 or was it paid for by the taxpayer?
And for the umptyumpth time, those of us who can afford to pay insurance premiums now would have to pay more for those who cannot. Just try to look at it logically - if you have a group of people paying essentially the same premium for coverage, and then double the size of that group with all those new people not paying or paying less of a premium, how long do you think the insurance company will survive if they don’t raise the premium to those who can afford it?
The taxpayers wouldn’t be paying but the taxpayers would?
Which, of course, is completely difference than saying “the woman who was stunned to learn that there are descendants of slaves still living in America today.”
Broomstick sees only what she wants to see. Unfortunately, she is not alone.