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Too bad you couldn't have been so "lucky" so predict a certain sector of Wall Street would increase in value (after that bail out)! Wish I could get paid big bucks for such amazing analysis! haha.
Originally posted by dolphinfan
reply to post by David9176
The numbers don't mean anything. I just can't understand this concept of "fairness". What is fair, who decides what is fair and how does "fair" get implemented?
Is it fair that someone should have to pay taxes that go to pay for some gent to sit home and watch TV? Is it fair to have a business owner's income taxed when he receives it and then have the government take a ton of it when he dies to pay for the same joker?
If everyone's wealth was confiscated and everyone got the same money, is that fair? Is it fair that the top 1% of folks in this country pay 40% of the taxes?
Is it fair that a person in a trade who works hard can not afford a decent house, send his kids to a decent school, take a family vacation and be able to put a little money away for his retirement? Yes it is "fair". Is it a serious problem? Yes. Is it something that we should do what ever we need to do to solve? Yes. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
We should get off of the fairness business because it makes no sense. We need to worry about the quality of life folks have and how to make that better, regardless of how much cash folks have.
"poor" people in the US on average have two TVs, cable a car, a computer and a roof over their heads. They get free medical, subsidized housing and utilities, free education, not to mention things like parks, librarys and the rest of it.
The problem we have is that we seem unable to be able to provide a quality of life for many of our citizens despite the massive amount of money that we spend in social programs. In many of these cases it is not the fault of the rich. Rich folks did not trash public housing. Rich folks did not make it such that parks and schools are war zones. The rich did not create a situation where 7 out of 10 black kids in this country are born into single parent homes. The rich folks did not cause any of these problems.
Face it - we have a growing number of totally dysfunctional people in this society who will not educate themselves, abuse drugs and alcohol, engage in risky sexual activity and have children they can not afford to have and raise them poorly. The funny thing is that these folks have well financed pressure groups with stooges like Sharpton who pound the table asking for "more". If you attempt to even discuss these problems you're a heartless bastard, a racist or just about any other ist you can think of. When this group gets larger they expand geographically. They move their dysfunctional lives into neighborhoods that previously did not have that kind of dysfunction. What happens is that the schools in that neighborhood decline, the crime goes up and the tradesman has to move to a more expensive neighborhood where he is on the financial wire. One blip and his life is in the tank.
Trace the problem to its core and it is not that he could not afford the house when he had a period of unemployment. The core problem is that the dysfunction grew and took over a perfectly nice neighborhood and he had to leave.
We also have a culture that is driven by the media where everyone feels that they should have everything anyone else has. There was actually a gal testifying in front of congress last week claiming that her not having broadband in house was a form of neglect. She is claiming this and her son is going to UNC on a full ride. How was the gent disadvantaged so much that we was able to get into a tier 1 college? Congressmen were actually talking about paying for broadband for poor folks. How did we get to this place where everyone thinks they are owed what most folks have had to work to get?
Lets stop worrying about how much certain folks have and how little other folks have and focus on what we need to do to clean up the problems we have - and those problems are not due to the fact that a few folks have a ton of dough.
Of course, the challenge with the current approach to dealing with this problem is to tax, tax, tax. We don't have the guts to deal with the underlying problems that left unaddressed will continue to fester.
I also never got hired or was given a raise by a poor person.
These are complex problems that require serious discussion and some very heavy lifting to solve. Railing about "rich" folks, most of which are small business owners does not do anything but make some folks feel good. If it makes you feel good, by all means, keep doing it. Don't kid yourself that you are proposing anything that will have even a marginal impact on the problems in this country.
Originally posted by David9176
reply to post by tothetenthpower
I felt sick to my stomach. So I left my house with my cheque in hand a brought it straight to the Community Big Brothers/Big Sisters club and donated all of it.
BTW...that was simply awesome of you to do!!! Your tax return was 22,000....I made just under 30,000 in earnings last year.