...soon the rich are no more. I visited my cousin the other day, who has three kids, no husband or boyfriend, and is living on welfare. She said at the dinner table that she did not understand why should she even try to get a raise if the government is just going to take away the welfare money the next chance they get. I don't get it. Since when did welfare and taxes transform from being a good thing to a terrible, terrible, mistake? I think that it's kind of unfair what has now happened to welfare and taxes and what Obama plans to do now. In America, you aren't supposed to single out people. Right now, my family is being singled out. Just because my family is wealthier than most of the other people, we have to give them our money. I spent the entire summer without air conditioning because we could not afford the taxes on it. It's ridiculous that so many people want our hard earned money, and feel ENTITLED to it. We have the same problems as anyone else. It's like America is the little kid that keeps asking their mommy and daddy to buy them stuff, thinking they have all the money in the world, but really, they don't. I feel as if I'm alone here, and that everyone is pointing the finger at me saying "YOU, give it up, NOW" after my dad just spent two weeks on the other side of the world to earn it. I barely see my dad anymore, and I'm starting to wonder if it's really worth it. I get mad when I hear about people getting tax breaks, or money from the government after they come to school and show me the new Ipod touch their dad just went out and bought for them one day. Where is that money going? Are you really trying to get out of your situation, or do you feel that you're just another number, a statistic, so it doesn't matter in this huge thing we call life. If it's there, why not take it? It's communism i tell you, and I don't like it at all. The whole system needs to be redone. I was watching on the news over the summer about a flood that was happening in Wisconsin. Everyone's basements were flooded. Then they showed a line of HUNDREDS of people standing, waiting to be given free food. There was a man that put his hand onto his knee and said he had water "up to here" in his basement. At first I felt sorry for him, until I thought, so why does this entitle him to free food? Doesn't he have money in savings? So you are out a week or two of groceries? It didn't make sense that ALL these people had nothing to fall back on, no money whatsoever to buy food with and that ALL of their food was destroyed (meaning they ALL had refrigerators in their basements wtf). Even if your couch or TV was destroyed, that doesn't entitle you to free food, and even if you really had a good reason for not being to be able to buy food that week because of the flood, it's still your fault for not thinking ahead and putting money aside for something like this. What do you guys think? Amirite or amirong?
Let me get this straight... Your family is wealthier than most, so your extra tax dollars go to those who have less cash than you? Yet now, your family is struggling, and you still have your extra tax dollars go to other people? That wouldn't make sense, but then again, most of this doesn't because I can't take Economy class till next year. But here is what I observe. It appears America's economy is going downhill, but I am just stating the obvious. The gap between rich and poor is expanding, as middle class families start loosing money due to the economy, while many large business owners, celebrities, etc. continue to receive ridiculously large sums of cash, of which if they should retire, could probably survive fine off of during this economic crisis. If there will be another depression, it won't be the same as the last one, that I am certain. But will people dip into poverty for a period of time before rising out again? I reckon so. Now, you say that the poor are poor because they are lazy, and undeserving of welfare money. That is quite rude of you to say. My family used to be in perfect wealth, as far as my memory recalls. My mom made a 6 figure income before I was born, and my dad worked a steady job as a Sales Manager for a company. But then due to a divorce about 4 years ago, our families wealth has gone downhill. The stress it put on my dad had him resign from his job, and try starting an independent business. My mom is sick with incurable illnesses, and her medication and treatments cost alot, but prevent her from working. But then the legal system raped up, cause now, my dad has to pay my mom $500 a month, per child. So that is $1500 a month my mom receives from my dad for me and my two brothers, yet I don't live at my moms. He is lucky enough to make slightly more than that a month with this business of his, considering me makes a couple sales a month. It is tough. My mom gets my brothers really nice things to use up my dad's money, and I get nothing, because I don't want it. My brothers are young, they don't understand yet, but I do. I got a job at 14, and worked for a summer and half a school year, but had to quit because the stress resulted in my starting to fail my studies. My money I was using to save up for a camera to further my career into the filmmaking arts. However, I had to spend some of it on a new computer to replace the one that broke, and now the rest of the money I allow my parents to use (mostly my dad now, but my mom used it before she started draining him of money). My mom uses a thousand or so, my dad several hundred, because they don't like borrowing from me, but I am fine with it. If we go somewhere, eat someplace, anything, I choose not to go, or make it my burden as cheap as possible. Is my family poor? No, not necessarilly, but we are heading that direction, faster. Are we lazy? Do we deserve this ill fate? ****, I don't think so but maybe my perception is wrong. My point is, many poor families can't help it. It just happens. Whether they were born into poverty, where they have to worker harder than a person should to become economicallys stable, or their money was taken from them due to unforeseen circumstances, not everyone is poor for being lazy. I don't know what to do about these issues. The obvious being just balance out the middle class, taking money from the extremely wealthy giving it to those who are falling down. But then, if we make everyone the same status of wealth, well then we just became reliable upon the goverment, and we will loose our freedoms shortly after. No, we as individuals have to work our way past this. Maybe your money is being taken to give to the poor, but surely then, you won't remain wealthy, and you might fall into the category of families who need that financial boost. Just bear with it, things will work out, but complaining about possible solutions I don't think is the best course of actions. Again sorry that I hardly touched the subject, like I said, I don't get money yet.
This is my opinion on the topic and the topic only, i haven't read your debates (their about as long as the average bible). I think something should be done to help the poor, but I don't think it should be at the wealthy's expense. a lot of people just assume that omfg their all fortune 500 ceo's who do nothing but make tons of $$$. Wrong. The upper-class contains some of the hardest working americans (minus celebrities). They've gotten to where they are from doing well in school, going on to college and almost undoubtedly graduate schooling, worked hard at their job, and after all that have finally received the fruits of their labor aka a big paycheck. so i think that they deserve every penny that they get. just because someone has a lot of money doesn't mean they should give it away to help others. i believe that there are other ways of helping those less fortunate than by digging into the pockets of those who aren't in same position as those less fortunate.
Do we see only the bad side of each person? Only how horrible they were, and not the circumstances that put them in that situation? Why do the rich deserve to be rich? What makes the poor so decidedly poor? For the rich, is it because of their parents spoiling them with money? Or did they actually work hard to reach that status? For the poor, is it because they were lazy and are paying the price for not learning a proper education? Or is it because a series of unfortunate circumstances that forced them into poverty? It's hopelessly natural for humans of one group to generalize the other group to be bad in some characteristic. So of course the rich middle class views the poor as 'lazy' because they worked hard to reach their status. So of course the poor middle class views the rich as 'greedy' because they simply stash their money away. Human beings always try to do the right thing, subjective to how they view right and wrong. The rich feel that they should be more powerful because they earned their right to it through hard work. The poor feel that there should be total equality because they are tired, hungry, and have no money to pay the bills. There are two opposites, negative and positive. And between those two, there is a buffer; neutral, zero. These three relative terms exist everywhere you see. White, gray, black. Cold, warm, hot. Electrons, neutrons, protons. Without the neutral acting as a buffer between the two, the intricately delicate structure would fall apart into utter chaos. And this is why the middle class is so instrumental in the success of the modern economy. The poor revolt against the leading rich class for equality and form Communism. The rich class revolts against the leading poor class for hope and opportunity and form Capitalism. It's a vicious cycle, never to be stopped. Only the help of the middle class buffer keeps these two powers in check. It's a Yin and Yang with a single fragile strip of gray between them. Shatter that, and it vanishes, leaving the two powers free to ream destruction.
Your fricking stole my line. Umm, no. What everHumans do is to head towards happiness. Everything a human does is to achieve happiness. Some think happiness is killing, some think it's helping people. As long as it's done on our Free-Will, we do stuff so that we may be happy. Other than that. Yes, the country is in dept to over 3 trillion dollars in warfare. They chose to pick on the rich because they can supply them the money they need, and are going to be dependent on them to get the money. The government shouldn't be doing that to you, but if they truly are then there is some problems.
i totaly agree. they shouldnt tax the rich and give to the poor. My family is a middle class family but we make due. If we start taxing the rich, we will see our economy decline. See, if we tax the rich then they will stop spending money, Which provides money to buisnesses, employes, ect. Noa when the middle class gets the money they will most likely put all the money to bills, morgages, ect. There not going to be spending money which will make our economy crash. I totaly disagree with Obama on most things. Hopefully i explaned my point well.
Exactly, so why should the government decide that one side is more deserving of money than the other (especially taking into consideration that no one owes you anything in life!)? They have no knowledge of your personal work ethic, or situation so SO many problems arise. You never know who is really going to use that money for good, or who actually worked hard for it. Let me show you the problem in an example. An adult may see two children fighting. The smaller, bratty kid started it by caller the bigger kid a name. The adult does not know this, but assumes because of his size, the smaller child was the victim and punishes the bigger child. PAUSE! The adult singled out the larger child because of his size, even though he was not deserving of punishment. Unpause. Just as in welfare, a wealthy man who may have gone to college for 8 years and worked night shifts to accommodate the cost, will have to later give money to a man who decided to not go to college and be a groundsman for a park. The government does not know either person's past or decisions but decides that this groundsman deserves welfare. Who is to pay for it? Why, the man who went to college. PAUSE! They singled him out just because he makes more money, basically telling him, he does not deserve that money as much as the groundsman. Here we see the problem again. Just because he makes more, the man who went to college is assumed to have not worked hard enough to earn his money, and the poor man has worked hard enough to earn more money, even though the groundsman did not work as hard. Unpause. Sometimes it's the other way around. A wealthy man may have inherited it and never worked a day in his life, while a not so smart man couldn't make it in college. It's still the same though. The government will give the money to the not so smart man. The question remains though, what if that man was just lazy? Half of the money is going to lazy people, which I think is far too much. The system needs to be redone, and I suggest that money should only be given to kids for college and food and whatnot, but not adults. This would stop the whole problem in my eyes. Again, a lesson I have learned in life so far is that nobody owes you anything, no matter how unfair fate is. Nobody is entitled to my money, or anybody elses for that matter. Granted, I don't mind giving money to the children of America because they really haven't done anything to deserve being poor. However, that money goes straight to the parents (and sometimes people who didn't think ahead) which is just wrong.
you are totally correct a women who goes to church is on welfare and has been saving money to send her children to college and to buy a car so that she could drive work and get better jobs when the government found out about the money they said that she owed them money because she could obviously afford to live with out welfare for a year. the system is meant to help people get out of financial crisis not lock them into it. also it should not be for those who abuse it like drug addicts and people who refuse to get jobs
The irony of it is that you're doing exactly what I just stated in my post as what both sides do to each other: you're generalizing the other party, and your own. Take into account that not everyone in the lower classes just didn't "work hard enough", and maybe that they were sued, or fired from their old job, or their home was destroyed in a natural disaster that their insurance doesn't cover. Take into account that not everyone in the upper classes just "worked hard". Maybe these people stole, did unfair business practices, just got lucky in a lottery. A good example of this is that one of my old friends in Hawaii had lived on the north side of the Big Island of Hawaii. Their old house their was destroyed in a hurricane in '92. Insane as it might sound, their insurance company, as well as many other insurance companies in Hawaii, didn't offer hurricane insurance. So with their house destroyed and no insurance to back into, they were forced to plow through their savings, college funds, and their 401k, so they could pay off their old house and so they could afford a new one. That's what we call unfortunate circumstances. Not just because they didn't work hard enough; a natural disaster simply pushed their financial status down the hill. In stark contrast, my neighbors' son had acquired a large sum of money from his grandfather. I don't know how much it was, but I know that it was enough that he bought the house from his parents. They're pretty much forced to do whatever he wants because he can kick them out of *his* house whenever he wants. He spends most of his time just inviting all of his buddies over so they can show off their obnoxiously loud cars driving up and down our hill. Simply put, this guy is a bastard. Does he deserve all of this money? No. So as you'll see, it's not as simple as simply assuming the way people act. You can't say that all lower class people are lazy, because there are many circumstances that might force them into destitution. You can't say that all high class people are hard-working, because sometimes their grandparent's may give an unfairly large amount of inheritance to their ungrateful grandchildren.
Why should the rich be taxed extra when they earned that money. Zander, you are completely correct with your point of the man deserving free food. He should've had extra money saved up. But I think the point of the free food was so he could put his money into repairs, and not basic needs. Although it does seem a little unfair to others, as they are never just handed food for no reason. Meh, it's pretty hard to pick a real side for me. I think the government does take too much of an advantage over it's people, though. I hate the tax deduction on each paycheck that goes to the government. Did they do the work that earned that money? Of course not.
Communism IS wrong, and that story you told of the flood in Wisconsin was a little ridiculous. But I think you're jumping ahead of yourself when you start implying that Obama is going to turn us communist. That's not what he's going to do. First of all, the tax increase he's talking about is going to families that make more than a quarter million dollars a year. That's a LOT of money. My wife's dad makes something like $80,000 - 100,000 a year. If it weren't for all the debt, and bills he has, he could be living well and still not get an increase in taxes. Secondly, the increase that he's talking about implementing, is only a 3% difference. 3%. Honestly, I think families that make a quarter million dollars a year in income can afford a 3% tax raise. It's not gonna hurt them that much. Thirdly, not all of your tax money, goes to everyone else. Tax money goes to the government. The government spends it on a lot of things, and yes, some of it goes to poor families and the homeless, but not all of it. So don't scream "Communism!" when the rich receive a small tax raise that the poor recieves only a portion of. No one's being singled out. You gotta realize that the situation is bad for a lot of people, and it's not all about you. People in this country need to learn to work together, and stop selfishly thinking of only themselves. I'm not saying it's bad to focus on preserving your family's interest, just that you need to also be more aware of the problems other people face.