How much should you give up?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2008
How much should you give up?
352
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 8:35pm

My mother wrote an angry reply to a post on this board. It was deleted, from what I read in her email. I know you will ask how I got into her email, well, I have the password in case something happens to her. I went into it tonight because I was trying to figure out why someone as lovely and kind as my mother tried to take her own life today. In her email, I found a reply to her post. In that reply, she was asked how much this person should have to give to her out of her $250,000 a year. This isn't an attack, it's an answer from someone who knows and loves my mother more than anything in the world. No doubt this will be deleted as well, but here it is until then.

First off, none of what you will be "giving up" out of your $250,000+ dollars will come to her or to anyone like her. It will be going to pay off the deficit for your children, and hopefully for mine, so that they will not get to a point where they would rather die than lose everything they own at the age of 56.

You were talking about losing 12% of $250,000. That is more than my mother made every year. She lost her job, and is about to lose her house. She never had much, but what she had she has lost over the years due to having a chronic illness. She has no retirement, and has watched her home value plummet. If she sold her house tomorrow, she would make less than $30,000 on it. We all know that's not even a year's income, and she cannot collect SS for 6 more years.

So here's my answer to you. You should be willing to give anything necessary to save people like my mother. You should do it because you have it to give. You should do it because it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't begrudge anyone your 12% who has worked so hard, and given so much of her time and energy to others free of charge when they were in need.

My mother taught us to give. Every Christmas, we had to take one gift off of our "want" list (which wasn't very long, since we were poor), and give that money to charity, or to someone with less than we had. There weren't a lot of people who had less than we had, or so I thought. I learned from my mother that I was wrong. She took me to homes where single mothers who had been abandoned by their husbands sat shivering with their children, wrapped in blankets, because they could not afford heat. We gave her a used kerosene heater and a gift certificate for $30 for kerosene. It wasn't much, but she cried when she got it.

Our next stop was to an elderly black man who was blind from cataracts, and had lost his wife just a month before Christmas. My mother brought him a homemade mincemeat pie, because he had loved his wife's so much. She apologized to him, saying she knew it wasn't as good, but it was filled with love.

We gave shoes to children who had none, clothes to women in battered women's shelters so they could go to work, gas money to people struggling just to get to work, and food to families when the food stamps didn't last out the month.

My mother gleaned fields every year after harvest and donated the food to a soup kitchen, and she also drove over 100 miles around our county giving it to the poor and the elderly. She never asked for anything in return. She has literally given the clothes off her back, well out of her closet, to someone she thought needed them more.

Now she lays in a hospital room, fighting for her life, because when it came down to it, nobody would help her. We kids did as much as we could, but it wasn't enough, because we don't have much either. Social services turned their backs on her because she didn't have a job to go back to. She lost her car, and her utilities were going to be cut off. And nobody...NOBODY cared about this woman who has done so much for others during her lifetime.

You obviously don't understand the spirit of giving. That's sad, with Christmas coming up. Too bad you didn't have a mom like mine.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2004
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:29am
yep, the plan is to keep him in this school until 1st grade when we can hopefully move to a better town.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:31am

You can see that not EVERYONE who is on assistance is lazy.

Jess


Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-18-2005
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:42am

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-Kristen

Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2001
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:43am
How do you know people on "assistance" are driving better cars and have cable and internet?
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2001
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:47am
There is abuse of the system at all income levels.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 9:58am
Jess


Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 10:04am

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Funny, that's what Obama's tax plan is all about...handouts! Just because most of the recipients of those handouts would be good hardworking people doesn't mean they deserve to take money away from the good hardworking people who earned it. If people are having trouble making ends meet maybe rather than demanding a handout they should sell their plasma TV and their new car so they can "make ends meet".

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LOL, I don't have a new car or a plasma TV and have no plans to buy either.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 10:07am

"If people are having trouble making ends meet maybe rather than demanding a handout they should sell their plasma TV and their new car so they can "make ends meet"."


Most hard working people who would qualify for the tax break do not have new cars or plasma TV's because they are too worried about how they are going to pay their mortgage or feed their families.


"Funny, that's what Obama's tax plan is all about...handouts!"

Jess


Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 10:12am
I just checked Obama's website and you are correct, he's considering it. Quite a while ago I saw an interview where in which it was said he was raising them higher than that so maybe he's changed his mind about that. "Considering it" doesn't convince me, however, that he isn't going to go for the whole 12.4% but I will concede that right now he's not saying he'll raise it 12.4%. For whatever his word is worth.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 10:20am

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We had a taste of what it is like (the entire global economy is threatened to collapse)

 

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