How much should you give up?
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| 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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Because you don't pay 33% on the entire $250,00.
I too asked that question on the welfare and tax cuts thread and got no response.
Actually, that's not true. I got a response from someone who said she wasn't voting based on taxes because it wasn't that important.
Fair enough, I guess. But with taxes being so fundamentally linked to our economy, which is hurting so much right now, I would THINK that would be at the forefront of everyone's minds when they decide for whom to vote.
Anyone who thinks the rich don't pay their fair share care to answer the question? What percentage of the federal tax burden do you believe the top 10% should pay as their fair share?
And please, when coming up with a figure, keep in mind the purpose of taxes--> Not to equalize income or to make things "fair," but to raise revenue for the government. You know, so it can function.
we pay 2,000/month for part time for 2....part time!
And people wonder why I say we can't afford for me to work.
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-Kristen
"I didn't say that people with no income shouldn't get help, I am saying they shouldn't get an income tax refund with no income."
Would you be more willing to accept the redistribution of funds if those who would be receiving them had a pre-qualifcation that they must be working, on disability or retired?
Yes, that's my interpretation too.
I know the question wasn't to me, but I'll answer it anyway :
You're completely missing the point. The problem that we have with Obama's so-called tax cuts is that they're not tax cuts. His plan proposes an expansion of welfare.
If he were to say: People are hurting. Even working people are suffering. So what I'm going to do is, give those people government checks to help them make ends meet, it would be different. Would I disagree with it? Probably, because I personally feel our government cannot afford any more entitlement programs.
But what he's saying is he's going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. That's impossible. 95% of AMericans don't even pay federal income taxes.
My major issue has to do with the way he's disguising his real plan- which is to raise taxes and expand welfare- by calling it a tax cut. Limiting it to working people or retirees or disabled people doesn't make it any better in my view.
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-Kristen
"give those people government checks to help them make ends meet, it would be different."
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not really....i still don't agree with re-distributing for the sake of redistributing.
but jsut out of curiosity, who does that leave? and why should they be paid?
(oh, except maybe people who are unemployment because the were laid off)?
-Kristen
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