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: 12-18-2005
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 12:31pm
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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>>


yes, ITA

-Kristen

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-15-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 12:31pm
SO Obama's tax cuts are welfare? At what income does it stop being welfare and start being a tax cut again? IF Obama cut taxes on
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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 12:40pm

but jsut out of curiosity, who does that leave? and why should they be paid?

Jess


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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-06-2003
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 12:45pm

I think everyone who you've asked this of has been pretty clear.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-15-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 12:56pm
I appreciate your input....but I was asking for further clarification. I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that many feel the tax system is welfare. I have never taken welfare in my life ( though I have qualified on more than one occasion) ..and it bothers me deeply that people see me and family as no better than lazy welfare people because we get back taxes....and yes...at times more than I put in. We work hard and dont' have our hand out...so I am simply trying to understand the concept of taxes of welfare...that's all.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-18-2005
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 1:08pm

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you weren't asking me, but in case you want multiple opinions....


i say.....when there IS income....that is where it stops being welfare...


if someone gets out moret than they put in, it is welfare...i think multiple people have echoed this point.

-Kristen

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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-18-2005
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 1:11pm

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-Kristen

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 1:25pm

"that was my point, why should we pay for people who use welfare that way?...they could work, but would rather not, because they make more money collecting, and not working."


I agree to a certain extent.

Jess


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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 1:31pm
Ditto! Couldn't have said it better.
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-18-2005
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 1:33pm

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right, agreed.


i thought we all agreed that it is not a good idea to let people starve, or die of asthma.....or any other dramatic scenario


-Kristen

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