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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It's different because he's not saying that he's going to expand the current welfare system to include anyone who makes below a certain income threshhold.
He is instead saying that he is giving "tax cuts." I have explained numerous times why it is impossible for anyone to give a "tax cut" to someone who has 0 tax liability. Is there something you don't understand about that?
I disagree. I don't think you can post on and on about how you put your child first and describe what you described. Not when other options are/where available but you did what you wanted to do and not necessarily what would be in the best interest of the child.
By all accounts being born into a stable and loving two parent family is what is the best for a child. You chose something different and now sound angry because it's hard. You're a free woman and made your choices freely. With them come consequences which should not be someone else's responsibility to pay for.
So great. I don't want to control your right to have a child before marriage or education but I'll be darned if I'll ever support forcing someone else who made other choices and sacrifices or their "wants" to have to pay for things not working out so easily for those others who made "free choices".
Raising a child in this country is voluntary. There are other options. Being born disabled or developing a catastrophic illness is beyond an individual's control. I can stomach the forced support of those circumstances although I don't believe wealth distribution is in the best interest of society as a concept.
No I understand perfectly.
No. What I oppose is disguising a wealth redistribution plan, a welfare plan, into a tax cut plan. It makes no difference who is receiving the so-called tax cuts.
I already explained earlier what a true tax cut is. If he wanted to cut taxes by just reducing the percentage that, say those who make under 75,000 make, that would be fine with me. That's a tax cut. Giving people refundable tax credits for them to use as they please is not. That is welfare.
If he wants to propose to expand welfare, by all means, propose that. Then we can have a different argument.
Things got a little too personal for my comfort level..
Edited 10/23/2008 9:45 pm ET by dopeone
Things got a little too personal for my comfort level..
Edited 10/23/2008 9:46 pm ET by dopeone
I disagree. I don't think you can post on and on about how you put your child first and describe what you described. Not when other options are/where available but you did what you wanted to do and not necessarily what would be in the best interest of the child.
By all accounts being born into a stable and loving two parent family is what is the best for a child. You chose something different and now sound angry because it's hard. You're a free woman and made your choices freely. With them come consequences which should not be someone else's responsibility to pay for.
So great. I don't want to control your right to have a child before marriage or education but I'll be darned if I'll ever support forcing someone else who made other choices and sacrifices or their "wants" to have to pay for things not working out so easily for those others who made "free choices".
Raising a child in this country is voluntary. There are other options. Being born disabled or developing a catastrophic illness is beyond an individual's control. I can stomach the forced support of those circumstances although I don't believe wealth distribution is in the best interest of society as a concept."
I think you are misinterpreting my tone because I am not at all angry.
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-Kristen
>>We just have different views of the world.<<
That's for sure!
>>What I had to think through was whether to have a baby or terminate the pregnancy. I was not married and had only been dating his dad for 5 months. It was a big accident but I love my son more than the world.<<
What? Adoptions weren't legal then?
Don't get me wrong I know the idea of having to admit you might not be the best choice to raise the child you give birth to is a very hard thing to do. It takes a tremendous amount of selflessness. I think it's the hardest of the three choices that we have in this country.
I remember someone once telling me that they could never chose adoption because THEY couldn't knowing they had a child somewhere out there that they didn't know. So they chose abortion! I mean "they" couldn't "live with themselves" knowing they had a child out there so they just killed the child instead!
At least you didn't do that. Most everyone loves their children more than the world--adoptive parents included.
And don't get me wrong--I believe in choices but I also believe in consequences.
Things got a little too personal for my comfort level..
Edited 10/23/2008 9:44 pm ET by dopeone
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