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: 11-27-2007
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 6:39pm

Are there some welfare cheats?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2007
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 6:43pm

First off, it's not McCain's progressive tax plan, it's the plan we've had forever. It's the same plan that Carter, Reagan, Clinton, etc. have operated under.


Secondly, the reason for that is that the flat tax is a consumption tax. Basically, you pay for what you buy. In general, consumption taxes are unfair, i.e. sales taxes. They punish the poor, because it makes a bigger difference in a poor person's income to pay the same rate of tax as a rich person. The rebates in a flat tax exist because it's to make it more progressive, which is what we have now anyway.


Thirdly, our current tax plan already had a built in system that does ensure that the rich pay more taxes than the poor, both as a dollar amount as a percentage of income.


Let me ask you this-- what do you think is a problem under the current tax system? Why do you think it's so unfair? And what do you think is the fair amount for the rich to pay?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 6:49pm
My post wasn't directed at you as an individual. It was a generalization of those (Republicans) I have contact with. I never implied that someone NOT voting for Obama made them racist. The decision one makes at the voting booth does not determine if they are racist or a bigot. What determines that is how they live their life and treat others. I am black woman living in a red state, life
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 6:53pm
That's
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 6:59pm

I've worked in Los Angeles, Chicago, Harlem, and now work in Atlanta. All of these cities have high crime rates, live at or below the poverty line, and

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 7:09pm
I agree there are people that get help that shouldn't. There are people that could be working but choose to receive welfare. There are people that are irresponsible with their money. I never meant otherwise. I do get sick of people saying that people have money because they work hard which isn't always the case either. I have the potential to earn a lot more then I do (I am a PA) but my husband's income is more then sufficient so I work for peanuts. I feel like it is important for us to give back . We are in the top 10% of wage earners so the increase will effect us. It will not change our life style though. I would much rather my money go to
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 7:13pm

According to democrats giving to charity isn't helping others. You're not helping others unless you're giving money to the government so they can send out welfare checks. You should have given those stimulus checks back to the government if you really wanted to do good


iVillage Member
Registered: 07-11-2006
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 7:16pm

>>Carter's failings include he was unwilling and incapable of working with anyone else. He was a hot head. He liked to shoot first, and you might be able to ask him questions later. <<

Did you mean Carter? Jimmy Carter? The Nobel laureate? I thought Carter was the most peaceful man on the planet.

Reagan was the "shoot first ask later president".

uCruiser.com Ticker
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-24-2008
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 7:16pm

The Internal Revenue Code says differently.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-06-2003
Fri, 10-24-2008 - 7:22pm

According to democrats giving to charity isn't helping others. You're not helping others unless you're giving money to the government so they can send out welfare checks. You should have given those stimulus checks back to the government if you really wanted to do good


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