Why should I support someone else?
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| Sat, 12-30-2006 - 1:24pm |
Let me start by saying that I"m new here so this may have already been discussed, but this has come up in my office several times and I wanted to get some other views of this.
I do payroll for a rather small company so I know most of the workers and their wives (most of the workers are men due to the nature of our business). There are two in particular who's wives SAH. These two are up to their eyeballs in debt. I have bill collectors constantly calling for them. That part is really their business, it is annoying but I enjoy being rude back to the bill collectors, lol.
The part that bothers me is that both wives have been in the office wanting copies of X amount of check stubs so that they can go and get public assistance (I know because they told me that is what it is for)! Why should my tax money go so that these women can SAH? I know that not all families that one parent stays at home are like this, but I know lots that are. Heck, growing up we were always broke because my mother refused to work, but we weren't on any public assistance.
So, why should I pay for a woman to SAH? Why can't she go and get a job to support her family just like anyone else?


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Yes, and that's what puzzles me.
Someone shared that they bought their daughter an IPOD as a Christmas gift.
You made it into such a big deal, something bigger than a parent buying their child a Christmas gift.
You made it about skewed values, about not knowing the difference between wants and needs. (If someone really thought an IPOD was a dire necessity, they wouldn't wait 6 months to buy it for Christmas) You have tried to paint it as some big public health issue. You have implied that if someone bought their child and IPOD, that they must be giving in to every demand that the child has. You have called children with IPOD's brats.
I don't think it is more than just that, a gift, and yes, reading this thread, you seem to have some sort of anti-IPOD obsession, to the point that you think it is an incorrect choice for a parent to give their child as a gift.
But dying hair blue, is apparently a correct gift to give a child, because the child has practical reasons for wanting blue hair, and there is absolutely no "cool " factor there.
You remind me of Hazel and her anti Thrift store obsession. Rather than just state that shopping Thrift isn't her thing, she makes up a story that there is something special about her town, and every Thrift shopper in her town is a chain smoking booze hound with poor parenting skills.
I can understand you not wanting to buy YOUR kids IPODS, especially if you think it will grow permanently into their ear, and that they will walk headlong into traffic because once the IPOD goes into the ear, YOUR kids will become dead to the whole world. But to project that ANY parent who buys and IPOD as a gift, is somehow teaching their kids skewed morals, that I just don't get.
YOu act as if this parent bought their son a subscription to Hustler magazine.
Sometime a gift is just a gift. I would be very surprised to live in a world where every child got exactly the same gifts for Christmas & birthdays.
Again, the gift angle has nothing to do with it.
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
I didn't bother reading your links, because if someone has an agenda agains IPODS or anything else, you can troll the net & find an "anti whatever is on your agenda" article to support your beliefs.
You own Diamond jewelry, I am sure there are plenty of links I could post showing how the "blood diamond" industry contributes to the dimemberment of African jewelry.
You let you kid dye their hair blue, and I am sure if someone "anti-blue" hair wanted to make you out to be a poor parent, they could troll the net and find plenty of articles about the health hazards of hair dye for children. Or horror stories of how hair dye is tested on fluffly little bunnies, or some such thing.
I have pretty much tuned out the "horror" stories of just about everything. If every thing about all the dangers are true, I should have been dead years ago. The rays from my color TV, the asbestos that was in my hair dryer before those were pulled off the market, the Rely Tampons I used to wear before they were pulled off the market, cooking my food in a Tupperware in a micorwave, etc. etc., one of these activities should have done me in at some point, if I were to believe every horror story out there.
Remember the song "Everything causes Cancer" ? I have pretty much become a cynic. It seems that fear mongering is all the rage now. Not a day goes by that the news isn't telling us that there is something in some food that is dangerous, etc.
I am pretty much convinced that smoking cigarettes is dangerous, that drinking huge amounts of alcohol while PG is not a good thing etc. but all these other things that the media is alway hyping as being bad and dangerous, well, I thinks someone is trying to sell newspapers.
My work allows us to listen to music with ear phones, some of choose to do so, some of us don't. Not much different than IPODs at work IMHO. I used to stay plugged in at work, and my work didn't suffer. In fact I got promoted. Now I don't bother with being plugged in, because with my new responsibilities, I am not at my desk enough to be plugged in. And I am answering too many questions for people, to even stay plugged in long enough to hear an entire song through.
But I don't think my work ethic or my values were skewed, when I used to be pluggen in at work. I havent' noticed that my work place is going the h--- in a handbasket because some people are plugged in.
My son has not ever expressed a desire for an IPOD (which actually kind of surprises me) but if he did, I wouldn't have this viscreal reaction, that he must be a brat, and that the ONLY POSSIBLE reason he was asking me for one is to be a brat, and to be cool, and I would troll the net looking for some hyped up "health scare". I would probobly give it to him on the next gift giving occasion.
As it is, he usually asks for musical instruments so he can make his own music.
But perhaps you have convinces some people that an IPOD is an inccorrect choice for a parent to give their kids for Christmas present. Maybe they'll just give their kid a carton of cigarettes instead.
First, of course it was "done," just not among your friends at Brown, Bennington or wherever you went.
Secondly, I posted specifically that I talked to my parents once a week.
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"I'd say that once you're around 25 or 26, done with
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Then why have you been going on and on about confusing want and needs IRT to IPODS, when clearly no one has ever said they bought their kid an IPOD because it was a need ? No one has said their kid was "entitled" to an IPOD either, yet you also implied that.
In fact, I can understand that you WANT to keep your kids IPOD free for as long as you can, but I don't think that any parent really NEEDS to keep their kids IPOD free, in the sense that we need to keep our kids free from drug abuse, and free from sexual abuse etc.
You are the one who seem to confuse your WANT to keep YOUR kids IPOD free into a REAL NEED that all parents must keep their children IPOD free
I don't believe there is anything inherently evil, or dangerous about IPODS. I think that parents all make different choices about which "wants" to supply their kids. Unless we have someone here from a third world country, I seriously doubt that ANY parent on this board has ONLY supplied their kids with the bare bones essentials of life.
You obviosly own things that are in the "want" cateogry as opposed to the "need" category. You obviously buy your kids things in both categories. Other parents buy their kids things in both categories. I don't think your choices are morallly superior or safer than other parents choice, just different.
I think it is very strange that you think dying your kids hair blue as a Christmas gift and owning nice diamond jewerly is a clearly superior moral choice in purchasing than an IPOD.
Why would I have been blind to what others in my peer groups did?
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea:
And love is a thing that can never go wrong; and I am Marie of Roumania.
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
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