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It does go to show that no good deed goes unpunished. If you save your money and work 2 or more jobs to put your kids through college and to collect savings to retire, others will be handed that same amount of work-hours for free to punish those who can look further into the future than their next check.
And like everything, the rich politicians will decide who gets to stay home and who must work. Guess how 'fair' that's going to be to those willing to work hard to get ahead, and those who are willing to protest for more freebies to get ahead? The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as you can see today demonstrated vividly.
"Only."
You must live in a very, very tiny world somewhere. Or you don't get out much and talk to people.
What about the neighborhood piano teacher that spent his life, self employed, teaching all of our children with love? The one who fell ill to cancer and his meager insurance hit his max payout and bankrupted him? Is he a poor planner? Does the fact that he pulls social security and continues to teach make him somehow less than the guy who spent his time marketing cigarettes and retired early?
The government already is the largest employer, and the majority of their workers are union with a 20 year retirement, it sounds like all we need is more government jobs. And more proletariat class indentured servants to support them, by let's say unlimited immigration or suckle off those willing to work extra hard to get ahead.
Wait. That plan has been in place for a very long time.
Wait. That plan has been in place for a very long time.
Such person's wealth is still largely due to socio-economic system (he/she did not build that bridge/road/school, make dollar strong, received tax breaks/subsidies). There are plenty of people who worked as hard and harder and have little of wealth to show for it.
I've seen a recent ad for care.com - their slogan was, I paraphrase, don't waste your time cleaning/doing chores - hire someone to do it for you. Who will care.com workers outsource their chores to so they can spend weekends with their loved ones?
Well, I know him. And he did his best, considering his income.
I seem to keep forgetting that I can't reason someone out of a corner they didn't reason themselves into.
nonsense, maybe those who rely on government payments however there are many who through their careers did not overspend, didn't assume massive debt. saved, invested prudently and live out their lives comfortably. those who neglected to plan for their old age are unfortunately not in such good shape.
this sounds like you're one of the no personal responsibility crowd, always looking for a reason for the bad in people's lives, sometimes it's self inflicted.
could it be that he didn't work as hard or enough to generate more income? could it be he lived above his income. there are many reasons for people getting into the circumstance he's in, but looking for someone to bail him out from his choices in life IMHO isn't the way to go.
if you continue with the ad hominem insults. I will start reporting them
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Measuring people by their wealth is a wrong way about it. Anyway, it's a closed system (days of pillaging other countries are largely behind us) - if people at the bottom earned more - people in the middle or the top would earn less.
Measuring people by their wealth is a wrong way about it. Anyway, it's a closed system (days of pillaging other countries are largely behind us) - if people at the bottom earned more - people in the middle or the top would earn less.
I am not measuring someone's value by their wealth. I am talking about people who did not prepare for the day when they could no longer garner income from their work. this thread is about minimum handouts for those who chose not to be able to support themselves. it has nothing to do with measuring someone's value by their wealth.
Well, I started out working at 15. and was paid by the piece, I cannot imagine the parts I finished were 'color-coded'. My wife was working 3 jobs when I met her. None of them hourly or union, again, paid for finished work. Many of our family members were in farming, and I do not mean ADM. They were paid per bushel or cows milked.
There are lots of folk who worked harder than us. But I can say our housekeeper makes the equivalent of $25hr. She is paid by the job. The harder she works, the more she gets ahead. She is a legal immigrant.
We are 'comfortable' and could retire, but if we retire, we cannot help our staff. Much of our "savings" are in the business. Their healthcare plan exceeds many union jobs, but we still must help pay for those employers who don't provide it via taxes.
So to the DNC we are the evil ones. We employ people, we provide excellent all-family no contribution medical/dental. We work past retirement age that government workers can retire at. And that means we were unfairly enriched by our labor according to them.
Some folk are born into wealth. Others work hard to achieve it. The DNC is not able to discern between the groups. Or they have no desire.
yes, I know a few people who had 6 or 7+ figure incomes for awhile who are now struggling to survive now that they and well into their 60's and didn't plan well.
there is no set story, everyone is different, there is no pigeon holing people as to why they wound up in a position of looking to others to fund their needs in old age.
I think this is why we're talking past each other. This thread is not about what you've written above. This thread is about reaching a time whereby automation supplants jobs and creates a situation where our workforce supply is greater than the employment demand. It's possible you don't believe that'll ever happen, and if so, that's your argument to the thread. Any other argument (people need to save, people need to work harder/longer) is talking about a different problem, and that's what @tomas insinuated earlier when he asked what you were addressing in this thread.
For those of us who do believe it's possible, we're discussing BMI as a solution. I don't think it's even close to a perfect solution, but I haven't seen another proposal that beats it. Working harder, if there's no work, is not a solution.
I'm not sure I agree, I think it depends on which train of thought you subscribe too. I have a handful of (I want to say they're libertarian, or maybe they're on the opposite end and very liberal...) friends who have posted articles and studies showing it's not a closed system, and making the poor richer, doesn't make the rich poorer.
What's with you and government workers? Why paint them all with a single stroke brush?
There are plenty of hard working government workers, who care and bust their asses. And then there's the handful that make everyone else look bad. Don't use the handful as your excuse to group all of them into one group.
Government workers have great benefits, but the higher GS levels are underpaid significantly compared to the private sector (higher GS = typically more educated white collar jobs, engineers, lawyers, etc.). So again, no need to be angry (?) at government workers who can retire early with a pension.
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Now back to the topic at hand, I like the concept of BMI, but I don't think it'll work well in a non-utopia. Sure you can replace all the handouts that the government has, but that still won't fund the BMI enough to offset expenses.
Unless you make BMI income dependent, at which case it goes back to being a [larger] handout than what we have now.
And people are stupid and can't manage money. If you give someone a check for $1,000, they can blow it on whatever they want. They way the system is set up now, of those $1,000, they get a voucher for rent for $250 that they have to spend on rent. A $250 voucher for food, that they have to spend on food, etc. So it leaves them little wiggle room to spend the money and realize they can't feed their family. Unfortunately it's aimed at the lowest common denominator, but I'm not sure there's a better way.
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