How old are you? Hopefully not old enough to know better because this is about the most ignorant thing I've read in a while.
at 66 you will receive about $15,000 in Social Security benefits and $9,000 in Medicare benefits annually for the rest of your life. Even more if you are a vet and getting free VA medical care already or are unemployed and drawing unemployment checks. The middle class gets more government benefits than they imagine. And the poor getting benefits now are overwhelmingly the working poor, they just don't make much money. The only idle people are the homeless who get no benefits at all. I had thought you were serious, but apparently it is just racism for you and for a lot of republicans apparently. It's a Pity.
not about racism. my mom sits on her ass drinking all day and waiting on her check then expects me to pay her utility bills. her bills her problems. she chose to take the path she's taken. she quit work and didn't plan on her future. I'm learning from her mistakes and have retirement accounts. if i could i would not put another penny in ss or medicare/cade. i could do better with my own investments than politicians can. the only people i know that put up as big an argument for why we need more government are government employees, and instructors that have spent more time teaching political philosophy than experiencing reality.
Well, your last post was. We all have such relatives. Do you begrudge them the subsistence living that social security provides? What would they do without it? Become a street person in old age or become your dependent. Let me tell you something, I've invested for 40 years and have done pretty well, but I don't imagine that it has to remain that way forever. Sometimes the plan goes south. The average middle class family today will be bankrupted by a single major medical expense, even with common insurance plans. If you ever need a heart transplant or repeated cancer treatments, it can rip through your savings remarkably fast. We all have relatives that this has happened to, as well. Everyone should retire with a seven-figure portfolio and top-flight insurance that they have worked and saved for. You are wise to be working towards this. But it won't take much misfortune to put you in the position of having nothing. A former girlfriend of mine had a rocking career in pharmaceutical sales making $9OK in her mid-thirties. Then she was in a car accident that left her with a paralyzed left wrist, chronic severe back pain, and other complications from internal injuries with high medical bills. She's barely getting by now on SS disability and Medicare and if she didn't have a free house provided by a gracious relative, she wouldn't be making it at all. Any of us can end up in a bad situation and need public help. This is the richest and most important country on the planet and we don't let our indigents starve and go without medical care. No modern country does. People should be responsible for themselves and their dependents. And most people are! Social Security and medicare are there for those who have not been so fortunate. It's a subsistence living, not a gravy train. Yes there are some who screwed up their lives but many more have just had bad breaks and are now too old to work their way out of it. It could happen to you, amigo. 1. I don't advocate big government, I advocate adequate government. I advocate balance between government and private industry. Anyone who thinks we can operate without government is a fool. 2. If you imagine that government and university employees live in some other world, you are unwise indeed. If you think I haven't "experienced reality", then try me and be surprised. I'm not as dumb as you imagine.
there is a balance between too little and too much govt and i feel these days we have to much. I have a cousin that's an instructor at ol' miss. only job she's ever worked was as a bartender while getting her masters. she's all "everyone loves us, corporations are evil, and you should pay more to those less fortunate but don't touch my money. it's a totally different situation for a person that has paid into the system their whole lives as opposed to a person thats lived off the system their whole life. I don't know where you live but you should take a trip to the post office on the 1st and 3rd. watch all the able bodied people, young people, getting their checks. talk to the liquor store owners on those weekends. I have a couple of cousins that get there checks and smoke them up in crack and because they're dopers they qualify for disability. never ending process.
you need to get out more. mattress stores? get out and visit the hoods and see where your dollars are going.
i am curious as too how you've gained your wisdom red. not trying to be a smart ass or anything but i've read lots of your stuff and figure you must have been there done that. all i've done was join the navy at 17 and ride a submarine. get out of that and ride towboats for 4 years working 84 -130 hrs a week and then worked in a factory making aluminum injected parts til my daughter came along. It was then that I decided I needed a future instead of a job so I went to work as a machinist and spent countless hours teaching myself how to program cnc machines and programming on cad/cam systems, on my own time might i add. I went to college full time and majored in Pre-engineering for just 3 yrs while working full time at the shop, 3.5 gpa not to bad I think. volunteer firefighter for 12 yrs now, asst chief. and been working as a part time paid firefighter for 5 yrs. now, trying to get full time position. I was also the counties first search and rescue training officer, currentlt training officer for firefighters, you light em we fight em ; . i've seen some shit in the last 25 yrs i guarantee. it's made me harder but smarter. I've gotten outta bed and left work and driven 20-40 miles on more than a few occasions to fight fires, work wrecks and bag n tag bodies because the "african american" firefighters in the area were clubbin' or didn't feel like doing it. i'm not politically correct have the time because i've come to realize that "african americans" are more racists than I am. I'm getting off shift and won't be able to respond for a couple of days. between the fd and the shop these 76 to 100 hr work weeks are starting to take there toll on me. I do know 1 thing, if your a professor at LSU and attend fb games i bet you and I could have an interesting conversation tailgating with some good food and cold adult beverages. Geaux Tigers!! 14-0 2012!!
sounds to me like you are the one who needs to get out more. mattress stores? you bet your ass. I came from nothing, joined the military so I could get an education and did so after serving for six years (4 years active duty, 2 years La. Air Nat. Guard), then went to work for a chain of Ashley furniture stores as a salesman. Five years later I was the President of that organization. Two years ago I opened my first mattress store and my second one last year. I make a damn good living and I've worked for every single penny of it. here's some advice for you, friend: get out of the Mississippi Delta sometime and see the rest of the world. I grew up in south Louisiana so I understand how racism works both ways down there. That said, it isn't that way every where.
What is your point? It is America and each is entitled to their own opinions. Take a look at this chart and you can see where your money is actually going. The big ticket items are: 1. Medicare 2. Social security 3. Defense 4. Interest on the debt Everything else is manageable. Your money isn't going to the hood, it is going to the middle class in SS and Medicare benefits and to the entire nation in defense. The politicians have no balls to attack the big four. Everything else is a distraction, including your hatred for the poor. It doesn't matter if they are lazy or just unfortunate . . . they aren't getting that much money in the big picture and they are still poor.
I know what I know the same way that you have. Yes, I am university professional but believe me it is not in isolation on some ivory tower. It's not Hogwarts where we all live in a castle and wear robes and make magic. What we do is real work, its hard work, and important work and has all the "reality" of your work. We live in the same communities that you do. If you see a lot of worthless people in the delta, come look at what we see in the city sometime. So what, they are useless and will always be poor and it doesn't affect me. I make my own success. I wasn't born in a university. My dad never finished high school and never earned more than $11,000 a year in his entire life working hard in the oilfield industry, a practical man if there ever was one. My mom was a PhD with a well-paying industry job, an idealist if there ever was one. Between them I learned a lot about everything. I was a hell-raising, hard-drug hippie in the 70's running with bikers and rock musicians and still managing to go to college. But when I got serious, I got serious. I've worked in private industry, for the government (If I tell you, I'll have to kill you ), I own three small businesses of my own, and have had a long university career. I've traveled all over the continent and half around the world, been arrested in three countries, have hundreds of interesting friends, had dozens of intriguing girlfriends, read enough books to sink the titanic and never been out of work in my life. I could go on, but the point is that just because someone works at a university doesn't make them divorced from reality in any fashion. Lots of really smart, interesting people come through colleges but it did not keep them from experiencing large slices of life along the way.
