41–50 of 198 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.
Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?
Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.
It's even trickier if you consider that she lost her house in 2008. How?! She is in her seventies, the house should have been long paid out. So this means she borrowed heavily against the house equity and spent all that money. I do feel sorry for her problems right now, but I sympathize more with people who were prudent not to risk their house to pay for expensive toys (Smart car).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.
Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?
Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. She's part of the most benefitted generation, the "hardships" shown are induced by her own choices (expensive dinner, speeding ticket) and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age. Alas, thats the trick with other people's stories-- difficult to project how it would feel if I were in their shoes.
Is there a website that does the accounting for this? Do you have a link?
[ Serious question, has anyone done an analysis. I keep hearing "boomer ripoffs" but I'd like an impartial analysis. Also, I don't think the 80 year old in the article is a "boomer"; more likely she's a "boomer's" mother. ]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.
Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-...
https://internationalliving.com/countries/costa-rica/cost-of...
I guess that is really bad for US.
Total Spend: 6.18tn
Total Revenue: 6.08tn
Healthcare: 1.32tn (21.3%)
Pension: 1.20tn (19.7%)
Education: 0.93tn (14.8%)
Defense: 0.80tn (13.1%)
Welfare: 0.50tn (8.2%)
Other*: 1.43tn (23.1%)
*Other = Protection, Transportation, General Government, Interest
By 2020, interest will no longer be enough to cover the deficit between revenue in from taxes and expenditures out to retirees. At that point, the SS fund will need to start redeeming treasuries for cash. The federal government will then need to issue new debt and/or raise taxes to cover SS treasury bond redemptions.
If the Federal Reserve follows through in its quest to raise interest rates and inflation, it will be relatively expensive to raise the $2.83tn in debt that we will need to fund SS through 2029, when it is projected to completely deplete its reserves of treasury notes. At this point, SS will only be able to pay out 75% of promised benefits given the current tax rate and demographic trends.
Healthcare expenses lean heavily towards the old but are funded by the working age population. What happens as the birth rate decreases and the average individual lives longer? Expenses increase for the working-age population.
I'm less concerned about spend on education (which is broken) than I am about how we plan to fund our health care and pension systems. The only feasible way I can see is through increased taxation. I just started working last year. Hell of a time to enter the work force! Overall it seems to me like we are paying an increasing amount of our federal budget on the older population than we anticipated we would need to and that we did not adequately provision for.
I feel so sad when I read stories like these ones... a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her. To me it says a lot about our society if we can't take care of our elderly.
"a 300$ ticket is the difference between being broke and having food on the table for her." And the same could be said for a 18-year-old, living out on his or her own. But in both cases, it is the result of a poor choice (inattentive driving) rather than a major flaw of society, and has nothing to do with being "too poor to retire and too young to die", as was the supposed focus of the article.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you have never been poor. Poverty and misfortune wears you down. A moment of weakness is inevitable. Moreover financial stress has shown to significantly reduce effective IQ.
Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes? Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?