51–60 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"?
Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
>But there should be no hesitation at all about applying it to seniors. As in, right now. So something like social security. Which she is already receiving.
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.
$300 is beyond exorbitant for a speeding ticket. It's vindictive and exploitive.
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.
> Its tricky to feel sympathy w/ the lady in this article. ... > and by world standards she's won the lottery to even be alive and living comfortably at her age" Why does that need to be trotted out whenever a story about someone's misfortune or bad circumstances is written about? It would be nice if people could just be happy with what they have because they aren't living somewhere else, under worse conditions, but…
Life is much easier if you don't have that mindset.
I, in fact, do wake up every morning thankful for what I have, even if it's not as much as my neighbor.
401K is a massive Wall Street ripoff and a massive failure. The disaster is just beginning.
Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
I find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.
Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
You are being down-voted because the US has near universal basic income for older folks & the subject of the story collects it. It's one of the real questions I have about basic income schemes generally. The examples we have are not powerful arguments in favor of them.
No, we don't -- because the amount you get depends on how much you've earned before you're eligible. And because it isn't nearly enough to actually live on (and has stayed flat while living costs have skyrocketed).
The whole point of basic income is that it's (1) unconditional and (2) pegged to actual, real basic living expenses.
Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
She is mostly living her own dream though: After her retirement in 2007, she had planned on selling the double-wide to finance a lifelong dream: touring the nation from behind the wheel of Big Foot. Yes, she is working while she does it, but it sounds like she's migratory by choice.
Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. This is just shameful. You…
I find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.
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.