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My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

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Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#201

Post by pg_bot »

soared wrote: post #71

Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

What matters are the outputs and not the inputs. The author has all of these resources, but her output is frankly disappointing. You could accomplish more in 6 months than she has in her career if you truly dedicated yourself to the craft. Persistence and dedication still matter more than money.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#202

Post by lordnacho »

soared wrote: post #71

Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

> Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

I grew up with a number of people who were far more well off than me. One kid made more interest on his inheritance -most of it hadn't even arrived yet- than my parents made all year.

There's pros and cons. The pros you know about. Skiing holidays, expensive cars, everything you can point your finger at.

The cons are a bit more subtle. The feeling of never being able to deserve anything. The feeling of not participating in the struggle of life, which every living creature other than a rich human kid has. Face it, it doesn't matter how yo do on that math test. Frustration when inevitably some kid you know without all the advantages does better than you.

Also concretely rich people are no happier than poor people, above some quite low limit. It's not like the rich kids I knew were much happier than the poor ones, they could be grumpy as well. In fact it seems to be the case that barely anything affects how happy people feel, as long as they've got more than a baseline.

So even if you somehow managed to swap financial situations with some silver spoon kid, chances are you'd not feel any better.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#203

Post by microtherion »

OJFord wrote: post #183
microtherion wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business Surely you agree that if he instead were to hire an extra gardener with the same $30,000, that money would be taxable as the gardener's income? So why should somebody who works for their money pay taxes on it, but not somebody who receives the money as a gift?

I assume therefore that you dutifully calculate and pay income tax on any and all birthday or Christmas presents?

To the extent that we have received large gifts from relatives, yes, we've reported those accurately to the tax authorities in two different countries. There was no tax due, but I would not have objected philosophically to the gifts being taxed.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#204

Post by cwbrandsma »

soared wrote: post #71

Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

Probably because I'm older, I am envious of the parents to be able to do this. I have kids getting ready for college. Thankfully they are getting academic scholarships. But to be able to write off the entire schooling and basically set them up for life...that I envy.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#205

Post by slimshady94 »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #72

Relevant John Adams quote: I could fill volumes with descriptions of temples and palaces, paintings, sculptures, tapestry, porcelain, etc., etc., etc.—if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences: the art of legislation and administration and negotiation, ought to take place, indeed to exclude in a manner all o…

What do the children of poets and musicians study?

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#206

Post by nickthemagicman »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #144

> With the arts, a student may be accepted to an arts program without a scholarship and find herself $200,000 in debt before realizing she isn’t going to be able to get a real paycheck with her arts degree—at least in the next decade. We need the government to stop backing these bad loans. Any bank that makes enough bad loans will eventually fail, so they try and avoid it. I'd rather see someone say "Well, you can bo…

Theoretically college is not supposed to be a purely business transaction.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#207

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #193
cup wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All white people do have some innate starting advantage due to their whiteness. That isn't to say they don't also have disadvantages too, for instance poverty, disability etc. Having white skin though gives you an advantage in a system that prioritises whiteness over other colours. Its not racist to discuss this.

RE: "All white people": You are a white person living in Eastern Europe. How's your advantage now?

Compared to a black person living in the same place and going to the same school and having the same number of living parents with the same jobs and same dedication to success, probably very good. Please remember to keep other factors equal when comparing aspects of demography. Otherwise you've just strayed off into the wilderness of logical fallacyland.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#208

Post by indemnity »

Luc wrote: post #148
secabeen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. Do you see a lot of deathbed transfers of wealth? Certainly, there are some illiquid assets that are going to be hard to transfer at deathbed in any country. In the US, you would see tons of deathbed transfer (they had to create a look-back period for gifts to prevent people from "improvishing" themselves via gifts to kids to qualify for government-paid nursing home care through medicaid). Is it just a c…

It's even better - in Belgium you can avoid even the 3% gift tax by simply donating the money AND not dying within 3 years (if you do, however, the donation then gets taxed as if it were part of the inheritance, so it may be worth just paying the gift tax).

In New Zealand you can gift “people for whom you have natural love & affection” any sum and it will not be taxed.

$1k, $100k, $100MM, any amount.

A recent (2011) policy change, remains to be seen how it will play out.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#209

Post by bradleyjg »

jws wrote: post #176
secabeen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gift tax exists largely to prevent people from avoiding estate tax by gifting large sums of money just before death. That's why they're linked. If there was an estate tax and no gift tax, people would just give all their money away in the years leading up to death. The gift tax exemption is co-mingled with the estate tax exemption, so you can just think of the gift tax as pre-death estate taxes. As for why we hav…

At the generational time frame, the estate tax serves to capture otherwise untaxed asset appreciation… Consider Grandpa buys an asset; as company, land, a football team, whatever. 50 years later Grandpa dies and his will transfers it to you. If Grandpa had sold it the day before he died and given you the stack of money, he would have been taxed on the appreciation of the investment. If there were no estate tax, then…

I’d argue that we should eliminate the step up basis at death despite having an estate tax. The estate tax after all only starts at $11 million dollars. Why should an estate with $10 million worth of appreciated assets pay no capital gains and no estate tax?

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#210

Post by Inconel »

roymurdock wrote: post #189
Inconel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having absurd amounts of money certainly doesn't make bias go away, but it definitely makes such bias more bearable. I've been subject to numerous indignities due to "shopping while black", I've also gone hungry and had to resort to sleeping under overpasses, the two are incomparable. $28k a year in free money was an almost unimaginable sum to myself and many of my friends, most black but some white, when growing up.…

If/when you have kids, assuming the economy looks roughly the same when they graduate college, would you consider providing them a similar $28k/year stipend if they decided to pursue their goal in the arts/a non-lucrative career? Maybe non-monetary support such as having a place to live with you at home? Or would you want them to learn lessons the hard way?

This is getting very hypothetical here, but I'll be glad to indulge your question. I'm unsure at this stage in my life whether I'll ever have the opportunity to have children of my own, but I would certainly like to. As I've spent some time in the foster care system, and seeing as it ended rather disastrously with me spending a good chunk of my HS years homeless, I'd very much like to get involved in being a foster parent. I'd certainly like to give my child, whether biological or adopted, many of the things that I didn't have growing up. First and foremost would be love, and safety, and the educational opportunities I didn't have. Travel would be the first of things I may categorize as "luxuries" that I'd like to gift.

As to a specific number, my gut feeling tells me $28K seems rather excessive. That's more money annually than I and most of my friends made in total yearly wages for a good chunk of our adult lives, and we all worked rather dutifully. I'm not entirely convinced that the creation of art requires such sums. And $28k could certainly help a lot of other children in need.

In any case, I'd like to think one of the most satisfying aspects of parenting is watching a child transform into an adult, I'm unsure whether a perpetual yearly stipend equal to the wages of large segments of this country is the best method to achieve that goal. But assuming my child was the recipient of such privilege, I'd hope I would have taught them the humility to understand just how privileged they were, and in general refrain from criticism based on generalities.

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