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My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

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Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#241

Post by DoreenMichele »

mmirate wrote: post #237
TimTheTinker wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other people seem to think that's charity or a bleeding heart or something. I see it as just [...] I firmly believe that moral virtue and wisdom are inseparable. That is, to behave more virtuously or with more charity (in the old definition) is to benefit oneself more.

How so, and more importantly, how?

Just one example: An awful lot of people are terrified of being around homeless people. They are just sure the homeless are all drug addicts and thieves.

If the street isn't full of smelly, desperately poor people with no home, you don't have to live in terror of being panhandled by them while imagining it will go much worse places than that.

If I make the world a better place, I get to live in a better place. Simple.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#242

Post by refurb »

astrodust wrote: post #26
ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that 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. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

At low levels, which aren't taxed, it's not going to affect anything. At high levels, like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. You're creating a class of people with indestructible inherited wealth that never have to work, that only have to collect interest and rent on the backs of everyone else. That's what inheritance tax and gift taxes…

How does someone having $1B of inherited wealth have any impact on my own life?

I’d be paying rent to someone, whether they have $1 or $1B to their name.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#243

Post by seatdrummer »

forapurpose wrote: post #227
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet I bet that 95%+ of American white males would easily, easily, easily make the trade between 'shopping while black' and $28,000/year. I actually wonder if you took the poorest 50% of white males and asked them what poor treatment they would suffer for $28,000/year tax-free - how much would they willing endure? I dare to say quite a lot. >Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away. And h…

It's true that other people have problems, but that doesn't reduce the amount of discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities, or help the problem. An assumption behind the parent's "bet" (no evidence is given) is that discrimination against African-Americans isn't especially problematic. I think that needs to be supported against the mountains of evidence that say otherwise; IMHO, it is like claims…

You think that HN is a hostile place?

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#244

Post by toasterlovin »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #125
underpand wrote: post #51

I disagree with her premise that the government should fund people to have fulfilling creative careers. That's not how the world works. Creative outputs generally do not have 'efficienciecy' increases like other fields. Creative outputs are zero sum: people only have a constant amount of time to use to consume creative outputs and consumption time has already been saturated. Efficiency upgrades for entertainment are…

Arts is not mere entertainment. Students with an arts rich education: Have better grade point averages Score better on standardized tests in reading and math Have lower dropout rates http://www.artsactionfund.org/pages/why

You probably have the causation reversed, FWIW.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#245

Post by mmirate »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #78
soared wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point becomes even more true when you think about kids who grew up with not enough or even unhealthy foods. Their brains didn't have the resources to develop, so they are hamstrung from the start. Even more true when you see poorer neighborhoods near polluting factories and industrial zones.

Yes, I would really like to do something to put in a floor, so to speak. Something to help mitigate conditions for the people who are the most burdened by current circumstances. Other people seem to think that's charity or a bleeding heart or something. I see it as just insurance to protect everyone so that stumbling doesn't ruin your life permanently with little to no hope of ever finding your way back to a comforta…

> I also see it as insurance against bloody revolution.

Why do you believe that our government does not - like any government purported to be by&for its people - slowly and inexorably march towards needing a horrifyingly bloody revolution in order to escape from degrading into oligarchy?

This isn't a new idea, either; it's ever so slightly older than the Constitution itself:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#246

Post by NullPrefix »

drblast wrote: post #24

The value of this gift is much greater than then nominal sum. My parents gave me $3000 for the down-payment on my first house, which cost $100k. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy a house. But I bought instead of renting and ended up selling it for $200k years later. That was a big financial win early on and meant I was never in debt again. My financial situation at the time was barely-making-ends-m…

>$1000k a month

Quite a ROI.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#247

Post by toasterlovin »

coliveira wrote: post #20
intopieces wrote: post #11

My guess is this is of interest to us because it sounds an awful lot like UBI. But, I think the key difference is that the money is connected to parents, who presumably have a standard for how it's spent. If E.J. ended up spending it on drugs or other perceived vices, there's a chance the money might be cut off. The point of UBI is that it is 100% no-strings-attached, which has a different dynamic. That dynamic is on…

People treat drug users as if this was something that they chose to do. In fact, most drug addicts are in this situation because they suffer from a tendency to drug abuse. Many of them had good jobs and lost them because of this condition. Holding up on the UBI program for everyone else because of the behavior of a few that need treatment is absurd.

No, it's not absurd. Most people don't want to give money to people who are not immediate family. And they especially don't want to give money to people who are not immediate family and who are pissing their lives away. And I wouldn't count on this changing anytime soon, since it's probably a trait which evolved to counteract cheaters and free-riders in the small-scale societies that defined our evolutionary past.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#248

Post by refurb »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #90
paulddraper wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. Zero-sum is one perspective, but not one that I subscribe to. Does your neighbor having $10b of stuff make you better or worse off than if than if there's $10b of stuff at the bottom of the ocean?

I don't believe the economy is zero-sum either but handing $10B in capital to your child gives them a significantly unfair advantage compared to most others. Image that the economy is a field of wheat. It grows bigger every year as workers become more productive and learn how to fertilize and water more efficiently. At the end of the season, everyone gets a chance to head into the field and collect some wheat. Some p…

Reading to your kids gives them a huge leg up. Should we stop parents from doing that?

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#249

Post by refurb »

nicoburns wrote: post #109
paulddraper wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. Zero-sum is one perspective, but not one that I subscribe to. Does your neighbor having $10b of stuff make you better or worse off than if than if there's $10b of stuff at the bottom of the ocean?

No, but other people having $10bn of disposable income increases prices for you. Or if you look over the long term, skews the economy towards producing luxury goods rather than meeting the basic needs of ordinary people.

Pretty sure a guy/gal who has $10Bn of disposable income isn’t buying underwear at Target like me, driving up the price.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#250

Post by refurb »

microtherion wrote: post #175
ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that 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. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

> 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?

Because the money has already been taxed?

But to your point, a gift tax also stops people from “gifting” their gardener and avoiding taxes on both ends.

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