But JD, it's like a dog chasing it's tail. I don't call it empathy. I call it a sense of entitlement. I can't do something I want to do, so someone else should make it possible for me. I stand by my beleif that we are the people we are based on the challenges we confront. We'd all be a bunch of silver spoon snobby a**es if we were handed everything we want simply because we feel we "deserve" it.
While I was driving around getting my breakfast I came up with a concise way to explain why I hate government assistance programs.
This is an example for college funding, but it would apply basically to any government assistance program.
First, simplify the equation. let's say there are 10 taxpayers (each representing roughly 10% of the actual taxpaying base)
Ok, so now, we want to make it so that EVERYONE has the ability to attend college.
College tuition averages $50,000.
So we tax each of the 10 at $60,000. That's what we'd have to do, because once the people involved in collecting the taxes, organizing the system and dispersing the money were paid we'd lost AT LEAST that much of it.
So now what have we accomplished in this perfect world?
10 people paid taxes of $60,000 and all ten went to college and got a $50,000 education.
Does that make sense? Of course not.
Of course, government programs aren't about making sense. They're about taking from those who have and subsidizing those who don't (or in many cases those who don't want to).
So more than likely, in the real world, at best 50% of those people would go to college.
Each of the 10 taxpayers would pay $30,000, so that five of them can get $50,000 educations.
Is THAT fair?
So the guy that decides he wants to just raise his family and get a service industry, average paying job has to pay the higher taxes so he can send someone else off to college to "follow their dreams"?
We have a right to Life, Liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness in this country.
We are not obligated to GUARANTEE that any individual that wants more out of life will have it supplied to them by the rest of the country.
JD, you know that I the greatest respect for you. But I put myself through school and got my masters little by little while working sixty or better hours a week. I lost money on tuition because I would start a couple of classes at the U and have to drop becuase I just couldn't handle the work and school. I cannot complain, I just took class by class, and got my degrees much later in my life than most, but I got them. Should I have had to work that hard. Absolutely, becuase that was the choice I made.
I had an employee come to my house once to assist me with a project. He was making about fifteen dollars an hour. He thought by my house I was RICH. You know that I am not. He asked me how he could get it. I said easy. Sell everything you have, buy a 30 year old mobile home for 5 grand, drive the worst cars that are always breaking down and cannot afford to be fixed and WORK seven days a week for five years without one day off ever. You do not ever get to call in sick, you stay after every one else is gone, and then be the first one there in the am. Don't buy the stereo, go without cable tv for five years, no cell phone, no long distance calling on your land line. Don't go out to eat, go to the day old bakery. Buy second hand furnature and save save save. Now because I paid cash for my mobile home, from the sales of everything I had, I did not have a rent payment--but instead of buying cd's, going to the movies, having parties etc. I took that money for would have gone for my house payment and put it in a savings account. Then after five very long years of no vacations, never touching the money etc. You have a down payment for a house.
He looked at me like I grew horns. He honestly said, NO WAY am I doing that. I shook my head to myself and thought, then you sit and wonder why? I mean at one point I took a graveyard shift at one of the Indian Casino's playing cocktail waitress--ok I got to wear a tux shirt with bow tie and black pants, and I thought it was humiliating, but that was the sacrifice I made to get what I wanted. No one handed me anything. I even took a job at a scum dining buffet place for a while, becuase they let my wife and daughter come and eat for a buck. Now if I make that sacrifice for me and my family, why should I hand over my savings to someone that goes to the movies, eats out, buys drugs, works fewer hours, does not save money but puts loud speakers in their car, or buys a car with a 600 a month payment and then complain about living in squalor? OK, buy the Kia Sephia. I did. I took my Toyota truck, brand new with the KC lights everything, my dream car that I saved for while I was single, and went to the Hundai dealership. I worked out a deal for them to take over my truck and I drove off the lot with a Hundai whatever it was, so that I could lower my monthly payments.
The life we lead today is made up of the choices we made yesterday.
You know I am not directing this to you personally, but to those that want a free ride, because I didn't get one.
Any civilization needs ditch diggers as much as it needs lawyers.
No one is better than anyone else, we're all human beings. But if you want better things you put in the hard work to get them. If that's too much to ask of you then take a lesser job. You can still be happy.
Studies have actually shown middle and lower class people are typically more happy than rich people anyway.
