The Tea Party LOVES America...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I sincerely hope you lose your job and fall into a profoundly compromised financial situation through no fault of your own.

[Golden Applesauce]

That's below what's considered the poverty line in the US for a family of four. So definitely, no taxes up to that point, but I'd put that mark up higher.

Not getting to the bottom of this thread yet but who the fuck has a "family of four" when they're below the poverty line in income and don't run a farm?

Why is that a good idea, and why should the people who don't do that sort of thing subsidize it?

Doesn't subsidizing it encourage population growth in low income families?

- Pickle,

Back in form that will get him shit from the board and ok with that.

Pickle, I like that you're so willing to stick your neck out to give Discordians something to disagree over.  I don't know if that's a survival advantage for you personally, but if you're okay with it then so am I.

Anyway -

--  People usually figure the poverty line in terms of family situation.  A family making 100k a year would be below "the" poverty line if they had, say, a hundred kids to take care of.  So a family wouldn't necessarily be saying "Hey, we're below the poverty line.  Ehh, a fourth kid wouldn't hurt" - it could easily be "It's looking like our three kids will grow up to be assets to society, and we're making a little extra, let's try for a fourth" and then the wage earners in the family have to take a pay cut when the youngest is a few years old, pushing them beneath the poverty line.

--  Family planning isn't an exact science, when people have access to it at all.  Say you figure you can support two kids, and the second pregnancy turns out to be triplets - what are you supposed to do, go ask the doctor to abort the two with the lowest body mass?  The other thing about kids is that you can't really stuff them back into the uterus if your income goes down, either, despite the best efforts of child murderers rationally self-interested parents.

-- I am not a socioeconomist, but I suspect that the size of the low income population has less to do with birthrates than it does with wage distribution changes and cost of living increases.

-- Putting all that aside, even accepting the idea that breeders are morally undeserving of aid from us bachelors and gays, it's not like the kids themselves chose to be born to a large, poor family.  Personally, I'd prefer that as many of those kids as possible grow up into engineers to build cool widgets to make my business more efficient, and relatively few of them to rob my business at gunpoint and then make me pay to incarcerate their criminal ass.  It seems that the easiest way to adjust those numbers is to make it easier for families to provide for the children.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

DP, I would also like to remind you that before I quit my job and became an artist, I owned a house and worked a stable job that paid me middle-class wages and benefits. I quit my job in order to make three times as much money working a skillset that I had taken 12 years to develop, and I also opened a glass supply company called Bridgetown glass. Later, running both businesses were taking too much of a toll on me, so I sold Bridgetown Glass and remained a full-time artist. It wasn't until the extreme economic tank that happened during my divorce that my income dipped below $40k for the first time in many years. I didn't marry money; when I met my husband HE was struggling and I was the one with the house and stable income. I then proceeded to help him build his business while I built mine. At my peak I had three employees and he had one.

Could I have predicted that my husband would cheat on me with random guys from Craigslist and lie about it for years?

Man, I wish I had, I would have avoided all that mess in the first place.

Anyway, shame on you for thinking that you know better than me and would have been able to predict the course of events that would see me diminished from upper middle class to struggling to survive over a course of three years. You may imagine that you can predict what will happen in your life and plan for all contingencies, but odds are that at some point you'll be sideswiped with something less than pleasant that will kick you in the teeth a time or two before rubbing your nose in your own shit.

And I bet that when that happens, you'll be the first person wailing that it's not fair and it's someone else's fault.

[Disco Pickle]

That's below what's considered the poverty line in the US for a family of four. So definitely, no taxes up to that point, but I'd put that mark up higher.

Not getting to the bottom of this thread yet but who the fuck has a "family of four" when they're below the poverty line in income and don't run a farm?

Why is that a good idea, and why should the people who don't do that sort of thing subsidize it?

Doesn't subsidizing it encourage population growth in low income families?

- Pickle,

Back in form that will get him shit from the board and ok with that.

Aside from the correlation between education and family size? Lower income families tend to have lower levels of education, and there seems to be some kind of relationship between low education and larger family size. I don't know but maybe, just maybe, if families below poverty line don't need to have everyone working children might get more help with homework, instead of having mom and dad too tired to help from working overtime, have more time to do it, instead of working a part time job, and might maybe be encouraged to go to college?

No you are totally right, welfare is subsidizing lazy, poor people and encourages them to have more children than a first-worlder should have.

College, these days, without a college fund that wasn't planned and/or plundered at a minimum 10% penalty, takes enormous amounts of debt or scholarships, based mostly on GPA.  

College costs are a bubble, detrimental to any family even NEAR the poverty line.  My biggest problem with the OWS people is that this is not on their list.

That being said, government subsidies of student loans (through Fannie May) for anything other than a technical degree (Engineering, Programming, Chemistry, etc. ) are a complete waste of money and time.

Argue with me on that.  PLEASE.  

Parents have to work to take care of their children.  They had them.  

instead of having mom and dad too tired to help from working overtime, have more time to do it, instead of working a part time job, and might maybe be encouraged to go to college?

You know what, if you're too tired to teach your children how to do things better than you did?

FUCK YOU

Your family and your children will get everything that's coming to them.

Your grandparents and THEIR grandparents did without your fucking TV and your car and your spoiled little shit's video games.

UGH.  

I do not fit in here.

[Disco Pickle]

I did post that after reading all of the "warning, posts" warning.

Nigel, no one can prepare for all contingencies.  Your wish that I be laid off will have little effect on me because I have prepared for that and am willing to relocate to any part of the world that has a company that does what I do.

I've even made plans about where to keep my books, something I didn't do the first time I changed countries, to my eternal regret.

GA, I'm going to have to get back to you on those points.  Work comes early and it's 12 EST.

I did read them though, and appreciate your time.  I will come to them.

Nigel, on your second post.  I will dedicate a reply specifically to it, as it deserves.  

[Golden Applesauce]

What exactly is the issue you have with my post?  That DITK family providers can get fired and not be able to find new work in their field?

Can't speak for Luna, but I get the impression that you think people should do something along the lines of:

1.  Establish career.  Make estimate of future earnings.
2.  Figure out how high of expenses you can afford, and don't exceed that.
3.  Then, and only then, should you figure out how many kids you can have.

That's not a terribly bad system assuming that you can get enough information to do #1 before the condom breaks or your uterus gives out (and the markets are stable enough that such an estimate useful across 15+ years), but I think the overwhelming majority of humans don't think that way - and we're the the animal best equipped to make reproductive decisions based on projected resource abundance.  Changing human nature at a level that deeply biological and emotional is a pretty huge task.  It's probably better to design a system based around how people actually behave, rather than engineering an ideal system and trying to shoehorn people into acting the way that system requires.  People in developed countries are delaying pregnancy by a lot compared to historical times, though, so maybe that's relevant.

Addendum - only just now realized that "family of four" meant four people, not four kids + parents.  I thought 2 parents + 2 kids was a perfectly reasonable size for a family; that's below the level necessary for population growth.  You even get to recycle a lot of stuff used by the older one, and the second kid is like having a free social skills tutor for the first one, right?

[Golden Applesauce]

Parents have to work to take care of their children.  They had them.  

Not too long ago, children were considered something of a community responsibility.  When your tribe is relatively close knit, the liability of having a kid grow up to be antisocial (in the sense that their behaviour is harmful to the larger societal unit) is too great to leave parents to their own devices.  Not saying that that model is a good idea, but it isn't a necessary economic or moral truth that parents be required to be the heavy lifters in terms of caring for their children.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

DP, I assume you don't have children? If you don't, and aren't dealing with the school system, then you really have no idea what it takes to properly support a child (mentally and emotionally) through their school career. The whole system is still (and increasingly so) set up in a way that children with a parent who does not work WILL get significantly more needed support via involvement with the school than a child with two parents who work. Additionally, workplaces are still set up so that parents are penalized for taking the time required to support their children, even if they put in the same or more hours than a childless worker.

It is an incredible amount of work to support a child through their school career. It is many hours of work per week that a person who is working full-time, or more, will have a very difficult time finding, because you cannot add hours into the day or week. There is homework, emotional support, and teacher meetings. I work about 75 hours per week, but one of the reasons I have worked so hard to be self-employed is because it means that I am here in the hours after school, and here during weekends, so that even though I work so much I have the flexibility to take three hours out for teacher meetings. I am my children's scholastic support system, and I can see them struggling despite how hard I try, because there are times when I have to choose between sitting with them for two hours talking through their homework, or working for those same two hours to make sure they will have food next week and a house to live in. I can't pull those two hours out of my ass, no matter how much I may wish I could make more time.

I really think you are blindered, because you are unable to see that the fact that you haven't had a particular struggle doesn't mean that other people don't have that struggle. You are unable to see that there are some struggles that you simply don't understand due to naivete and inexperience.

I have thought many times that if I could move to another part of the country, I could work far less for the same or better standard of living. Unfortunately, it would also mean that I would lose my children by default, which would do them, and society, a profound disservice. The reason I wish unforeseen hardship on you is not for retribution, but so that you could gain perspective that you don't currently have.

My ex, BTW, has a very similar view to yours, which I find frustrating partly because when I met him he had nothing, and I put a great deal of my intelligence and acumen into building his business, while remaining the integral support system for the family. For many years I earned more than he did, and supported him. When the market shifted, my income dropped but his didn't... and when we parted ways, I suffered economically and he didn't. Unfortunately, that's a very common story for women who get divorced.  However, he is a very arrogant person who is unable to perceive that his current prosperity and security is not due only to good planning and hard work (trust me, he's not that good of a planner) but due to the work and support of others in combination with a market that happens to value the kind of work he does very highly... despite the fact that the value of the kind of work he does was largely speculative when he was entering it. And that market could shift for unforeseen reasons at any time, like it or not.

I assume that you are a techie of some sort, because I see your attitude quite a bit in people who work with computers. It's been a good era for people who work with computers. I hope you are able to understand that no matter how secure you feel your job skills or investments are at this point in life, it is completely possible for that security to drop out from under you.

[Aucoq]

I really think you are blindered, because you are unable to see that the fact that you haven't had a particular struggle doesn't mean that other people don't have that struggle. You are unable to see that there are some struggles that you simply don't understand due to naivete and inexperience.

I think this really hits the nail on the head.  Certain people lack the ability to empathize with others who have different lives, situations, etc.  They're unable to see that their life is relatively harder or easier than others have it.

A good example is an overnight sports show I listen to.  The host got his job in a relatively way.  He would always call in to a radio show with great points in an entertaining way so they eventually gave him his own show after he won a contest.  While he certainly deserves his job (I love his show), the truth is he got "lucky" to get such a high paying, relatively easy job for so little effort.  Because he's unable to see past his own experiences, he thinks getting wealthy is as easy for everyone as it was for him.  Therefore, if someone is poorer than him it's because they didn't put in the minimal work he did which means the person is lazy.  And if a man is poor because he's lazy (and all poor people are poor because they're lazy, right?  ), he has no sympathy for him.  I never understood how he could think that way until I read your post, Nigel.  And now I get it.  Some people just can't see/imagine/think beyond their own personal experiences.

Sorry about the short OT rant, lol.

[Juana]

God, DP, you fucking idiot.


The poor tend to have more kids for a lot of reasons - lack of access to decent birthcontrol, no or shitty healthcare, etc. And you propose we punish the poor for being poor by making them starve so people who don't "do that sort of thing" (you mean have kids unexpectedly?) don't have to "subsidize" them?

Oh, and do you realize the human cost of what you're arguing for? Grinding poverty, more of the children you seem to hate (how dare their parents be poor!), starvation/malnutrition, bad health, and all sorts of other nasty shit.

That's below what's considered the poverty line in the US for a family of four. So definitely, no taxes up to that point, but I'd put that mark up higher.

Not getting to the bottom of this thread yet but who the fuck has a "family of four" when they're below the poverty line in income and don't run a farm?

Why is that a good idea, and why should the people who don't do that sort of thing subsidize it?

Doesn't subsidizing it encourage population growth in low income families?

- Pickle,

Back in form that will get him shit from the board and ok with that.

Aside from the correlation between education and family size? Lower income families tend to have lower levels of education, and there seems to be some kind of relationship between low education and larger family size. I don't know but maybe, just maybe, if families below poverty line don't need to have everyone working children might get more help with homework, instead of having mom and dad too tired to help from working overtime, have more time to do it, instead of working a part time job, and might maybe be encouraged to go to college?

No you are totally right, welfare is subsidizing lazy, poor people and encourages them to have more children than a first-worlder should have.

College, these days, without a college fund that wasn't planned and/or plundered at a minimum 10% penalty, takes enormous amounts of debt or scholarships, based mostly on GPA. 

College costs are a bubble, detrimental to any family even NEAR the poverty line.  My biggest problem with the OWS people is that this is not on their list.

That being said, government subsidies of student loans (through Fannie May) for anything other than a technical degree (Engineering, Programming, Chemistry, etc. ) are a complete waste of money and time.

Argue with me on that.  PLEASE. 

SURE. Just off the top of my head with a minimum of thought - teachers, doctors, nurses, scientists. No teachers, no technical degrees because there's no one to teach 'em the basics. No doctors and nurses, no medical care. No scientists, no understanding of so many other things.

Parents have to work to take care of their children.  They had them. 

instead of having mom and dad too tired to help from working overtime, have more time to do it, instead of working a part time job, and might maybe be encouraged to go to college?

You know what, if you're too tired to teach your children how to do things better than you did?

FUCK YOU

Your family and your children will get everything that's coming to them.

Your grandparents and THEIR grandparents did without your fucking TV and your car and your spoiled little shit's video games.

UGH. 

I do not fit in here.

You don't understand a fucking thing, do you? What the fuck do you think the poor spend their money on? Not much of it is on video games. Most of it's on things like, you know, FOOD AND RENT AND BILLS. The kind of things you apparently don't have to worry about.

You're perfectly welcome to go find a board teeming with idiot libertarians. I'm sure you'd feel right at home.

[Don Coyote]

College, these days, without a college fund that wasn't planned and/or plundered at a minimum 10% penalty, takes enormous amounts of debt or scholarships, based mostly on GPA.  

College costs are a bubble, detrimental to any family even NEAR the poverty line.  My biggest problem with the OWS people is that this is not on their list.

That being said, government subsidies of student loans (through Fannie May) for anything other than a technical degree (Engineering, Programming, Chemistry, etc. ) are a complete waste of money and time.

Argue with me on that.  PLEASE.  

Parents have to work to take care of their children.  They had them.  

What in the flying fuck does that have to do with anything I posted?

instead of having mom and dad too tired to help from working overtime, have more time to do it, instead of working a part time job, and might maybe be encouraged to go to college?

You know what, if you're too tired to teach your children how to do things better than you did?

FUCK YOU

Your family and your children will get everything that's coming to them.

Your grandparents and THEIR grandparents did without your fucking TV and your car and your spoiled little shit's video games.

UGH.  

I do not fit in here.

My biological father walked out on me when I was 2. My step-father was only good for the shitty pay he got driving long-haul. My mother chose to wait until her three children were at least in middle school before getting a job so she could stay home. We qualified for all those wonderful "subsidies" like free school lunches. We grew up wearing second hand clothes, walking to school, and eating a lot of beans and rice.

I'm just glad I can look back and see how easy my childhood really was unlike your white, middle-class, libertarian punkass.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You know what, if you're too tired to teach your children how to do things better than you did?

FUCK YOU

Your family and your children will get everything that's coming to them.

Your grandparents and THEIR grandparents did without your fucking TV and your car and your spoiled little shit's video games.

UGH.  

I do not fit in here.

This is, seriously, one of the most repulsively sociopathic things I think I've ever seen anyone post here. I think you might be right about not fitting in here: for one thing, you appear to be incapable of learning, and for another thing, you appear to have a literally monstrously low level of concern for the well-being of children who should, for the benefit of society, be given as decent a baseline head-start as possible, even if their parents are LITERALLY retarded selfish assholes.

It sounds a lot as if you would like to return to the days of poor farms and child labor, though, possibly on the off-chance that you might be able to "earn" a profit from it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Either that or you drink too much and all your brain cells and common decency fly out the window when you're drunk.

[Scribbly]

Pickle...

For fuck sake. I want to believe you aren't a stupid person. I liked you, but between the Slogans thread and this thread...

You come in asking questions where you should already know what the answers you are going to get are by now. Do you expect it to be different when you jam your dick into the meatgrinder again THIS time? Given you've been going 'I sure am going to get reamed!' just before you jump in now, I don't think so.

All it does is show that either you are too fucking stupid to learn basic pattern recognition, or you have a profound lack of respect for everyone else on the board, for all the times they have tried to explain in the past and you have said 'oh you are right I am sorry I will learn'. Either you are an idiot or a liar.

The above really was repulsive by the way. But I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion when you reread it. You might even apologize. But anyone who has followed your posting history would have to be pretty naive to believe it this time.

[Cainad (dec.)]

You know what, if you're too tired to teach your children how to do things better than you did?

FUCK YOU

Your family and your children will get everything that's coming to them.

Your grandparents and THEIR grandparents did without your fucking TV and your car and your spoiled little shit's video games.

UGH.  

I do not fit in here.

This is, seriously, one of the most repulsively sociopathic things I think I've ever seen anyone post here. I think you might be right about not fitting in here: for one thing, you appear to be incapable of learning, and for another thing, you appear to have a literally monstrously low level of concern for the well-being of children who should, for the benefit of society, be given as decent a baseline head-start as possible, even if their parents are LITERALLY retarded selfish assholes.

It sounds a lot as if you would like to return to the days of poor farms and child labor, though, possibly on the off-chance that you might be able to "earn" a profit from it.

I don't think you understand the real issue here, Nigel.


What matters here is that it is a moral imperative to make sure that the children of the untermenschen are punished for daring to have parents who are shitty and poor (even though everyone knows that the two go hand in hand, AMIRITE LOL).


DPickle, I think you really need to drop the "I'm still learning" schtick and come clean. You've pretty consistently demonstrated that you have no real interest in changing your sociopathic worldview, since you keep bringing it up in the exact same form over and over again.