Andover: Tell me more!

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Boomer Biker. I am 5 blocks from the St. Francis school district (some of Andover goes to St. Francis district). I'm with your brother. I would not live in St. Francis district. Resales are lower in that district because of the bonds never get passed.

The core problem was several years ago, the board bought "junk bonds" that went bad. It was costly and there is no more trust.

Minnehahapolitan. HUH (again)?? Please translate your post: "Andover: Where the schools are so great you don't have to pay for them." I really struggle to "get" your points.

For the record, Kid's who live in Andover proper go to St. Francis, Andover, Anoka and even parts of Coon Rapids high school. (Andover is a large city). My Kid's go to Anoka high school and the school is pretty diverse (creed and income). They have great teachers and super programs for motivated children.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by Minnehahapolitan

Did you read the last paragraph as a response to Clifford63's second sentence?
You don't need to live in poverty to be curious, but going as so far as to snub people who are in a lower class than you goes further than it needs to.
Actually, the reasons for poverty have everything to do with this thread. The reasons that people give for poverty on forums on these are quite revealing. You think that the urban poor do nothing but sit on their ass and wait for handouts. Some do, alot of Fortune 500 CEOs do also. Most, however, are limited by the opportunities available to them. Alot is generational. Most is leftover from segregation and old social policies.
Everyone is scared of living near a Section 8 housing, but live in the biggest form of subsidized housing in America by taking the Mortgage Interest Tax-Deduction.

If you assume I "snub" people because I want to live in a safer community (based off of city-data.com stats) then I am proud for my families sake to say I am a "snubber". Guilty as charged.

You said: "Everyone is scared of living near a Section 8 housing, but live in the biggest form of subsidized housing in America by taking the Mortgage Interest Tax-Deduction." Let's see...... Since I live next to people who write off their interest deductions on their taxes, they will have the same amount of crime as in a section 8 neighborhood. Is that what you are saying? Care to guess which "subsidy" will correlate to an increase in crime?? Great. Let's do away with the mortgage deduction (or subsidy), corporate subsidy etc. I agree.

I just got back from Mazatlan where the average wage is $1. I was watching the 2nd largest Carnival in the world on the roof top of a Mexican friends home with 50 Nationals looking in awe at the fireworks. I was the only white face. I enjoyed the conversations, food and friendship. Culturally, they don't covet and they don't expect a hand out. There is not a correlation to wages and crime in Mazatlan as there is in the USA.

Minnehahapolitan, when you understand why crime correlates to income in the USA and not in Mazatlan you will understand why there are fiscally conservative view points. In the spirit of disclosure, I grew up poor and the government helped my Dad with food stamps, reduced lunches, home assistance (section 235), and free college. While I loved my father, he lacked motivation. Without those "free" things I bet he would have gotten off his butt. Statistically, give-away's hurt our society more than they help and I am speaking from experience. More people are ruined than helped when you give them money that they didn't earn.

[Minnehahapolitan]

Originally Posted by MN-Born-n-Raised

If you assume I "snub" people because I want to live in a safer community (based off of city-data.com stats) then I am proud for my families sake to say I am a "snubber". Guilty as charged.

You said: "Everyone is scared of living near a Section 8 housing, but live in the biggest form of subsidized housing in America by taking the Mortgage Interest Tax-Deduction." Let's see...... Since I live next to people who write off their interest deductions on their taxes, they will have the same amount of crime as in a section 8 neighborhood. Is that what you are saying? Care to guess which "subsidy" will correlate to an increase in crime?? Great. Let's do away with the mortgage deduction (or subsidy), corporate subsidy etc. I agree.

I just got back from Mazatlan where the average wage is $1. I was watching the 2nd largest Carnival in the world on the roof top of a Mexican friends home with 50 Nationals looking in awe at the fireworks. I was the only white face. I enjoyed the conversations, food and friendship. Culturally, they don't covet and they don't expect a hand out. There is not a correlation to wages and crime in Mazatlan as there is in the USA.

Minnehahapolitan, when you understand why crime correlates to income in the USA and not in Mazatlan you will understand why there are fiscally conservative view points. In the spirit of disclosure, I grew up poor and the government helped my Dad with food stamps, reduced lunches, home assistance (section 235), and free college. While I loved my father, he lacked motivation. Without those "free" things I bet he would have gotten off his butt. Statistically, give-away's hurt our society more than they help and I am speaking from experience. More people are ruined than helped when you give them money that they didn't earn.

First off, stop comparing American cities to Mexican resort towns. They are not the same types of poverty. They come from different histories, circumstances and parameters.
I didn't say that Section 8 housing has a similar crime rate to suburban tract houses, and don't take my words out of context. What I am saying is that a person who writes thousands of dollars off his taxes every year shouldn't be so one sided in how he believes that the government should help people.
Crime in America has nothing to do with income. West Virginia is the one of the poorest states in the Union, but has pretty low crime rates. Crime stems from the opportunity that we give people. As long as you can support a household by selling crack more easily than you can by working minimum wage, we will have crime.
You honestly think poor people don't earn their money? How insolent. CEOs don't work 400 times harder than a McDonald's drive-thru worker, but you can't support a family working at Mickey D's. You could go get educated, but that costs money too, no? Honest to God, there are people sleeping on a street tonight who will work 40 hours this week. Are they just lazy? Unmotivated? If they were Mexicans, I bet they would be able to do what decades worth of poor people here couldn't.
If we did away with the mortgage interest tax deduction, many middle-class people would be forced from their homes. But then they are just lazy sons-of-bitches too, right?

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

I did not mean to put words in your mouth. You said "Everyone is scared of living near a Section 8 housing, but live...." If you didn't start off your statement with "Everyone is scared" maybe I would have understood your (flawed) point.

For the record, Mazatlan is a "resort town" but that is their 4th largest industry. So the culture is not shaped by tourism as much as you might think. It's simple: I want to live in a town with lower crime; or as you put it "different histories, circumstances and parameters" so that I don't have to look over my shoulder. Whatever the "histories, circumstances and parameters" are in Andover and in Mazatlan I want to live there.

So do share. Why do the Burbs have less crime?? I expect a politically correct answer. Don't forget to blame me.

I'll give you a hint to my thinking: It's the culture. Some cultures have a higher work ethic. Some cultures take personal responsibility. Some cultures stick together and are proud and help one another. Some cultures have 7 Kid's and other cultures have 1.7 kids per family. Individuals inside of those groupings that mimic the economically successful cultures climb higher on the social scale. It's why one of my brothers (and his Kid's) coast while our family are performance driven. It's (now) my families culture. Now don't assume you know what color my skin is or my religion is.

So income correlates to specific (multiple) cultures and even religion (knowing right from wrong) will tie into it. So I took a shortcut. I now look at income and it has a way of cross correlating.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Originally Posted by Minnehahapolitan

First off, stop comparing American cities to Mexican resort towns. They are not the same types of poverty. They come from different histories, circumstances and parameters.
I didn't say that Section 8 housing has a similar crime rate to suburban tract houses, and don't take my words out of context. What I am saying is that a person who writes thousands of dollars off his taxes every year shouldn't be so one sided in how he believes that the government should help people.
Crime in America has nothing to do with income. West Virginia is the one of the poorest states in the Union, but has pretty low crime rates. Crime stems from the opportunity that we give people. As long as you can support a household by selling crack more easily than you can by working minimum wage, we will have crime.
You honestly think poor people don't earn their money? How insolent. CEOs don't work 400 times harder than a McDonald's drive-thru worker, but you can't support a family working at Mickey D's. You could go get educated, but that costs money too, no? Honest to God, there are people sleeping on a street tonight who will work 40 hours this week. Are they just lazy? Unmotivated? If they were Mexicans, I bet they would be able to do what decades worth of poor people here couldn't.
If we did away with the mortgage interest tax deduction, many middle-class people would be forced from their homes. But then they are just lazy sons-of-bitches too, right?

While I was going to college for a different degree (married, with children an home and full time job), my brothers were bowling, partying, and having fun. I would wake up at 3AM in the morning to study my butt off for 8 years. After that, I was working 100 hours a week (yes I really was) running my business while my brothers were working 40 hours coasting in comparison. Most times 40 hours a week are not enough to get a head. You cannot get comfortable just because the economy is doing well.

So as compared to me, I suppose my brothers were "lazy". The world does not owe you a living. We need to compete. If someone in China will work for $8 a day, we better find out a way to have higher productivity of WE will have to reduce our standards. That's life as a global economy.

Life is not fair. I NEVER want it to be fair. If it was, I'd take my turn being poor, abused, in jail, paraplegic, being a slave, blind, etc. So you I and the homeless guy were lucky enough to be born in this great country. Being born in the the USA isn't FAIR! If it was fair, I'd take turns living in Bangladesh, North Korea, and China. It also isn't fair for a CEO to make 400X more than a McDonalds worker. Never mind he might be the reason for a hundred thousand employees to have a job (Steve Jobs and others like him). Chances are he was born smarter. People are born with God given gifts to a certain degree. That wasn't fair either.

As to your point on the mortgage interest. Stop the deduction if you like. That person who needed it to live in will need to buy a used car, work more hours (or get this) the government could reduce the taxes because it wasn't the governments money to take in the 1st place. They would not have a "deduction" because they took to much initially.

The homeless person working 40 hours a week living on the street is not lazy or unmotivated persay. They might not-so-bright. Hint: try combining their income with another homeless person. They now can make it work. Maybe it takes three homeless people working 40 hours a week to live in the same apartment. Hey, I use to work 100 hours a week. Who says 40 hours are enough??? Maybe they should have studied harder. I don't know there situation so I don't know. Personal responsibility will take care of a lot of the problems even though it will really hurt. Think Darwinism. Speaking of "not so bright", a banker was complaining to me when I was looking for property in Grand Rapids. This Grand Rapids banker was upset on how much I was willing to pay as it was forcing out the retires because of increased taxes. I explained that if their taxes went up, then have the bank borrow them money because by doing a reverse mortgage to pay the taxes will result in more wealth for the retiree. They should happily pay more in taxes as their value goes up by hundreds of thousands right?? Isn't that the liberal argument when people complain about paying high taxes??? So the retiree who was loosing their home should have gone to the bank for the extra couple grand a year so they could realize hundreds of thousands of more in value. I mention this because the homeless 40 hour worker or the retiree need to think outside of the box. Heck, the banker wasn't smart enough to figure it out. I diverge.

So in my specific case. I worked my butt off and made what I considered a lot (30X Micky D's). But some people thought I should not be able to take that evil government subsidy know as home interest deduction or my children as a deduction or medical deductions etc (think alternative minimum tax). You know, those rich people have loop holes. Just the opposite in my case which wasn't "fair".

The solution. I now work 20 hours a week. So since I work less than the McDonald's employee, should I now make less than him??? Hey, they physically work harder and have more stress. Ever heard the expression "work smarter, not harder"??? Now I make 1/5 the amount but the government doesn't get to redistribute my income. So in reality, it is a lot closer now because of the tax difference. I am no longer forced to share. The big difference: I don't have as nice of a garage sale!

Mark my words. The reason this country (was) successful was that top 10%. **** off the business owners and the workaholic performers with your socialist nonsense and they also will coast. They can and are; one by one. Some of those greedy CEO's are cashing in preparing to coast. Business are being sold off to put the cash in the banks to coast. 2nd homes are being sold to put $'s in the bank to coast. The motivation to work hard is disappearing. Why work when we can get all this stuff for free (health care, unemployment, free college, food stamps, housing assistance, etc). Hey, we just need to tax that other guy or print money. The government will take care of us right??

My friend, I can tell you don't run a business. Your philosophies are now common place and will finish ruining this country. That is my prediction. It's the new culture of corruption and a lack of personal responsibility and it started a few elections ago... We potentially are in for a real tail spin; you may have not seen anything yet.

What does this have to do with living in Andover thread??? Has the horse been beaten yet? I get the feeling that you are not easily persuaded.