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Aside from the inflammatory rhetoric in the article, the author brought up some issues that both democrats and republicans should agree on--eliminating mortgage interest deductions, 529 college savings plans, and exclusionary zoning.
Ideology aside, rational people would have difficulty agreeing on the surface with any of that.
Maybe you forgot some small anecdotes like Jeff Bezos who was born to a poor single mom and now closing on Warren Buffet when it comes to wrath. Same thing as the WhatsApp guy. There is mobility in the USA, unlike the U.K. So stop listen to the alleged secretary from Carter years who often comes here and spread misinformation. It's not a perfect country but it's pretty darn good.
It may be nearly impossible for someone in the bottom 20% socioeconomically to move up to the top 20% in their lifetime.
However, it is hard to believe that someone in the 50% percentile won't make it to the top 20% if they start relatively young, bust their butt in school and try really, really hard to reach that goal.
PARENTS get a pass on paying federal income taxes. Childless adults pay up the wazoo, and while parents get a lot of "free" taxpayer money, EITC is carefully designed to ensure that childless adults cannot get a refund greater than the taxes they have currently paid into the system.
Apparently you have never raised a child thus are not familiar with what it entails in form of money, time and commitment. Tax breaks are drops on hot coals.
Low income earners do get more then they paid in.
@ Pub-911 and others that are so down on America not being the "Land of Opportunity" anymore and that its a "rigged" system, well name another country that you lived in where you feel immigrants or poor could advance themselves and move up in class? England? Countries in Western Europe?
America certainly has its problems, but I've lived in many countries and none compare to the opportunities and fairness the U.S. offers to ALL its people, born in the U.S. or not. It all depends on if people want to work for it, or want it handed to them.
Sure, some people are born into a better position, but that's life. Its what you make of what you were given that counts.
But achieving it means effort. It is so much easier to complain about the system and expect hand outs.
Achieving an understanding of real-world things also takes effort. But it is so much easier to sit on the couch with a beer and let FOX News fill your head with all that they think you need to know.
It may be nearly impossible for someone in the bottom 20% socioeconomically to move up to the top 20% in their lifetime.
However, it is hard to believe that someone in the 50% percentile won't make it to the top 20% if they start relatively young, bust their butt in school and try really, really hard to reach that goal.
well... yeah
but the bottom 20% can move up to 40-50% and become middle class, then their children can move to the top 30%, and their children can move up to the top 10%
do you really think that the top 10% of families in the US did so in a single generation?
This is an argument from the outliers. When 95% of something tilts one way and just 5% the other, keep hitting and hitting on examples from the 5% and pretend that the 95% does not exist. No points for that.
And that anecdote was not an outlier. Stop spreading nonsense.
Here in the U.S. we are raised to believe, go to college and get a good job "working for someone else".
No we are not.
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Originally Posted by petch751
There is very little financial education taught in our government run schools.
True, but if there were, the government would just **** it up. They would inject misguided notions of social welfare into it.
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Originally Posted by petch751
The problem is... few make the effort to learn how to handle it, and invest it.
There is a wealth of information available to those who seek it.
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Originally Posted by petch751
People opt for what they think is "security" when there is no such thing and are afraid to go out of their "comfort zone. People tend to follow, or march to the same drummer as the people around them, afraid to step outside the box.
If your point is that some people appear irrational, you won't get much disagreement.
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Originally Posted by petch751
Our parents know just as little and alot of times are stressed about it and that way of thinking is passed on down the generations. As they say, look at your parents, for most, there go you in your future.
My dad, like so many of his generation, lied about his age the day after Pearl Harbor and joined the navy. He died unexpectedly at age 47, leaving behind an unsophisticated widow ill-prepared to be a head of household, my older high functioning autistic brother, my severely mentally disabled sister, and me.
I'm nothing like my dad or my mom. I educated myself about financial matters.I semi-retired at 40, fully retiring once our daughter went off to college a few years later (I kept working simply because a parent is a role-model.)
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Originally Posted by petch751
Whew, thank god I marched to a different drummer.
At the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their own outcomes.
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