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So, you and your wife were paying tens of thousands of dollars towards your niece's college and law school expenses and she didn't know that????? Where did she think all that money was coming from??? A unicorn pooping out one hundred dollar bills and gold coins???
Why in the world didn't anyone tell her where the money was coming from while she was receiving it???
Perhaps she didn't ask and assumed her parents paid? After all they make a comfortable living.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wheelsup
Nope.
If you had said she went to school and worked hard for her degree, interned, and got a good job meanwhile her HS friends never left their house after HS, work menial wage jobs and want free stuff and she realizes why that isn't possible now and not "fair" to those who work to get ahead, you would have a point.
But according to your story, her reason for switching from D to R revolves around taxes.
So yeah. Hypocrite.
Not really hypocritical at all. She had this notion that X income provides an absurd life of excesses, tax shelters, etc...
She got a job with a high income, and saw that it wasn't the life of obscene luxury she thought it was, and that she did pay a huge amount in tax already, and her views moderated.
The top 1% pay about 38% of all income tax revenue. The top 5%, over half. Your beloved bottom 50%? 3%
Your own bracket shows that as a percentage of their income, they pay less (21%) if I understand that right.
I agree with most of your other statements. But both Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney have made comments to the effect of how they basically pay a lower percentage of their income than their secretaries do.
Better than my thanksgiving that I spent with my wife's family.
I come from a long line of entrepreneurial small business owners, so my politics lean right.
My wife's siblings and their spouses are all very liberal, and one of the spouses is a sjw-type. The SJW spouse is a teacher; the rest never found a career and just kinda drift from job to job. The people are all in their late 40's and struggling financially.
We tried not to talk politics too much, but it inevitably came up. Every conversation included the following comments/phrases from them:
"It's not fair"
"Nobody should be rich"
"Why should they get to make all that money"
"Rich people are selfish"
"The govt should provide everybody healthcare and housing"
"There should be limits on how much money a person can have"
Ugh. It was exhausting to listen to and quite infuriating to me also. But I didn't want to create a fight during a holiday, so I just kept to myself.
First, I am a moderate and I think both the left and the right have gone way too far. I cannot stand sjw.
But someone's got to do the low paying jobs, the service jobs, the jobs that help people. Such jobs as social worker, for instance. We could use a lot more social workers and maybe that would straighten out the welfare mess with the generations who think they are entitled. Also child protection workers--there never seem to be enough and then we hear of children dying because there was no follow up by child protection, then the governor promises more funding for child protection, and rinse, repeat.
I'm not saying that those ultra liberals in your wife's family are the social worker type but that could be the case. I have known low paid people who have really made a difference in this world. They know that what they are doing (helping families to stay together, helping children who are being abused, etc.) is important. But even though their work is very important, they are very underpaid. So you can see where some of that resentment comes from.
Not everyone wants to be, is cut out to be, or should be an entrepreneur. Plenty of people work just as hard, or even harder, and for much less money. That's the reason for the resentment.
Too much of a gap between rich and poor. Also, if you could see what a school teacher has to put up with, including the kids (majority) who come from overly permissive homes and never heard the word, NO, in their lives, the piles of paperwork, the loads of work they take home every night, the phone calls and conferences with the entitled parents, the administrators who just sit in an office all day and don't have to take verbal abuse and even physical abuse--then you might understand why a teacher should be paid a lot more than they are.
People are starting to realize the enormous gap between the super rich and the working poor. Hence, expressions like, "They have no right to be so rich" and "It's not fair." The people at the top do make the rules and they selfishly make the rules to suit themselves, not for the good of their fellow man.
Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
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I have a friend whose son has had a pretty easy life with nice perks. Ski Trips to Breckenridge and things like that. He was pretty liberal through high school. Now however his mom makes him go and clean up and work on rentals. He is starting to see how much things cost and what some people will do and take advantage of.
He's starting to view things a bit differently now that money for the nice things he was given is starting to get diminished.
I was pretty liberal when I was younger but became more conservative as I got older. Idealisms start to fade when they come out of your pocket.
So, you and your wife were paying tens of thousands of dollars towards your niece's college and law school expenses and she didn't know that????? Where did she think all that money was coming from??? A unicorn pooping out one hundred dollar bills and gold coins???
Why in the world didn't anyone tell her where the money was coming from while she was receiving it???
He demonstrated a point. There are no conservatives or liberals. There are people who argue from their own self-interest for programs that are for their own benefit. As soon as she was on the receiving end of freebies, she changed her tone. He is no different.
And in the current reality, there really is no fiscal conservative. People keep trying to discuss or explain the current economy and markets in the concept of textbook definitions as if that exists in the real world.
We have some in-laws who make really nice money, I'd guess roughly $175K with spectacular benefits. However, I juggle cats better than these people manage money. Hence my wife and I paid roughly half of their oldest daughter's college and maybe 1/4 of her law school tab.
She was unaware. Further, she left for college as a left leaning kid after college in the NE and especially into law school she drifted into Sanders/Warren foolish dreamery. In other words she became idealistic, frustrated, angry, suspicious of success etc.
As a side note more than once I've had to hold my tongue while she lectured my wife and me as to how we needed contribute more to the needy, fiscal conservatives are selfish etc.
_____________________
Two things happened to her recently.
1). Her mom told her that my wife and I had paid a good bit of her schooling costs.
2). After having two either unpaid or very low paying internships during law school she got her first real gig in Manhattan.
*Her pay is surprisingly high, to me anyway, at a little under $200K.
*After her first paycheck and the myriad taxes, fees and levies imposed by the feds and NY authorities she told my wife, "I gasped and almost became a republican right then!"
____________________
Back to Thanksgiving.....the greater family on that side spent Wed.-Thurs.-Friday at a lodge as it either rained or drizzled that whole time there was a lot of conversation. The kid apologized for maybe the 100th time for razzing my wife and me as we were paying for some of her college, I told her to forget it and never think about it again except to do the same or similar down the line.
Secondly, obviously she's very bright and now that she's been smacked in the face with the task of paying for instead of just talking about liberalism she's moved from the idealistic hard left much closer to the center and my guess is she will be a moderate-right soon.
Forgive the typos I forgot my glasses again.
I have a few thoughts...
1) It's sad that your inlaws aren't better at managing their money but that has no impact on you nor should you judge them for it.
2) That is great that you chose to help fund your SIL's education. You should feel greatful that you were able to make a lasting contribution to a member of your family's life.
3) Here political affiliation have no relations to points 1 &/or 2.
4) Most people have little remorse or thought about items when somebody else has to pay for them. Hence rich people, corporations, other countries, polluters are easy boogeymen to the very problems that you and I crease/cause. I would also argue that in some families that are rural members that only watch FNC all day and have similar limited perspectives. Also when people get something for free they tend to have little value or importance on it. When immigrants come to America and they are first generation college graduates and see how hard their parents worked to help them with school there is a great amount of pride. That student will work hard to learn choose a major wisely and make the most out of their experience. Now if you took a kid and gave them that entire experience for free it wouldn't be worth more than a big mac.
I don't know if it's that or just getting more knowledge and seeing a bigger picture. I think it depends on the situation
Yep it absolutely does. I have a personal story....I confess I was similar to this niece out of school when younger. One can even view my posts on raising min wage and such a decade ago and see I was very firmly in the left camp.
However I have almost come completely around, as I have gotten into my 30's. I realize now that some people work harder than others and sacrifice to gain a foothold and accumulate assets while many do not. I am now mostly against government involvement in wages. I realize the best way to "raise the boat" is to "raise the tide", that is, to provide an environment for increased economic activity so more people can take advantage of it. This is in contrast with the current left who strongly believe in mandating higher min wages and tax credits/guaranteed income to boost low income earners pay.
I'm not anti-democrat because they want to tax me. I am anti-democrat because I mostly disagree with the far left viewpoint of heavily taxing those who sacrifice and provide value to society to facilitate giving more to those who choose to not make those sacrifices early on in their lives and provide little value. Yes that makes me cold. But I've seen how the lower class live via low income rentals, and there is a reason they will never get ahead short of winning the lottery.
If you're going to tax (and we do already) the wealthy more, use the income to expand economic prosperity for those who work for it and are willing to put some effort in.
The person EDS describes worked hard in school. They deserve everything they have worked for, despite having it paid for which gives them a substantial leg up on those who weren't born to the right family. But it's quite telling that they want to pull the ladder up once they got theirs.
He demonstrated a point. There are no conservatives or liberals. There are people who argue from their own self-interest for programs that are for their own benefit. As soon as she was on the receiving end of freebies, she changed her tone. He is no different.
And in the current reality, there really is no fiscal conservative. People keep trying to discuss or explain the current economy and markets in the concept of textbook definitions as if that exists in the real world.
I agree with most of your other statements. But both Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney have made comments to the effect of how they basically pay a lower percentage of their income than their secretaries do.
Sure... but that's completely meaningless. You only pay attention to percentages instead of dollars if you're starting from the assumption that all wealth belongs to the government and we're talking about how much is "fair" to allow someone to keep. And I completely reject that notion.
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